(7 of 8)
A young boy in Harlem was sitting at a computer in a library, clearly loving the experience. When asked why, he said of the computer, "It doesn't know I'm black." We are no closer to one another than we wish to be.
Between men and women there seems to be a widening separation based partly on the new varied social status of women and on men's difficulties in making adjustments. Movie plots have men turning into women, women men. One of our weirder celebrities, a basketball star named Dennis Rodman, put on a bridal gown a few years ago and married himself. Saner but sadder consequences are evidenced in an absence of romance in courtship and the treatment of sex as sport.
Between adults and children there has always been a chasm (sentimental pretenses notwithstanding), which has of late become murderous. Child-interest groups regularly cite the vast numbers of the abused, neglected and homeless. White middle-class families blithely assume that the statistics apply to poor urban people of color. The fact is that sexual abuse in states like Iowa and Nebraska is the national average. Because of work patterns, parents of every economic status are spending much less time with their kids. Children also compete for one's money, time and resources. In a recent exhibition of children's art in New York City, a painting showed a man raising his hands in surrender and surrounded by clocks. It carried the caption THIS IS MY FATHER.
Between people and nature there may actually be less of a division than there was, say, 50 years ago. The corruption of the atmosphere, the erosion of the rain forests, the plundering of the waters are all common topics of concern. Dozens of first-rate organizations are at work on conservation, and political candidates have adopted the issue, both because it's safe and because they mean it. The trouble is that this effort may be too little, too late. You tell me.
Between people and themselves, separations have always existed. Some of that today is due to the "Is this all there is"-ness of flush modern life; some, to the number of work hours--a mere three hours less a week than in 1970. And the pressures of competition make those hours feel like more. Maybe we are deliberately working harder so as to have less contact, less time for self-inspection. (These are self-interested but not introspective times.) I won't pretend to know what all this means, but if you have preserved Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, we look more like the hectic machine than we look like the hapless Chaplin.
A woman just rowed solo across the Atlantic. Parachutists frequently leap off cliffs and out of planes. Balloonists are beginning to require air-traffic controllers. We are trying to escape from something.