Our Superpower

Increasingly, modern humans are living our lives online, which is to say that we exist without a physical presence. Of course, this isn't entirely a new phenomenon. The landline telephone likewise allowed us to "be" with others without being physically present. Even before that we could engage remotely through letters we stuffed in envelopes and posted. But, the sheer volume of time we spend in this kind of disembodied state is unprecedented.

The pandemic itself was tragic, of course, but one of the most alarming consequences for me has been that so many people "discovered" that they preferred working from home. No matter how physically alienating our previous technologies, at least, for most of us, our jobs kept us fully in touch with our fellow humans. As a natural introvert, I get that it might be a relief to not have to make all that small talk, but that's a high price to pay for a disembodied life.

I'm reminded of H.G. Wells classic sci-fi horror story The Invisible Man in which a mad scientist named Griffin learns to make himself invisible to his fellow humans while retaining the rest of his faculties. Unfortunately, he didn't have the foresight to create an antidote. After the novelty of being a fly-on-the-wall wears off, he begins to assert his presence through small tricks and pranks, what we today might call "trolling." Dissatisfied with that, however, this disembodied man rapidly descends into burglary, blackmail, and even murder in what he calls his "Reign of Terror."

As a social species, we have evolved to be in the physical presence of one another, which is to say that our communication and connection is more than just words, more than just voice. Indeed, as Rutger Bregman writes in his book Humankind, one of the ways we stand apart from our fellow species is that our internal states, and particularly our emotional states, are quite easy to detect. "Humans," he writes, "are anything but poker-faced. We constantly leak emotions and are hardwired to relate to the people around us. But far from being a handicap, this is our true superpower because sociable people aren't only more fun to be around, in the end they are smarter too." 

This capacity toward sociability and interconnectedness is one of the primary reasons we out-competed (in an evolutionary sense) our fellow hominoids the Neanderthals. By all accounts, they were, as individuals, much more intelligent than individual Homo sapiens. But as Bregman puts it, "If Neanderthals were a super-fast computer, we were an old-fashioned PC -- with wi-fi. We were slower, but better connected." This is why our distant ancestors rarely idolized the individual: they knew the power of the collective. This is why "trolls" were routinely ostracized, even, in extreme cases, banished, which was a death sentence. Likewise, they knew that "having more friends ultimately makes you smarter." 

I don't think it's an accident that young people today report having fewer close friends than young people of previous generations.

I don't know what, if anything, is to be done about the direction we are taking as modern humans. Predicting the future in the light of our fears is no more effective than attempting to predict it through rose tinted glasses, but we are definitely risking one of our most important adaptive advantages in this project of becoming friendless and invisible. I certainly believe that this contributes to our growing feelings of alienation, division, and loneliness. I often think of The Invisible Man when I learn about the lives of mass murderers who are are compelled to enact their own reigns of terror against "enemies" they've created in their lonely and fevered minds. They say that prisoners who are kept in isolation for too long begin to doubt their own existence. I can't help but wonder if these acts of senseless violence aren't at some level driven by alienated individuals trying to prove that they do in fact exist, with tragic consequences. 

As early childhood educators, we live in the opposite kind of world, one more akin to our species' heritage. Our days of physical presence with groups of young children puts us in the world of the legacy of community and friendship. We spend our lives together in the same physical space, fully embodied, where we learn to read and respond to our fellow emotionally "leaky" people, creating, discovering, and deciding together. We allow children "space" when they need it, of course, but the default is to be together in the flesh where we have evolved to thrive because no one is invisible. 

I couldn't care less about preschoolers learning to read or cypher. My only goal is that the children in my care learn how to live in a world with other people, and, most importantly, what it means to be a friend. I want them to experience their visibility, their embodiment, and their connection. Being fully visible is our superpower.

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