In the matter of personal ties, there is nothing on the face of this earth that takes the place of experiences forged in the crucible of time. A defining feature of modernity has come to be that we want what we want now, if not yesterday. That sort of attitude may very well be applicable with technology; however, it fails mightily when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I can only earn your trust over time. I cannot do 50,000 things all at once and thereby have your trust. For that only tells you how I have behaved at that moment. It does not tell you how I shall behave over time.
I have said it before, but it is worth saying again. On any given occasion, a mother’s single kiss has no significance whatsoever over. But the accumulative effect of an insignificant kiss on a daily basis is none other than a tidal wave of affirmation against which the very gates of hell cannot easily prevail.
Human beings need time. As a species, we take longer to mature than any other species. The gestational period of some animals, such as whales and elephants, is longer. But they leave the womb very nearly fit to take their place in the world. They can certainly travel with the pack within weeks if not days. We human beings leave the womb utterly helpless. And it takes a good 12 or so years before we come even close too approximating the wherewithal of adults. And technology has not changed that at all, even if youth reaching puberty at an earlier age.
This tells is something extraordinarily deep and profound about human beings. There has been no transmogrification on the part of human nature owing to technology. Accordingly, it is still the case that personal relationships take time and seasoning. That may seem to be a downside. But the downside has an upside. When personal ties have been forged with honesty and goodwill over time, then they have fortitude—a durability, if you will—that very little can destroy.
It is easy to miss this if one focuses upon a single instance of not behaving in this or that way. For in social interaction, it is exceedingly rare that a single instance is determinant of anything significant.
Part of what worries me enormously with modernity and recent assessments made by political theory is precisely the fact that people fail to appreciate the simple truth that the single instance in personal interactions is of little import. Another way of putting the point is that modernity and political theory is failing to be mindful of human nature.
It is simply not possible for any human being (infants aside) to mistake a 5-year old human for a 25-year old. I take the fact of the slowness with which human beings develop both physically and psychologically to be quite indicative of a deep, deep fact about human nature, namely that personal ties need to withstand the test of time. There is no other way to measure stability of character, whatever the content of that character may be like.
Now, here is what strikes me as quite sublime. Words are no substitute for time. At any given moment, I may aver with great conviction that I believe in punctuality or that I love France or that I am committed to taking my students seriously. In saying these things, I may be absolutely sincere. But here is what is true about me. I have only been late for class once in 18 year of being a professor at Syracuse University. And in the last 14 years, I have traveled to France more than I have traveled to any other place in the world—indeed, to any other place in the United States including New York City (a mere 250 miles from Syracuse as opposed to France, which is 3,600 miles from Syracuse). Finally, I have managed to acknowledge dozens of students in my published writings.
When it comes to self-knowledge, there is not, and cannot be, a substitute for consistency of behavior over time. I have shown up to class on time when I have been tired and weary, and when I have been intoxicated with emotional pain, and when I have despaired of the thought that I could make a difference.
Technology is wonderful. But it has given us the illusion that even depth of character is something that can be had or ascertained at a moment’s notice. The most that a moment will give, unless it is an extremely paradigmatic moment, is an insight that must be subject to further affirmation or disconfirmation (as the case may be).
Unfortunately, we are not grasping that. Accordingly, we are running on empty and are wondering why.
Let me give a concrete illustration. Being transient has come to be an acceptable part of modernity. And in once sense that is an extremely good thing. Certainly, I cannot criticize anyone for being transient. But transience comes with an enormous price tag, namely the loss of stable ties and personal history.
Sometimes, of course, precisely what we want is to put that moment in time behind us. We want to burn old bridge and build new ones to replace them. Sometimes, though, what we so desperately need is the old well-trodden paths of nourishment.
On my view, it is no accident that personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are increasingly failing to fare well. This is because these ties are being asked to bear a load that they cannot bear.
The communitarian point is that human beings are quintessentially social creatures. This is not the same as saying that the right personal tie is all that a person needs in life. We miss this point because we miss the simple truth that once upon time families were themselves a fundamental part of communities. It was not just that Mary and Bob defined themselves in terms of one another, but Mary and Bob lived in a community and that community was also a constitutive part of their identity, though obviously not the most fundamental part. This also meant that Mary and Bob found strength not just through interacting with one another, but through interacting with other members of the community.
It is a revealing feature of humanity that it is the extremely rare to find people whose only aim in life has been to be a recluse; and such people often strike us as problematic on a number of fronts. What most human beings have often done, even in the context of being unjust, is to define themselves vis à vis others by, for example, having control over them. And most evil people rarely commit evil alone. Even the suicide-bomber is part of a network that affirms and re-affirms the so-called good that she or he does. This tells us just how important human beings are to one another.
We begin life in desperate need of other human beings for many years after entering this word; and we typically end life in desperate need of other human beings for several years prior to expiring. At the beginning and at the end, the character of the other matters more than words can tell.
We have no choice at the beginning. The interesting issue, though, is this: Will we choose so badly along the way that at the end it is as if we had no choice, either? Insofar as we make choices along the way that ignore the relevance of time to ascertaining the quality of a person’s character, then the answer to the question just raised will, most unfortunately, be an affirmative one.
