The modern world is characterized, not only in principle but also in
practice, on greater freedom – socially, in the sense of accessibility and of traveling
the world, etc. All these are supposed to be ways in which the liberated human
being finds expression.
But this is only one side of things. There are other aspects that work –
though mostly in accordance with people's will – in the opposite direction. The
more modern and advanced the world becomes, the more life in the wide expanses is
discarded. More and more farmers and their likes, who were surrounded with open
spaces and sky above their heads, move to the big cities; these in turn are
growing bigger and are becoming more crowded, with more high-rise towers.
Contemporary men, the city people, can, technically speaking, travel far and
wide; but social patterns place them in factories and offices. In principle it is
a free society; but in practice, there is a significant measure of enslavement
in it.
Choosing city life is not an inescapable necessity, but rather a matter
of choice. It seems that people tend to crowd together more and more, to inhabit
closed spaces and live a life full of locks and fences. True, city people do
have entertainment centers, surely more than the inhabitants of villages or
wilderness do – night clubs and day clubs, restaurants and pubs; but these too
are, in essence, a part of this huddle, they fulfill a need to be with others –
not necessarily significant others: just others, and many of them. People no
longer just sit or roam around, singing their own song: they go to congested shows
and events.
In this sense one people willingly do to themselves what is being done
to chickens against their will. For reasons of comfort and efficiency they choose
not to walk around on their own, but rather crowd in small cages (even if these
cages contain six or eight rooms). They go into those cages either because they
are familiar and cozy or because they are no longer familiar with any other
kind of existence except life in such cages.
In the not-so-very-distant past, people who went in groups of whatever
kind they had close, intimate relations with each other, and not only with one
person but with different kinds of people: family members, friends from their congregation
or neighborhood play-mates. But this, too, seems to have become too heavy, and
consequently the things that people once used to enjoy are changing, they too
are and becoming more crowded. Furthermore, the various media that were
supposed to open the entire world for the individual, wherever he may be – such
as TV stations, radio and computers – are indeed highly successful; but their
success expresses, to a great extent, the loss of individual identity; for the
individual is now no more than a rating datum.
Nowadays, practically everybody has in their pockets gadgets that
seemingly allow them to connect with the entire world. But in practice even the
cellphones, with all that has developed around them, have become just one more
means of crowding together, of losing selfhood and of dependence. Cellphones
have become replacements for real people. As can be seen everywhere, people now
have less and less time to talk to each other face to face. Human, individual
contact is continuously ceding to these gadgets. Even in family or friends reunions
people almost do not sit with each other: they sit with their cellphones – basically
in order to tell each other more or less the same things. Thus even the
megalopolises and jumbo-events are shrinking, for the chickens are sitting in
their cages, eating and drinking, and cackling with each other via their
smartphones.