{"id":1715,"date":"2014-06-17T20:11:54","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T03:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-mountain.com\/?p=1715"},"modified":"2014-06-17T20:27:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T03:27:16","slug":"more-on-being-detached","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/?p=1715","title":{"rendered":"More on being detached"},"content":{"rendered":"
Following is a response to Sam Negri’s observations on being detached from the contemporary world. It is from Bunny Fontana, a long time friend and anthropologist by trade who has appeared previously on this cyber corner.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Not only am I detached from the world of internet celebrity, but I seem to be detached from celebrity, period.\u00a0 And also contemporary (last dozen years) fiction, clothing styles, and nearly the entire world of computerspeak (I can create neologisms, too).\u00a0 It’s gotten so bad there are frequently allusions to persons, events, and objects in the daily comics — which I still read every morning out of a lifetime of addiction to what used to be called “funny papers” — that fail to have any meaning for me at all.\u00a0 Likewise with TV’s standup comics.\u00a0 Audiences roar with laughter and I wonder what they are roaring about.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I remain more bemused than bewildered by all of it.\u00a0 And worried.\u00a0 Worried chiefly about what’s going to happen with interpersonal relationships among people whose worlds have been principally “virtual” rather than real.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, I had a chance to talk with my 16-year-old granddaughter when we all got together on Father’s Day.\u00a0 What she had to say gave me a glimmer of hope.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The day before she had returned from a week long stint at something called a leadership retreat at Camp Tontozona in Payson.\u00a0 As she and about 60 other kids her age\u00a0piled out of buses at the camp’s headquarters, they were relieved of their cell phones and any other electronic devices they may have brought with them.\u00a0 They spent the whole week\u00a0without being able to watch TV or listen to radio; text, tweet, email, surface the web, etc. etc.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her dad said if I wanted to get in touch with her I would have to send her a letter, postage stamp and all, c\/o Retreat at Tontozona.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s what I wrote:<\/span><\/div>\n
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Your dad tells me you have been committed for a short time to a lifestyle into which your grandfather was born\u00a0and in which he spent the majority of his 83 years.\u00a0 It was a time when people generally talked to one another face to face, using more-or-less complete sentences and whole words.\u00a0 It was when we spent nearly as much time outside rather than indoors; when we connected to our surroundings in meaningful ways; and when we slowly grew into an awareness that we human beings are not the only living creatures on earth, but that we share a small planet with other life forms with whom we are all intricately connected.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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Ours was a world without computers, cell phones, and television.\u00a0 It was a world far less rushed and frantic, a world less inclined, as Thoreau said, toward “lives of quiet desperation.”\u00a0 We used our imaginations and created our own entertainment, making toys as children, playing group games as youths, and reading, singing, and socializing as young adults.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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We had time for reflection.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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Your week is no more than a tiny blip on the screen of what will be your entire life.\u00a0 I hope it will be a meaningful blip, one you will look back on with warm feelings in the decades ahead knowing you have shared experiences lived by your ancestors.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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Much love,<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Grandpa<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Her short answer to the question, “How was your week in camp?” was, “It was a life-changing experience.”\u00a0 And later she exclaimed, “I hate social media!”\u00a0 And this from a teenager for whom the worst possible punishment was to be deprived of her smart phone.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So who knows?<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following is a response to Sam Negri’s observations on being detached from the contemporary world. It is from Bunny Fontana, a long time friend and anthropologist by trade who has appeared previously on this cyber corner. Not only am I detached from the world of internet celebrity, but I seem to be detached from celebrity, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-people","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}