Verified by 
Yesterday I wasted over two hours in a local phone store trying to get my new iPhone service switched over.
I noticed anger in my driving.
I tried to understand what I was feeling. Was this ordinary frustration at everyday hassles?
No, it was somehow different.
This anger had something to do with the anonymity of the process. The nice young man I bought the phone from and who seemed to know something was gone by my next visit. I was on hold for hours with the other phone company and then talking to someone from far abroad. Or perhaps not even a human.
The lack of caring, of human connection was palpable. With the communication with the young man I felt safe about the phone journey ahead, and now I was at the mercy of uncaring machines.
I thought about the fascinating/creepy news I’ve been hearing lately. About wearable apps that create varieties of human/machine hybrid. About driverless cars and killing machines that will need to make moral decisions. About the inevitability of a new concept of what it means to be human.
And that frightens me. On some level I feel the dramatic changes surging through our culture. Of the uprooting and lack of sense of place.
The Union Street in San Francisco where my office has been for 30 years has changed from a lovely neighborhood of mom and pop shops, an Art Deco movie theatre, a bookstore, record store, used bookstore, grocery stores….to about 1/3 empty storefronts. Long-time restaurants can’t keep up with the sky-high rents, and there are fewer of us “old-timers” on the street. The charming shops have been replaced with Nail Salons and exercise wear. We old-timers mourn each closed shop and count those among us who are still standing.
It is not just the hi-tech invasion of San Francisco, it is also a break-up of old neighborhoods. That gave San Francisco a sense of uniqueness and charm.
I worry about the loss of sense of belonging will mean to future generations. I see in my office the anxieties that come from having been uprooted. Of being here with the rest of the family far away, of being neither American nor still from the old country and struggling with a sense of identity.
In last Sunday’s New York Times, journalist Roger Cohen wrote a most moving account of his family’s Jewish journey, and how the repeated uprooting destabilized his mother.
So many of our anxieties come from a lack of connection to our ground. Of course we cultivate a connection to our inner ground of being, but we also need the outer. Networks of friendships, mutual care and understanding.
I wonder if some of the anxieties we may be sensing these days are a vague apprehension of the loss of our humanity?
