It’s hard not to notice the absence of mystery in life these days. There’s simply not a lot of je ne sais quoi. Little could be described as arcane, hermetic, or hidden from view. Thinking back to the years before the Internet, we used to enjoy a state seldom encountered these days: wonder. A time when questions loomed long enough that our fantasies had time to fill in the blanks. A place when not knowing the answer was a perfectly possible and reasonable state.
These days, not knowing is equated with not Googling. And not Googling appears both lazy and … mysterious.
Why don’t you know if you could know with just a few keystrokes and a mouse click?
Take, for example, “I wonder what ever happened to the celebrity I idolized in 7th grade?” Today that’s a question easily answered via a quick search, a scan through some highly condensed information, and the almost inevitable resultant disappointment--likely involving a cocktail of DUIs, drugs, divorce, bankruptcies, and maybe even prison stints.
Pre-Internet times, that very same teen idol would have remained eternally 21 with beautiful long hair and an oeuvre of treacly but sincere love songs. But don’t take my word for it. Try Googling Leif Garrett. You remember '70s heartthrob Leif Garrett, right?
More recently, he looked something like this.
When I was a child growing up in the '60s and '70s, I remember puzzling over what kind of people my favorite writers actually were. I recall reading S.E. Hinton and trying to envision this guy who wrote so compellingly about street kids. I must have read The Outsiders five times, and each reading more thoroughly convinced me that the book was flat-out autobiography. It was not until I was well into adulthood that I found out that S.E. actually looked like this:
My musings later extended to a certain J.D. Salinger. There again, the absence of a name, the coolness of only initials, lent an unquestionable aura. What little I could glean of him was the folklore…the recluse who never wrote again after Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters, never granted interviews, succumbed to a life of romantic literary retirement. I imagined him lingering in the New Hampshire woods near his home, alone, ethereal and otherworldly, while his characters made their ways in the world, enchanting children for generations. I adore the notion of a permanent recluse who never comes back. It is far lovelier than the one who emerges from “retirement” 25 years later, driven by penury, touring a new book and pounding the blog- and tweetospheres.
And then there were teachers, in grade school, beloved; in high school, be-lusted, all of whom I knew precious little about (sometimes not even first names!). I remember the glorious day I found out—god knows how—that my Russian high-school-teacher crush, Mr. T, was actually known to most of the world as “John.” This was honestly a big deal, and served as plenty of information for one day, week, or month. In century 21, kids actually friend their teachers on Facebook. Now, that to me is one tricky proposition. Finding out that Mr. T enjoyed bad bluegrass music, watched TV shows I did not respect, and was a member of the Republican Party and Shania Twain fan groups might have sent me over the edge.
But unfortunately, in contemporary life, these are the details with which our mind forms impressions, judgments, opinions—accepts or dismisses without any further body of experience. However, this shortcut creates three little problems: our information is insufficient, out of context, and often wrong.
Children now grow up having farrrrr more information about their idols than we ever did. They know farrrr more about Justin Bieber’s daily life than perhaps his mother does. And they can probably glimpse his very soul with an iPhone swipe. What are we doing putting so many hard facts into the hands of the so very young? How do they use it, when they hardly know how to use an iron? And what happens when their idols make that inevitable fall from grace? As children of the late Neolithic age, these events were hidden from our view, and leaving much to the imagination was a respectful choice for those thought too young to handle graphic detail. Today's philosophy seems to be reality without filters--for anyone, no matter what age. But is it really preferable to watch your idol self-destruct, to succumb to human failings (sometimes all at once), than to be allowed to hold a fantasy of your idol as somehow superhuman?
When I think back on the idols I had when I was young, I realize that I have no desire to know the "facts" of his/her existence. I love recalling a certain actress as a character in a film I saw in 1978, not as someone who was very ill with cancer for 20 years. And thus, I limit my Internet reading about her--and can still smile.
While I’m not advocating delusion or being lied to, isn’t there room for the little fantasies that keep us going?
Living in the age of the know-all, tell-all has proven, mostly, a major bummer. In centuries 20 and before, our celebrities had a certain sanctity and inspirational quality. And maybe that was utter hogwash, but it worked. Gave us something to strive for, a bit of beauty in life otherwise mundane. Allowed us to believe that a life could be charmed, like a day of gliding down 5th Avenue with Audrey Hepburn.
This month alone we have seen the genitals of our politicians, the results of those genitals, and our political campaign contributions being used to pay for the actions of those genitals. Thanks to Facebook, we know the intimate daily life of boyfriends we had in college. We witness those we dearly loved saying vapid things online and posting photos of themselves looking like lunatic fringe. We look up a potential date and realize that they’ve made contributions to far right-wing politicians, have execrable musical taste, or can barely spell simple 5th grade vocabulary words.
It’s a jungle of knowingness out there. And familiarity may still breed contempt.
The days of spotting someone across a crowded room and getting to apprehend them through direct experience over time have ended. The days of going home and holding them in your thoughts as a new fascination, a beautiful blank slate, are unlikely to return, unless the world’s wi-fi coughs, sputters and dies.
Our vastly knowable world leaves little room for dream and fantasy. And even less room for our highly human tendency to want things to be as we remembered them, not as they actually were. The blanks can all be filled in—often in under 60 seconds. For some, it may lead to happily gleaning discrete points of fact from which conclusions may be drawn.
Others, like me, are left wondering what to wonder.
