Malvaceous...holothurian...splanchnic
Here is the challenge: find three words in the dictionary that I do not know, make definitions for them, then write a creative piece using those words (presumably without looking them up).
Malvaceous (adj): the quality of having a fantastic figure that one uses only for evil purposes.
Holothurian (adj): having the appearance of an ancient vision, e.g. in which Arthur, or another figure of ancient lore, appears to one and delivers instructions
Splanchnic (n, also adj): someone that has the ability to split himself into many pieces, splanching oneself
The 21st century is a fascinating place. Never before have we had a population so completely connected, so totally unable even to imagine what it might be like to have a moment's silence, in fact. It is a generation in which responding to a text with more than five minutes delay is considered a huge breach of etiquette, almost an aggression. Or perhaps a micro-aggression. I'm not sure how to tell the difference.
Simultaneously, we have a generation in which the feeling of loneliness is epidemic, where teens routinely tell their clouds of followers and friends that they feel completely alone. The prescription of psychotropic drugs to treat anxiety is rampant, in a group of people that has never--not in the history of the world--had less to worry about. This is a group of people that self-mutilates--and self-murders--more than any in history, as a means of coping with the incredible pressures of being themselves.
It's probably a coincidence that malvaceous women collect tens of thousands of likes and follows by posting pictures of themselves with nothing on, then rail at the sexism rampant in the culture, as if astonished that by treating their bodies as the most important thing about themselves, other people learn to do the same. I have two daughters whose friends routinely complain that nobody talks to them, and almost simultaneously their parents lament that their children have sent twenty thousand texts in a month. Presumably, those texts have been answered, though possibly not with the speed the kids desire.
It's not enough any more to answer a text, to like a post, to heart a tweet. This "reaction" must happen within a narrow window of time--no more than a few minutes--because the poster, the tweeter, the texter will surely have been clicking refresh and reloading their images, waiting for the reaction to come. The worst horror is not to be flamed, but to receive no reaction at all. If the social media reaction is negative, at least the depth of one's social leprosy is known. If no reaction is forthcoming, then like a holothurian vision, the poster sees the horror in their head. And there is no disaster in fact as great as the one imagination creates for itself.
As an experiment, I invited my daughters to turn their phones off for six hours on an average day. No warning, no "I'm going dark", just one minute there, and the next gone. The experiment was twofold: one, I wanted to see how they would do with the disconnection from the electronic world; two, I wanted to see what the reaction would be from that world that two of its brightest lights had suddenly winked out (that's sarcasm, to be clear).
The results were interesting. The first two hours passed like Prometheus chained to the rock, while the buzzard ate out his liver. I thought they might actually expire from restless boredom. But an hour or so later, they were painting their nails, and then they went for a drive that lasted far longer than the end of the trial period. I know they weren't cheating; I had the phones. They were simply enjoying being with one another, no devices in sight. Both reported later that they'd had the best conversation they'd had in months, driving through the foothills of the mountains and looking at the new spring growth.
When they got back on their devices, they showed me the blizzard of messages they'd received. Their friends had texted as usual for about ten minutes, but with increasing agitation, and even my girls could see the mounting desperation and wholly illusory interpretations of their silence. They were accused of being angry, rude, callous. They had said, of course, nothing to warrant any of this. The hysteria was instructive. "Have you ever reacted like this?" I asked them. They nodded, eyes wide. Maybe the lesson will take.
Probably not. Within moments, they were every bit as buried in their devices as they had ever been, but perhaps they'll refuse to make interpretations the next time they are deprived of instantaneous input from their legions of fans. How, indeed, anyone of that generation is able to concentrate on anything for long enough to make rational sense of it defies all understanding. Splanchnic, every one of them, dividing their attention among devices and apps and platforms like Voldemort and his Horcruxes, and I'm not sure the end for them will be better than it was for him.
Every generation sees the rising one and is sure that the end of the world is upon us. I won't go that far, not here, not elsewhere, but I will say this: if the sum of human relations is to know and be known by one another, to build connection that becomes real community, we--all of us--have some hard work ahead. I pray we're up to it.
~Cristof
P.S. The Atlantic has an excellent--and chilling--article on this very subject in their upcoming issue.
P.P.S. I looked them up.
malvaceous actually means "like the mallow" (as in, a marsh mallow, which is only one kind of the plant)
holothurian means "like starfish and sea urchins"
splanchnic means "of the bowels or intestines"
I hope you'll forgive me if I like my definitions better.
P.P.P.S. When I was a lad, my father played a game with me and my friends, called "fictionary". It resembles the game Balderdash. My father would drag out his Oxford Unabridged, a gigantic tome six inches thick that had to be read with a magnifying glass, find a few words, and split us into two teams. We would be presented with a piece of paper, on which was either 1) the definition of the word or 2) "fake it". We had a few minutes to pretend to read and memorize our papers, then we were to attempt to con the other team into believing that our made-up definitions were the real thing, scoring points for success. It was during this game that I realized I had a true facility for lying. My father had occasion to regret teaching me that, but that's a story for another time.