Month: June 2014

It is commonplace to criticize those under 30 for their excessive use of texting and other social network tools. “These kids can’t communicate face-to-face anymore… They are so rude, they ignore friends and family siting right next to them to be on those damn phones.” Concern about social networking, technology, and the young has, ironcally, gone viral. Perhaps those ready to endlessly complain about the young might heed the advice found in Matthew’s Gospel: 

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Mt. 7:5)

Strong words from Matthew. Do they fit this situation? Is there a plank in the eyes of those over 30 that prevents us from seeing clearly enough to remove the speck from the eyes of the young? 

I think there is. And it has a name. Jacob Burak wrote about “the plank” recently in Aeon (click here) and called it FoMO – the Fear of Missing Out. 

(FoMO) is the feeling that we’re missing out on something more exciting, more important, or more interesting going on somewhere else. It is the unease of feeling that others are having a more rewarding experience and we are not a part of it

We (us pre-texters) are all too familiar with this FoMO experience. As Burak points out, human nature itself is hard-wired with this dread. It is cross generational, and while social networking technology amplifies the problem, it is not the root cause. Blaming the technology misses the point: in the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”

FoMO has at its base unfulfilled psychological needs for love, respect, autonomy and security. Our young are using texting and social networks because, as Burak writes, of the anxiety that they are missing out on something more exciting, more important, or more interesting going on somewhere else. It is the anxst that others are having a more rewarding experience and they are not a part of it.

Here age does play a factor: many of us over 30 (and most of us over 50!) simply are not comfortable with all of those buttons and therefore have not tasted the anxiety of missing out on that one text, that one thread, that one new link that is the door to Nirvana. But we understand FoMO. We worry that we will miss out on a professional advancement, profitable deals, or accumulation of wealth. FoMO is painful, whether felt by young or old.

Perhaps the young are more adept at trying to medicate FoMO using social networking and other new technologies. Like most medicines, social networking has side effects. The auto accident caused by the youth texting while driving is the best known of these side effects. Another side effect, ironically, of “social” networking is an “unsocial” disconnection with other human beings in physical proximity!

Burak’s article points to the work of Herbert Stein for a solution. It’s termed “satisfice” – a “portmanteau of ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’ – to suggest that instead of trying to maximise our benefits, we seek a merely ‘good enough’ result.”

It is our generation, not just the young, who are obsessed with missing out: of the perfect love, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect deal, the perfect life. Ironically this actually all but guarantees that we are missing out. And I fear we have passed this FoMO on to our young. Social networking is the latest way to try and scratch that itch.

The young are already sensing this, I think, with their interest in and drive towards minimalist. Rather than this anxiety on missing out, we need to get comfortable with “good enough.” Burak sites Emerson for wisdom on why “good enough” is the real solution to FoMO.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Let’s take that beam out of our eye, share with our young the paradox of losing to gain, of satisfice. Perhaps social networking, when no longer used to medicate FoMO, will improve culture rather than threaten it. Maybe even to let the young satisfice their needs rather than live in FoMO. 

Borzou Daragahi in the Financial Times Thursday (June 12th edition) sees Iraq rapidly fragmenting into three distinct “ethnic and sectarian cantons” – Kurdish, Sunni and Shiia. Simon Henderson’s article in Foreign Policy (also published on June 12th, hopefully you can read by clicking here) describes the battle for Iraq as a Saudi war on Iran. Both of these establishment publications point to the West’s growing and grudging acknowledgement that the Middle East nation state structure is broken, fragmented. But perhaps the local populace does not have this same sense of national fragmentation. Perhaps for them the divisions remain sectarian rather than national. And the challenge remains finding, or more correctly, rediscovering, a political structure that functions with sectarian plurality. 

This whole concept of fragmentation hints at a confirmation bias in terms of whether these nations can or should continue to function. Jonathan Spyer in The Tower asks the right question: “Do Syria, Iraq and Lebanon still exist?” Click here to read his analysis. Spyer article points to an often forgotten reality: the “nation state” structure of the Middle East was imposed on the region by the West to manage the development of oil resources after World War I. The current crisis in Iraq is part of that ongoing, century long, projection of Western power into the region. 

Perhaps the sound and fury currently seen in the mainstream media starts from a false premise: that the regional populace bought into the Nation State structure imposed by the West. The reality is the populace in the region still identifies with traditional sectarian divisions (Sunni, Shiia, or Kurd) which are then projected into the geopolitical realm (Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, Islamic Republic of Iran, etc.).

Here is another way to view this: In the West, individuals and organizations look to accomplish their financial and political goals through the nation state, which united them regardless of, or in spite of, any sectarian membership. The Western populace acts financially and politically through the nation station, not through its sectarian groups and divisions. If the articles cited above are correct, this is not true in the Middle East, at least at the popular level. Economic and political activity begin with, and are expressed through, sectarian institutions, which then look for expression in some sort of geopolitical structure. 

The mainline media perhaps also misses understanding US interests are in the region. Increasing energy independence in the US and other industrial regions is resulting in a disengagement from the Middle East. If that disengagement continues on its current trajectory, then US interests are best served by a limited involvement, one aimed at making sure one of the two sectarian groups, or its geopolitical expressions (Sunnis –> Kingdom of Saudia Arabia vs. Shiites –> Islamic Republic of Iran), do not gain an advantage. In short, to maintain a stalemate.