Part 1 – Driving with a blindfold

Progress

In many ways the modern world seems to have advanced in just about every way conceivable. Few die of dysentery (at least in the developed world), we carry enormous multi-media libraries in our pockets, and travelling across the globe is easy and affordable. Yet, one only has to survey their family and friends to discover that something has terribly gone wrong with our relationships. You don’t have to wax nostalgic to see that our relational competence has degraded while our technological acumen has increased.

It’s not that previous generations were free from greed, vice and selfish ambition, and we have made evils like slavery and discrimination unpalatable to most, but the sense of general decency and warmth enjoyed by previous generations is harder to find today. How many times have you heard an older person say, “We never locked our doors,” or “We looked out for each other,” or “We would never say things like that in public.”? I’m sure endless examples could be cited that supposedly contradict my point, nonetheless, I think it is hard to ignore the general consensus that we have lost something beautiful and wholesome in our relationships.

Be a Luddite?

Neither do I believe that technology is the culprit behind our relational desert wasteland. Technology is a tool and while a tool can influence how we interact with our world, we are the ultimate deciders of which tools we use and how we use them. Additionally, humans adapt well to new tools and, eventually, once the novelty wears off, we integrate them into our daily lives without much fanfare, and life proceeds as usual. The things that are important to us continue to shape our behavior and the tools end up empowering those choices.

Cognitive dissonance

What has lowered the temperature of our relational culture has more to do with our general view of people and relationships and the intentional suppression of our recognition that how we are acting violates our relationships. It’s the cognitive dissonance (and its impact) that comes from wanting the world to be a certain way and living accordingly, when we know it is not, in actuality, that way. To put it metaphorically, it’s the damage that results from driving with a blindfold. We’re dumb because we refuse to see.

Not Fantastic Four

I suggest that there are four central practices that cause our relational stupidity, which we know, deep in our heart, violate something fundamental about relationships. They are: sexual promiscuity, divorce, abortion, and career obsession. All of these four manners of living strike at the heart of some vital and intimate relationship and force us into a justification mode that distorts our understanding and leads us to live in a way that is less honest, less warm, and ultimately less satisfying.

In future posts I will elaborate on how relationships work, why sexual promiscuity, divorce, abortion and career obsession damage them and the deception we’re forced to embrace if we want to practice these behaviors.