Jean-Paul Sartre was right! (maybe)
We’ll skip the millennial interview and let a Boomer rant this month. The main threat to society, from my born in the ‘50s point of view, is the trending reduction in human contact. The millennials I have spoken in the past few months don’t seem to be bothered by this, i.e. the dating apps and the ease in which they scan QR codes to access anything. But I does! Trying to have lunch at an outdoor table on PPW I encountered no waiter or waitress, just bunch of black and white squares, cellophane taped to the table. I scanned twice, to no avail. All that kept coming up was a red lettered instruction saying, “Scan for Service’. I wound up getting a scrambled egg and sausage on a roll at the bodega across the street.
In a nearby supermarket (ok whole food) I wound up having an argument with a robotic cashier about how many bags I would be using. I did not need a bag and that created a problem. “She” kept saying in that scary/calm voice we are getting used to, “How many bags how many bags…” I walked out grocery-less to the stares of people waiting for the machine I was on.
OK, I know it’s me. I am an obsolete person ready for the “Soylent Green” grist mill, but my question is this: Why can’t I have a human waiter, waitress or human cashier. Is it just efficiency, a higher profit margin for the owners? Or is it something else? Which brings me to Jean-Paul Sartre. Does anybody remember Sartre! (you could google him) In 1944 Jean-Paul Satre wrote a play titled “No Exit”. The main point of which was his famous quote, “Hell is other people”.
Is that the true reason for the seeming move to non-contact between us humans? Is it that we just cannot stand each other? So, we will upload thousands of years of progress, knowledge and beauty into some super digital cloud brain and disappear? Huh? Is that what we really want!?
K, calm down, get a coffee to go, walk down 7th avenue sipping (if you can’t’ beat’em etc). Oh…. wait a second…all these millennials clogging the sidewalks, with kids in hand, and smaller ones in strollers, making lots of noise! Sorry Jean-Paul, me thinks we’ll carry on.
