¶ … Future of Intimacy
"I have been away from home a lot lately," states Mark Kingwell, giving his essay on the future of intimacy an immediate and 'intimate' quality. The reader is suddenly taken into the process of writing, and is made to feel as if he or she is sitting on Kingwell's shoulder, observing the writer, as Kingwell muses upon the issues outlined in the essay while traveling from Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary. The places where the essay was penned span the "vastness of variety of Canada" as well as Boston and upstate New York (Kingwell 267). Kingwell uses specific locations and specific cities to stress the reality of his journey while writing, as well as Canada's diversity, a place where "cool kids" are different in Quebec than on the West Coast (Kingwell 267). How can true intimacy be possible, he suggests, when the world has grown so large and diverse?
Kingwell's use of specific anecdotes to persuade the reader also is evident in his use of statistics. He notes that despite the ease of travel conveyed by telephone, Internet, and airplane, ae of the world will die before making a telephone call (Kingwell 268). We take the small miracles of our technological lives for granted and fail to recognize the needs of the wider world community with whom we are not closely 'intimate.' Upon more careful reflection, even photographs of the past are miraculous, Kingwell suggests. He uses a reference to his father's Harry Connick haircut in an old photograph to suggest how the past and present are made one with technology, just as he can speak with Calgary and England while doing his laundry via email (Kingwell 268). We have come to take technology for granted. Technology can create intimacy through the generations and across geographical boundaries but can also shut technological 'have-nots' out of our world because our private, intimate bubbles makes things like email seem universally ubiquitous.
Kingwell even parses the word 'intimacy' for better understanding of what it signifies. 'Intimacy' comes from the Latin term for the most personal aspects of life. Yet English has also created a similar-sounding verb with a slightly different meaning: to "intimate" is to send out a covert message. To intimate is to share a kind of whispered message, to be intimate is to be inward-looking and private (Kingwell 268). The meanings of intimacy and intimate are a metaphor for all of human life, "this play of closeness and distance," of communicating in whispers suggests we are trapped in our own prisons of subjectivity, and frequently misconstrue the words of others or hear false intimations, even while we seek intimate connections with fellow human beings (Kingwell 268). "We keep trying" to communicate in what Kingwell likens to a child's game of telephone, where words are often misunderstood (Kingwell 268).
From the mundane aspects of modern technology, Kingwell shifts to an abstract realm of philosophy, wondering how we can use the tools of modern life and overcome "the triumph of private life and private goods that has been wrought in these past three centuries" that shuts us out from the "public good that alone makes a society or civilization worthwhile" (Kingwell 271). How can we intimate more in the way of real meaning, and make intimacy a more widespread affair, even with those who are not part of the technological revolution?
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