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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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If acknowledging and overcoming the problem of distance shaped the world of the18th century—as encapsulated in historian Geoffrey Blainey’s idea of the “tyranny of distance”—then the 21st century may be characterised by its opposite: Proximity. We exist in a shrunken, converging world, a McLuhan-esque “global village,” where we can’t help but confront each other. Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan are our problem, not just an American grievance.
Tyranny is an unbeatable domination; proximity is an inescapable closeness. Taken together, the tyranny of proximity produces suffocation borne of obligatory familiarity. On one hand, the tyranny of proximity is unwanted “in-your-face-ness.” If only one could break free from responsibilities generated by a teletechnological consciousness that soaks itself into us through overexposure to the mass media.
On the other hand, it is the cumulative breaking up of ethnocultural tradition, of freedom from the limitations of geophysical location and rising discontent with the authority of traditional sociopolitical structures. This is gaining force because of globalising democracy, multiculturalism, capital, technology and universal human rights. Foreign political institutions, cultures, currencies, computers and capacities are all being imposed on and become proximate to formerly isolated communities, such that they are losing their distance from social change and thereby dismantling their uniqueness.
The tyranny of proximity is imposed from without and within. From without, the violation of personal space (and privacy) is corrupted by regimes of media persuasion and political manipulation—one surrenders the integrity of one’s identity to the barrage of addictive and compulsive international management. From within, the self is corroded by the “herd mentality” (Nietzsche), by deceptions that speak to the necessity of burying the self in the corpse of totalitarian global demands.
These demands aim for control over the individual and nation-states; a control rendered possible only when the inner cultural self is successfully tyrannised by the outer impact of the repetition and constancy of simulated realities. The tyranny of proximity therefore allows no sleep, no escape to a dream world, no isolation that allows for self-repair and reconstruction of spirituality.
Where it is self-generated, the tyranny of proximity arrives through fear of being left out or behind, and arises in the need to ensure competitive survival. There’s safety and security in numbers; in banding together in order to maximise the conditions for the “species” survival and corporate primacy. Smaller units must accept the tyranny of proximity that comes with larger macro-social aggregations.
Today, Americans are perfecting the art of tele-technological invasion—spy satellites and the like that can get up close and personal, even in conflict engagement. We all participate in their remote wars via the Internet and CNN. Indeed, we also accept the tyranny of proximity as a form of voyeuristic entertainment (Big Brother), perhaps because it gives us our Warhol-ian 15 minutes of fame, perhaps subtly to inure us to accept the violation of personhood that it actually implies. As cameras chase stories, we’re left with a consciousness invaded by inflated concerns, by the possibility that we too may be celebrities, and by impossible care.
Indeed, pre-emptive care and intelligence gathering—it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes—are the latest tyrannies of our postmodern, post 9/11 age of proximity. Bags must be searched not just because there are votes in it, but because “homeland security” against the possibility of terrorism justifies it. Rights must be suspended for the sake of national safety.
But where we used to worry about our neighbours (next door) and on our borders (our collective personal space), we now have to care about the person sitting next to us on a plane who may be from worlds that are not even faintly contiguous to ours. Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea—those once far-off concerns are now ours. In the larger picture, this perfectly symbolises the tyranny of proximity that globalisation exacts upon us: no-one is a stranger anymore; no-one’s business is his or her own anymore.
In ancient times Cain asked God whether he was his “brother’s keeper”; Jesus asked us to love our neighbours as ourselves. One line of thinking produces the tyranny of proximity; the other is a natural imperative of Christian freedom.
Extract from Signs of the Times, July 2003.
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