Human loneliness, and the sheer desperation that too much of it inevitably causes, is the 21st Century's most potent and powerful driver of everyday action in the First World. I'm convinced of it. Nearly all bad life-changing decisions come from wild and selfish desires for human connection, and our municipal court hallways are littered with the endings and by-products of desperate acts: gang shit, quickie divorces, restraining orders, and children of ridiculous unions cursed at and by birth.
None of this fits into the narrative structure we've commonly accepted as entertaining or enlightening -- except maybe for the shows on the teevee down at the laundromat during which viewers are invited to pick a side whilst ignoring the larger picture. There's no place in Joseph Campbell's hero-story arc for a journey that ends in a victory over desperation; it tends to be a second-act problem for Good Guys, who are saved by quest completion, religion or a Good Woman. It's a first-act issue for villains.
The ability to refrain from making stupid decisions is not, sadly, considered a superpower. They'll never make a movie out of any of those old German novels in which the protagonist achieves a victory over a baser self by way of internal monologue, or from Saul Bellow's Herzog. As a result, there's no real cultural roadmap for breaking the desperation cycle, no hero to turn to. Is this, too, something the internet and its new complex media can help with?
(Image via DTMM)
