Never the Twain Shall Meet

Pastel-colored flowers painted on a delicate porcelain teacup that sits atop its companion saucer made of equal fragility.  Alongside the dainty duo lies a single, untarnished silver spoon.  The spoon rests next to a napkin that has been starched and bleached within an inch of its life so that it can, for all intents and purposes, appear new and unsullied.  And for good measure, it has been artfully transformed into a swan with the more stubborn stains discreetly hidden beneath a carefully folded wing.  The numbered tables are round, each draped with a meticulously embroidered white cloth where, at the center, a candle nestles snuggly inside an ornate and polished silver candlestick.  The candle brings life to each table as the flickering pulse of its flame melts the unscented wax beneath it.   Tiered silver trays filled with tea cakes and finger-sized sandwiches are displayed on each table and available for the taking by the stylishly-dressed, well-groomed and, by all appearances, refined patrons.  The otherwise modest room is paradoxical as the candle-lit tables radiate warmth and intimacy against the backdrop of garishly overstated and bold floral-papered walls that are stacked high with the fragile china and fragrant tea.  Exotic teas that are served by the uniformed and white-gloved baristas who feverishly conjure and steep the hot, aromatic elixirs into liquid perfection.  The enchanting shoppe is serene, seemingly under a celestial spell that is summoned by hushed and polite conversations, soft string music, and the muffled clinking sound of stirring silver spoons submerged inside their teacups.  The gentle sounds work in harmony with the fragrant, hot tea to create a hypnotic atmosphere that illustrates a façade of peace and tranquility. However, when viewed at a closer range, it is revealed to be not much more than an exclusive meeting place that is as pretentious as the clientele who frequent it. 

Oops. 

Maybe that is unfair and sounds a bit harsh.  But as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, pointed out with tongue in cheek, “There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.”  We are agreed, unfair or not.  It is generally the over-refined who come in droves to these quaint, yet gilded, little tea shoppes where the more highbrowed among us feel right at home.  That being said, there are usually two or more sides to any story worth telling.  Stories that examine glaring societal disparities where we regularly speak in contradictions as we endeavor to build, not break down, impenetrable walls and further deepen, rather than connect, unbridgeable chasms amidst pervasive opposition, righteousness and futile misunderstandings.  And at its root is the familiar anger that we have become conditioned to expect, but not necessarily accept unconditionally.  It is no surprise that the proverbial ‘twain’ in these all-too-common stories never get a chance to meet, and even if they do meet, it is under the strain of already bitter circumstances.  Notwithstanding the fact that ‘never’ is a very long time.  The quaint little tea shoppe is located on a corner of a busy and bustling Main Street.  In the spirit of competition, just down the street on the opposite corner sits another type of establishment that appears to happily lack the refinement of its long-standing and, in this case, hubristic rival.  And that is the bar.

The bar, as you can well imagine, looks and sounds a little different than the tea shoppe.  Even from a distance.  Differences that become more obvious and unambiguous as you begin to stroll along the sidewalk away from the tea shoppe and towards the bar.  Your ignited senses become heightened as you are seduced by the faint rhythm of a drumbeat’s vibrations.  Like a slow-rising crescendo, beckoning you towards it, the sound becomes more intense the closer you get.   Before you know it, the music quickly seeps into the pores of your body until it makes direct contact with your soul.  In your periphery, you vaguely notice the passersby who are watching you shake and shimmy down the street as you have now given over the controls of your body to the music which is, incidentally, leading you directly to the bar.  And then you reach your destination and find yourself standing at its entrance door.  Forming binoculars with your hands, you put your face to the glass door and peek inside. 

Yes. 

This place looks and sounds more like it.   Without further ado, you swing open the door and are pulled into the uninhibited and welcoming embrace of the bar whose cadenced pulse can be felt beneath your feet.  Once inside, the music borders on deafening and is in strong competition with the wall-to-wall people who can be seen yelling at each other in order to be heard. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the spirits served here have the ability to break down those otherwise indestructible barriers, loosening lips and hips as singing and dancing is a well-known side effect of the specialized and made-to-order elixirs.  Sweet, complex and bitter concoctions made from distilled and fermented fruits now being mixed, shaken and stirred by the bartenders who energetically serve them to the throng of fully-galvanized revelers in different sized and shaped glasses.  Proving that the size or shape of the glass doesn’t matter, what matters is what is inside. Like a flame to a candle, the longer the imbibers stay at the bar, the more convivial and festive they become.  A taste of the forbidden fruit, as it were, leaves you wanting more not less, therefore, you plant your feet to the floor that is now sticky from fallen drinks until the last round is called just before closing time.  While you are admittedly tired, you are not ready to leave just yet.  This was fun.  The kind of fun that makes you momentarily pause with your half-full glass suspended in midair as you consider whether or not this level of fun tips the scale and leans heavily into the land of the forbidden.  And as Mark Twain said, “The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.” Unsurprisingly, that accounts for the large crowd.  Similar to the tea shoppe, the bar is a meeting place, albeit less exclusive, where people congregate in large numbers both with and sans the judgment that has become culturally normalized. No matter where or what you decide to drink.  Or the vessel from which it is served.   But it does beg the question that manages to find its way to the tip of many thirsty tongues and that is, is that it?  Are those presumably different watering holes our only two options and are they really all that different? 

While seemingly simple, it is arguably an inconsequential question to be asking because technically we already know the answer.  Serving as another decoy to distract us, drawing ridiculous comparisons of tea shoppes and bars is only mildly entertaining until it is not really very funny at all.  Highlighting the exaggerated extremes of two establishments, that are allegedly different, lays bare unsuccessful attempts at disguising the harsh reality of an otherwise overindulgent society that, over the course of a couple of decades, has wittingly dissected itself.  Indisputably making the collective society far worse than anyone could have ever predicted.  The reasons for the decline are hardly groundbreaking.  The truth is there are no longer any real discernible differences between those who frequent the tea shoppe and those who electric slide into the bar.  They are nothing more than historical, society-made extremes that have evolved into a fragmentation of its dysfunctional members who have become weakened by their instability. New generations, who have been passed the baton by older generations, easily becoming the maladjusted poster children for irrational and unreasonable behaviors.  Suggesting anything to the contrary, while marginally optimistic, is an improbable and insincere ruse that lacks believability because while it sounds good and garners applause, it is repeatedly proven to be nothing more than a poorly conceived and elaborate lie.  And if Mark Twain was right when he said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” then the chance of the truth catching up, and meant to be believed, is practically utopian.  Because indelible lines have been markedly drawn, push has come to shove and the truth and facts have become blurred by anger and narcissism that has been carelessly built through nefarious means.   Consequently, one is no longer easily distinguishable from the other.

As many from older generations might attest, including yours truly, the current state of the societal decline is a difficult sip to swallow whether you are slow-sipping tea from a fragile teacup painted with pastel flowers or fast-guzzling a fruity concoction out of a tall glass with a colorful paper umbrella sticking out of the top.  It hits us harder because we know what a social media-free society looks like and it was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, better.  There is a high probability that social media may very well be the leading contributor towards society’s rapid downward spiral, the straw that stirs the drink, so to speak.  Along with its reliable accomplice, the compact and convenient handheld device, also known as a ‘smartphone’, that packs its own strong punch purely based on its ease in accessibility and addictive power of distraction.   Although labeling it ‘smart’ might have been an inherent bridge too far.  Having become our primary means of communication that is disseminated vis-à-vis a small device that travels with us everywhere we go and fits perfectly inside our back pocket when it is not in our hands or charging for optimal performance.   Like human magnets, we have unabatingly gravitated towards the one thing that has given us permission to remove any remaining filters or sensibilities that may or may not have ever existed in the first place.   We take comfort in the lack of any real consequence for the often toxic and largely disingenuous words that we bravely spew from behind the safety of a protective glass screen.  With unadulterated recklessness, we say all of those things that we doubtlessly would not have the courage to say if we were speaking to our ‘friends’, and vastly unknown followers, face-to-face.   Deeply-rooted, and now also technologically advanced, anger has taken flight making it easier to spread its wings and further expand its reach.  And yet even with that understanding, social media remains merely a catalyst that has successfully managed to accelerate and exacerbate the decomposition of a society that was already pretty angry and volatile to begin with.  Mark Twain said, “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”  And, heaven knows, we are in no short supply of anger.  With too much consumption over an undetermined period of time, the raw emotional, mental and even physical effects of social media have undeniably become permanent contaminants that are eroding and rotting its users from the inside out.  Whether you frequent a prototypical watering hole, otherwise known as the bar, or the tea shoppe, which is essentially a watering hole for the quasi-elite, is not really the point.  One by one and in countless numbers, older generations are abandoning what was previously considered to be within accepted bounds and are instead venturing to the dark side, also known as none other than social media.  It is the older generations who will remember a time when relationships – good, bad or indifferent – were genuine and, to a large degree, unpretentious.  They are the last generations in existence that can teach by example and from personal experience what living in a handheld device and social media-free world looks like because they know full well the freedom and benefits of being autonomous and less connected.   “Connected” being possibly the most misappropriated word used in present day society.

Because in relatively short order, communication has been abdicated, exchanged and outsourced to what we know today to be an artificially intelligent intermediary that habitually autocorrects and further twists our already unfiltered words.  As a result, older generations have become nothing more than simulated versions of who they once were with the younger generations heedlessly reduced to a fraction of who they were meant to be.  A society that has always flirted with darkness has managed to dim its own light.   Mark Twain said, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”  Today that is not exactly true and could very well be something he said that has not stood the test of time.   Never fully satisfied and indoctrinated from a very young age to challenge previously sound theories, today’s society members have seemingly proven Mr. Twain to be wrong because in truth, the unrelenting dark side of our collective moons has cast an everlasting shadow over our former light and it means to stay.  Due to circumstances both with and without anyone’s ability to control, we have become a collection of unchecked society members with an axe to grind who now must reap what has been sown.  There does not appear to be a particular bottom to this manufactured chaos because there have been no significant measures of prevention adopted to diffuse and minimize the proven long-term damage that it is causing.  And yet, we continuously claim that the solution to this problem is a mystery that cannot be easily solved.  However, that assertion is, on its face, fallacious because there is nothing elusive about a question whose transparently conclusive answers are right in front of us.  The real reason why we do nothing about the egregious overuse and abuse of social media, even with all that we know about the widespread damage that it is causing among those who should know better, as well as those who should be taught better, is because we don’t want to.  

And there it is.

The stain.  Unlike the lily-white napkin in the tea shoppe that has been starched, bleached and carefully folded into a swan, the stain of social media could not stay hidden for long.  Having managed to successfully camouflage the true nature of its fundamentally flawed framework, it has been revealed to be not as altruistic is it would like its users to believe.  Because what has been theorized and touted as a great connector has been systematically separating us.  And if that is true, then maybe the tea shoppe and bar comparison is not so farfetched after all.  Maybe those allegedly different, historically-made watering holes have simply been reimagined and relocated to social media platforms that expand their presence and continue to evolve while the people using them do not. 

It could be said that for some the bloom of social media is off the rose.  While others seem to have a stronger tolerance for the disproportionate truths, half-truths, lies and general tomfoolery that revolve in real time with no intermissions thereby granting the bloom permission to remain.  Either way, with too much information sharing and availability, we have normalized, and even worse rationalized, being unable to differentiate what is real and what is not having knowingly exchanged authenticity for entertainment and truths for lies.  The time for shock and surprise has unceremoniously passed as we now find ourselves faced with a troubling quandary and that is the undeniable negative impact social media is having on the youngest among us, our children.  It is our children who are actively attempting to navigate social media, which we already know is wholly unregulated, while lacking basic guidance from those who are charged with their safety and wellbeing, often referred to as ‘parents’ or ‘caregivers’ or a trusted member of this ‘village’ that we keep hearing so much about.   While we are spending our time speaking to one another in subliminal hieroglyphics and contradictions, on and off social media, our youth is openly demonstrating deplorable degrees of bullying not kindheartedness, exclusion not inclusion, and generally unseemly rather than suitable or appropriate behaviors, with an infallible confidence that usually surfaces when governance, authority and supervision are absent.  We have become desensitized magpies who talk too much and listen too little.   As now multiple generations of people underwhelmingly depreciate themselves with society, as a whole, slowly collapsing under the weight and unsustainable pressure of the superficiality and pretense that is of its own creation.  Rather than participating in the tea shoppe vs. bar debate, perhaps our time would be better spent considering our own social media utilization and the impact it is having on our children. Because the real question that many will not ask themselves is whether or not it is even plausible that one can effectively manage their children’s social media presence, when they cannot manage their own.  Whether or not they can, in fact, practice what they allege to preach.  And until that happens, there is no visible top, the bottom will deepen, there is no in between in the middle and the twain shall never meet.

**A note from Rebellious Mama.  Stay tuned for ‘New Dogs, Old Tricks’ which is coming soon and will further explore social media’s contribution towards the widespread, troublesome behaviors of our youth.  -RM

DISCLAIMER:  All quotes were on found on quoteambition.com and are understood to be true statements referenced for the purpose of illustrating a point.  Quotes have been bolded and italicized to provide a delineation from the author’s perspective.