In the opening scene of the HBO series John Adams, Adams and his fellow townspeople rush towards wells and buckets as cries of "FIRE!" ring through the town. It turns out the cries are related to gunfire - a precursor to what became known as the Boston Massacre - but in that brief moment, every able-bodied citizen came together to defend against a common threat.
In Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, a film set only a century later, an actual fire breaks out. The narrator remarks, "We always liked a good fire." The unfortunate homeowner's neighbors look on, amused, and some even break into the house to steal valuables.
It's not exactly an apt comparison: the John Adams "fire" takes place in a small Massachusetts town whereas the events of Gangs of New York occur in the Five Points, one of New York City's historically worst criminal districts. Nonetheless, you'd see few more helpful neighbors today. Fires are considered personal misfortunes not public ones. What changed?
The obvious and correct answer is: fire departments. Today, society pays specialists who are less likely to injure themselves and more likely to make quick work of the fire.
The same goes for every necessary human function. Specialists protect us from criminals, provide our food and water, build our houses, defend our borders and remove our waste.
Strangers serving our needs would have been very odd only a few centuries ago, but now some of us actually don't know our neighbors. This doesn't seem like a problem. Some of us don't really like the neighbors we know. Not having interests tied to another person by mere geography seems like a good thing, and in some ways, it is.
At the same time, as Cracked.com noted in "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable," we have even fewer close friends than our ancestors did, despite the ability to reach more people much more easily.
Relying on someone, even someone who you don't seem to like at first, is the number one cause of meaningful friendship formation, which makes a lot of sense - if it comes down to the person who helps get you food and water or the person who likes your favorite sports team, it's obvious which is more significant in your life.
OK, so what? We're a bit lonelier and less reliant on our friends. That doesn't seem like such a big deal. Well, to begin with, psychological studies are beginning to link loneliness to long-term health problems. So far the list of possible consequences includes stress, artery damage, high blood pressure, a lack of restful sleep and an increased risk of suicide, not to mention the mental health issues. We're also less socially adjusted than our predecessors. We live in a world where we can tune out people we don't like for most of the day, which makes us less likely to react reasonably when we inevitably have to deal with those people. But now for the extreme end of the spectrum.
Earlier this month, a man named George Sodini walked into a Philadelphia gym. He used two 9 mm handguns to fire 36 shots into a class of women and ended up killing three before killing himself. In the aftermath of the attack, investigators discovered an online journal in which Sodini detailed the slow death of his social life - " L.A. was the best! But going alone is not too fun" - and explained his planned attack.
Our essential struggle for survival has been solved so thoroughly that some people can live without any form of meaningful social interaction; some become as maladjusted as Sodini. The point isn't to excuse or even forgive Sodini, and I don't mean to trivialize innocent deaths. The point is that only a few centuries ago, his existence wouldn't have even been possible. Specialization has been around a long time, but in the 1600s, you did some kind of productive work or you died. It was that way for most of history.
Next time you get bored, look at a list of serial killers (or just take my word for it). They started increasing exponentially in number around the beginning of large-scale urbanization, and explode when they reach the 1900s. Some of this is due to modern communication and recordkeeping, but psychologists largely agree serial killing has only become widespread recently.
In fact, stranger murder (the killing of someone without traditional motives like war, greed, jealousy or fear) on any level is primarily a phenomenon of the modern era. We live in a world where it's necessary to dehumanize most of the people around us just to shut out the noise. It's possible to do this too, because we have absolutely no attachment to the professionals who provide what we need.
Obviously I'm not advocating any kind of "return to simplicity." Without some kind of Fight Club-esque apocalypse, we aren't going back to the jungle any time soon - or 18th century towns, for that matter. Nor is population going down.
But the idea that it's safe and appropriate to trivialize modern loneliness and alienation - probably the quietest consequence of the Industrial Revolution - is mistaken and needs reconsideration.
