In the classic 1957 science fiction movie 'The Incredible Shrinking Man,' the lead character is exposed to radiation and insecticide and begins to shrink. When he discovers himself to be a mere six inches tall, he takes refuge in a dollhouse until the family’s cat becomes curious about who has taken up residence in the dollhouse. Escaping to the basement, he becomes the prey of a spider.
Many of the horror movies of the 1950’s and early 1960’s played on our fears about nuclear bombs and Communism. Rachel Carson’s book, 'Silent Spring,' about the destruction of the natural world due to the proliferation of insecticides, also fed those fears.
The politics of paranoia, exemplified in McCarthyism, made us all feel fearful and very, very small.
Today those fears are still with us. Communism has been replaced by terrorism. We are willing to fight unending wars and give up our civil liberties in order to somehow "defeat" the terrorist menace.
All of these fears are really a symbolic expression of the realization how small, and even insignificant, we are in the face of the immense cosmos. Like the incredible shrinking man, we seek to find solace in a smaller world which is within our control and manageable.
Everything is getting smaller. Movies cannot be longer than two hours at the most. We do not have the attention span to sit through a 4-hour epic any more. Books must be an “easy read,” and more and more people prefer to read them on a small electronic tablet.
Cell phones keep getting smaller and with them, through texting and twittering, we can be instantly connected to everyone with whom we want to connected, but only in short text exchanges.
Being connected is not the same as being in communion or in community. Communion and community with other human beings requires time; it takes, sometimes, generations of time. It also needs space, real space in the real world. Communion cannot occur in the “virtual space” we have created. It requires touch and taste and smell and sight.
Our small interconnected world with all its social networking falls far short in providing the community our souls need to survive and thrive. We need a big world, not one that is shrunk. In fact, communion and community must take place in the face of forces beyond our control.
After our record-making blizzard here in the Quad Cities, my wife said “It looks like a Doctor Zhivago world out there.”
Doctor Zhivago was the epic book by Boris Pasternak, and an equally epic movie staring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. Some of the most beautiful scenes ever filmed are those of the snow-scaped Russian winter. It was a story as big as the snow-scape. Itwas a story that took place over a lifetime, about real human beings coping with a lavish world with violent forces over which the characters had little control. Yet, they survived and thrived. Real life takes place in time and space. Real life cannot be reduced to a manageable size.
As we create a shrunken world, we often run away from the real world and from real life. In our smaller world, we find our lives and our souls diminished. We become a miniature expression of what we once were and what we could be - human beings in communion and community, all facing the forces of the cosmos beyond our control.
Small is not all bad. Small may help us be more eco-friendly. Small can help us to live less cluttered lives.
The danger isn’t the smaller devices we create, but in creating a view which leads us to believe we are in control. That is when we become small as well.
The danger to our souls is when we become satisfied with our small lives and give up on communion and community. Real life is of epic proportions. If we forget this truth, we will be as small as the devices we create.
