Eternal Loneliness: Is It Important? By Al Sikes

“The Tech Ecosystem that surrounds today’s teens is fueling loneliness.” Axios AM

The Thesaurus translates loneliness: as “deserted, forsaken.” I type just having come back from church, while recognizing that fewer and fewer of us return from churches or any religious venue these days. Many, not just teens, are more likely to get swallowed up by the “Tech Ecosystem.”

Today’s church service theme was “eternal happiness”. My wife and I were at Holy Trinity in Oxford, Maryland. In a broader sense the religious pulpit invites variations on this theme each week.

While religious leaders across the full spectrum of the world’s religions underscore eternal happiness, the Tech Ecosystem deals more pointedly with happiness. Google, for example, has a detailed profile of our “likes” and especially weaknesses as too many think their interface is a private affair. It now pinpoints advertising, as our online activity reveals our interests. And to promote happiness many of the ads sell pills.

Google and its peers are not selling eternal happiness—their operating system is organized around profit. Hourly and then daily and, well it all gets rolled up in the quarterly report to Wall Street.

The longer and more profound search should be for “eternal happiness”—a by-product, “internal happiness.” Of course, we can have brief moments of happiness without being concerned with continuity, but is that what we want?

And we can enjoy the fruits of friendship without considering it to be other than in the moment. But, is real friendship on offer?

While I am not a student of the world’s religions, I am led to believe by those who are that sharing our good fortune with others is thematically similar from faith to faith. In my life I have been fortunate to know persons who are generous, and not just at the end of the year when tax calculations are at hand. I cannot think of anyone in the generous category who seems lonely or feels deserted.

And reflecting, it has been my experience that having internalized generosity the downturns in life are much shorter. This is especially true for those whose faith provides an eternal buffer against both the shortness of life and its sometimes bruising offerings.

Most, I guess responding to the secular theme that all truth is relative, find themselves looking for some formula. After all, most prefer happiness to its opposite. The formula seems elusive, maybe it’s because we make it that way.

In the last several years I have seen “He Gets Us” commercials. The He is Jesus. Whether you think him divine or not his teachings lead to ultimate truths, not just situational ones. My take: only ultimate truths will overcome our quite understandable nausea with a culture that deploys artificial intelligence to overwhelm us.
The Counsel of the centuries is free.

Presidents Day

I can recall, although somewhat vaguely when George Washington’s Birthday was changed to Presidents’ Day in 1971. Some argued that Washington was a singular figure and should be recognized accordingly. Others thought all Presidents should be recognized
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Borrowing on sports, we have several Halls of Fame; most players are not recognized. And historians would certainly agree that all Presidents should not be spotlighted.
This year as Donald J Trump’s Vice-President suggests Trump is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time), we need to re-think our cancellation of history. Historical literacy has suffered as fewer are taught and social scolds seek to disparage former presidents because they succumbed in some way to the culture of their times.

George Washington was indeed a singular figure and once a year we should all be encouraged to find out why. Likewise, Abraham Lincoln. Nor should we let either celebration of the best to get entangled with days off from work.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.