Stranded on the Shores of Time: The Consequences of Civilization and the Disappearance of Love

By Lena K. Ericksen

They walked together upon the shore. He looked to her and called her name amid the roar of the waves. Could she accept the vulnerability that came with opening her heart to him? Could she allow feelings long suppressed by the demands of living in a world in which authentic intimacy had no place to guide her?

What has happened to love? Where does it figure in the technology-based global economy that orders our lives? What has happened to that most splendid of feelings?

Stranded on the Shores of Time takes us on a journey through time to answer these questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499080971

Lena K. Ericksen

Lena K. Ericksen was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She earned her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of California, Davis. Stranded on the Shores of Time addresses the contrasts and the conflicts between our ancient evolved behavioral characteristics and the new behaviors that came with the rise of civilization.

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Copyright © 2014 by Lena K. Ericksen and Marcus Shimazu-Takahashi

Library of Congress Control Number:          2014917953

ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-4990-8095-7

                    Softcover            978-1-4990-8096-4

                    eBook                 978-1-4990-8097-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/08/2014

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Contents

PROLOGUE

The Shores of Time

On the Dover Shores

A View of Change

PART ONE — THE DEEP PAST: THE EDENS OF OUR ORIGIN

A Note on Biases

The Foundations of Love

It Is the Destiny of Man to Serve the Needs of Woman

A Woman’s Choice

My Niece’s Smile

Three Paths

In Dreams, I Heard Him Speak

Choosing a Path

PART TWO — THE RECENT PAST: ONCE TAKEN, IT CANNOT BE GIVEN BACK

Owning

The Cost of Civilization

Risking the Fires of Hell

The Blinking Cursor

The Wisdom of Women

Contrasts

PART THREE — THE PRESENT: STRANDED ON THE SHORES OF OUR TIME

Social Constructions

Nothing Lasts

Chips and Guilt

Last Person Standing

Money Will Make It Work

What Does It Mean?

Contemporary Illusions

Death of Trust

Two Voices

I’m Far Away

Detached

Darkly Tinted Glass

The Loneliest Feeling

A Life That Might Have Been

When Words Fail

When Winter Arrives

Fragments

Commodified Mom

Pots of Water

Not Even with Each Other

A Ghost

Running from the Shadow

Beyond the Fires of Redemption

The Pain of Numbness

Vulnerability

A Nothing Relationship

The Sight

PART FOUR — THE FUTURE: ON THE SHORES OF ETERNITY

Anonymous Conformity

Love an Illness?

Lost Our Way

Phases of Life

First Contact

Gazing into the Future: The Media Me

Regret

Primeval Postmodernity

The Morning After

EPILOGUE — PERSPECTIVES

Between the Skyscrapers

Lament

Three Views

In the Heart of a Child

On the Shores of Unconditional Love

Concerning the Vignettes in Stranded on the Shores of Time

Key Works That Influenced My Thinking

To Sydney, Olivia, and Chris

Prologue

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The Shores of Time

H is voice was almost lost to the crash of the turning waves, his eyes fixed on something in the far distance, but I heard him.

He asked, Vanessa, what is love? What is it really?

We had been walking together on the beach, our footsteps in the sand running parallel for some distance. When his questions came to my ears, the impressions my bare feet left on the shore began to drift away from his.

I felt suddenly vulnerable out in the open with him.

I knew there was no reason for me to feel this way, but I did. Michael and I had known each other for years and years. We’d hooked up many times in the past. We knew each other’s habits and shortcomings, our strengths and weaknesses. We’d always had this unspoken agreement to be just friends.

He gazed at me for a moment then turned to look out across the whitecapped waters, his blond hair blown to one side. I shouldn’t have asked …

No, it’s okay, I replied. I was lying. Why are you thinking about … it?

He shook his head. After a long pause, he answered, I met a girl when I was in New York, when I was there for work.

Oh was all I could bring myself to say as a wave of intense jealousy swept through me. It wasn’t that I thought of Michael as mine. It was that he had met someone, and I hadn’t. It was that he was feeling something for another person and I had never encountered anyone that made me feel anything—or allowed myself to feel anything.

I’m sorry, he muttered, still looking away. I should have kept it to myself.

No, it’s all right, I said just loudly enough to be heard over the roar of the surf. I glanced at him through the hair the wind had blown across my face. I drew my dark-brown strands behind my ear and tried to read his expression.

Was Michael unhappy? Was he in love?

What’s her name? I found myself asking, my voice tinged ever so slightly with emotions I was struggling to control.

Who? he replied absently, his gaze still fixed on the rolling waves.

The girl you met, I said a bit too curtly.

Still staring into the restless waters, he answered, Nadia. He added, I met her in Central Park—when I was out taking a walk to clear my head.

I’d never known Michael to be the sort of guy who took walks. I’d never known him to be introspective enough to be inclined to clear his head. What was on your mind that you needed to walk around in Central Park?

Life …, he said abstractedly. He knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with his response, so he continued, I was trying to figure out what I really wanted out of life.

Glancing behind us, I saw the distance between our footprints in the sand had grown larger. Any conclusions? I inquired, a tad afraid of what he would say.

Out of nowhere, he matter-of-factly stated, Did you know … I’ve been in love with you since we were in college, Vanessa?

I came to a dead halt. Fear surged through me. The sound of the sea receded into silence. I looked down at the sand in front of me and let my hair fall across my face.

His voice somehow penetrated the defenses I’d thrown up. Even when you were married to Roger … during those two years you were in England … I never stopped being in love with you.

I closed my eyes. Roger. The biggest mistake of my life—the reason it was so hard for me to trust. No, that wasn’t true. Trust had never come easily to me. How could it? My father had abandoned my mother and me when I was seven. My first stepfather had been unfaithful to my mother. My second stepfather was a pervert. I had married Roger for the security he offered me when after college, I hadn’t been able to find a job and was facing the prospect of having to move back home. But he had cheated on me almost from the beginning of our marriage. Be honest, Vanessa, you caught him with your bridesmaid after the reception. Shit.

Van? Michael’s voice interrupted the progression of disturbing memories flashing through my mind.

I thought you were falling for some girl named Nadia, I found myself saying dispassionately, almost angrily, my eyes now fixed on the ground.

I am—I was …, he replied. But I realized I still had far stronger feelings for you.

No, you don’t, Michael. I didn’t want him to be in love with me. Why? Because I didn’t want to feel inadequate, because I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same way about him—even though I knew deep, deep, deep down in the depths of my heart I did. I didn’t want to be reminded I was broken inside and that I couldn’t allow myself to love.

He reached out to me and touched my shoulder. I can’t help what I feel.

Unable to look at him, I heard myself say, If we’d lived under different circumstances, lived in another age, and I’d lived another kind of life … if I’d been able to trust … My words faded into nothing.

Van? he pleaded.

I can’t love, Michael. Not you, not me, not anyone, came my voice.

But … Vanessa …

Make a life with the girl you met in the park, I said flatly.

I wanted to curl up into myself and disappear. I wanted Michael to walk away and leave me stranded on the shores of time.

_________

How to address emotions at a time when deep, complex feelings have no place in an IM, a text message, or a web page? When global communication is commonplace yet intimacy is rare, how can printed words touch the heart?

Abstract ideas, conceptual frames of reference, paradigm shifts: these are among the cognitive building blocks used in most formal works to convey information about the social and psychological elements that shape our lives. Such constructs may describe complex interactions that occur within and between individuals, but beyond that, they often fall short of helping us understand our own personal life experiences.

I’ve often wondered if the use of highly structured, formalized modes of thought is a defense against confronting the things that really matter. Love. Life. Death. Happiness. Despair. Loneliness. Loss. Hope. Rather than face hard realities, we gingerly examine the content of our experience through the lens of the intellect and break it down into manageable bits that pose no threat to our hearts and minds.

But we know lessons are best taught through storytelling. The little tale of the puppy with a bone in his mouth, believing his reflection in a pond to be another dog with a treat, drops his bone to steal the one mirrored in the water and so ends up with nothing, more effectively warns of the potential consequences of greed than any economics lecture on the hazards of unrestrained avarice.

A child’s love of stories told by the flickering light of a campfire, our own love of drama depicted in words and action, speaks to the way we prefer to make new ideas and concepts our own.

So I turn to another scene of another couple on another beach.

_________

On the Dover Shores

T he advancing tide will inevitably erase the line of footprints we have left in the sand. How, like deeply drawn breaths and long, lingering sighs, the restless waves sound in my ears. They mourn for all that is lost on the shores of time, I muse to myself.

My husband knows my thoughts, my feelings. Cyrus turns to me and says, We live but a day in the lifetime of the universe.

I nod. Yes, we live but a day and believe the small part we experience in our daily lives represents all that humanity has ever known. The morning shower, the cup of coffee, the e-mails and memos, the meetings and the conferences—all the mundane events that fill our waking moments, we project onto our conception of past and future. Our preoccupation with concerns for our finances and our careers, our daydreams of buying this and that, our anxieties about relationships and our future prospects, we take to be the common interests of all who have lived in the past and all who will live in the future.

Cyrus looks at me as I ponder these thoughts.

I watch a wave curl and descend upon the wet sand, sending a plume of mist swirling into the air. Over this beach decades ago, young men piloting what we would regard as old-fashioned propeller-driven airplanes flew and fought to protect their country against other young men bent on winning control of the skies. I need only cast my mind back in time to hear the roar of their planes’ engines as they pursued each other among the clouds, to see the twisting contrails they left on the sky, to watch those who failed in their bid for supremacy fall flaming into the sea.

A few centuries further, I skip back in my mind’s eye and witness an armada of square-sailed ships of the fleets of Imperial Spain and England contest for these same waters. Compared to the swift little planes of the mid-twentieth century, these wooden vessels move with ponderous slowness, crewmen running across their decks in preparation to do battle with their foes. The sound of cannon fire and flapping sail, the clanging of bells, and cries of taunting bravado fill the air.

I push back even further along the shores of time, and I see a valley of lush grass beneath a cloudless sky replace the turning waves. A cold north wind causes the slender green blades to sway together in unison, a chill running through me as my clothes flap against my body. Sea levels have fallen as the waters of the world are locked in up in snow and ice. I see in the distance the hardy men of this ice-age era gamely pursuing a herd of mammoth wooden spears in hand, their thick long hair flying wildly in the wind.

In the past, I linger for a time and consider the world my forebears knew. They had no morning cups of coffee, no meetings to attend, no memos to read. Concerns about wages and bills that needed paying had no meaning to them. Their world was not a place of skyscrapers and tidy suburbs, of evenings spent sitting alone viewing the distractions of the Internet while coping with loneliness.

I see it plainly then. Our ancient ancestors, who lived before the rise of global economies, before the development of writing, before the building of the first cities, experienced lives completely different from our own.

Cyrus knows me well and says to me as the cold wind blows harder and the Paleolithic hunters close in on their quarry, Remember that when we look to the future.

I nod to him as I project my thoughts into times that lie beyond tomorrow.

It is fortunate we stand on this shore during an extremely low tide. Sea levels have risen markedly, and we would be under several feet of water if the tide were coming in. Dark clouds send squalls of rain in sheets down upon the writhing sea.

What we call disruptive technologies today profoundly altered the world our descendants knew. Though I cannot perceive it, I know universes of data are being transmitted through the air continuously. Jobs that were once the bread and butter of half the world’s people have disappeared beneath an advancing wave of automation and computer-driven change.

Up the slope of the shore, I can see beyond the high water mark the squatters’ camp where the people who were left behind, who wouldn’t or couldn’t go with the flow of innovation, eke out a living. The relentless logic of supply and demand, of price and cost, of wage equilibrium and rates of return, has rendered them, what a character from Dickens called surplus population.

Cyrus takes my hand as a chill runs through me.

It dawns on me to wonder, do we live human lives in this future? Where has love gone in this world? Those primal feelings of companionship, of friendship and family that have sustained us for so long, what have become of them?

I return to the present and muse upon the impressions that pervade the world of the early twenty-first century that I know as part of my personal reality. E-mails and updates on social networks, little comments posted on the Internet designed to rouse my interest, ads appearing in the margins of my sight, text messages popping into my awareness then receding back into nothing—all concerns of the moment but, ultimately, feelings blurred into vague sensations.

Where are those lovely emotions that inspire? Where are those lofty intensities of the heart that give immediacy to our existence, that make us feel alive?

And I see in imagination the mist-shrouded fields where they pass, their hooves pounding the rhythm of impassioned hearts, their manes flowing in the winds of a nearly forgotten calling—they are the mythic creatures that dwell in dreams—they are the embodiment of feelings as old as humanity, as vibrant as the arrival of spring.

But unicorns do not grace the halls of the global marketplace, nor do they figure in stark economic realities or haunt consciousnesses shaped by social media, except as images meant to induce us to buy what we want but do not need.

And sadly in this world we have made for ourselves, love has, in our own time, become like unicorns. Romantic love is for many people a nearly forgotten rumor, a ghost roaming the corridors of bygone memory, a thing of legend, like King Arthur’s court, like Cinderella’s glass slipper, like the dream of a one true love.

When the pursuit of peak experiences compels thrill-seekers to climb the loftiest of frozen, windswept peaks, to dive into the blue depths among the most primeval of predators, to rely upon steely nerves to hurtle through vacant atmospheric heights, love is felt to be too great a personal hazard, too onerous a burden—even a potential deathblow to self-esteem.

For many individuals, being in love has become an almost frightening proposition, a condition of terrible vulnerability, an act of unacceptable risk, a lowering of one’s guard that will inevitably lead to betrayal—or being in love is just an abstraction and is as distant as a philosopher’s notion of the perfect good or the derivation of pi to the trillionth place.

Or worse, falling in love is a farce—to be viewed with outright cynicism.

Romantic love is held by many to exist in the domain of the improbable, on the mist-strewn borders of the impossible.

How did this come to be?

How did falling in love become an almost mythic act, a beautiful fantasy reserved only for characters in torrid novels, for poets and artists ensnared in the tangle of feelings many of us now regard as beyond the scope of personal experience? How did we come to stand on the other side of the glass, like orphaned children peering in from the winter cold on realms of light and life where the warmth of human contact seems to penetrate into the lives of only the lucky few?

Why have the meaning of the words I love you taken on an aura of frightening immensity or trite superficiality? Why do we tend to view this most splendid of human emotions with skepticism now?

Have we become so afraid of losing control and responding to the callings of our heart that we miss out on the most wonderful of human experiences? For we know in our gut, there are few things in life that can approach the high of being in love. It is the most natural of uplifting sentiments. Words cannot begin to capture the soaring beauty of it. At best, inspired works of poetry and music can only aspire to those towering heights of transcendent affection.

Why do we turn away from the hope of the emotional ecstasy of real love? Why do the lonely shadows encroach ever further into the reaches of our heart?

I need only lift my eyes from my mobile device when I’m in a public space and witness the procession of lonely people. Their ears stopped with private emitters of music, their eyes fixed on screens, their gait stiff with anxiety or meandering with obliviousness, their posture sending the message, Don’t touch me, don’t disturb my self-imposed solitude, don’t intrude upon the emptiness I embrace.

Where are the couples talking, sharing, immersed in the presence of each other? Few hold hands, look to each other, and fewer still revel in the pleasure of companionship. And even among couples, I sense many feel alone with their mate.

Before we separated ourselves from each other through the intervening screen of text messages and voice mail, we once spoke to each other in real time. Before the advent of electronically mediated communication, we interacted with each other face-to-face. We laughed and cried, wondered and pondered, shared and related to someone we knew personally—and physically. The tilt of her head, the focus of his gaze, the roll of her eyes, the movement of his lips, the shift of her hands—we unconsciously noted the rhythm of her breathing, the texture of his skin, the fragrance of her scent, the moisture on his brow—we could perceive the fine nuances of tone in his voice, the subtle emphasis in her sigh, the urgency in the pace of his speech, the deeper meaning of her momentary silence.

And before speech, there was touch. Through our fingers and palms, we communicated care and empathy, sharing our concern profoundly, unambiguously; now we shudder at a pat on the back, a glancing touch.

Through physical contact, we can still experience comfort and reassurance that no words written or spoken can ever approach. How did it come to be perceived as an intrusive act that elicits a defensive response?

All these very human elements have been lost in the barrage of beamed information coalescing on the digital displays of devices profoundly divorced from the old ways of reaching out to others. We walk alone in silence amid throngs of anonymous individuals and seek solace in a texted reply.

Is it our human destiny to one day live entirely through electronically conveyed images, sounds, and sensations? Will there come a time when all of us exist singularly in fully self-contained private worlds in which our only contact will be with service providers attending to our desires?

It would seem that if current trends continue, this could very well be.

Imagine a world like the one depicted in the movie The Matrix. Virtual reality—virtual relationships—as the foundation of personal existence: we’d become nothing more than isolated consciousnesses fed by a system that ultimately controls every aspect of our lives. Personal freedom is an illusion.

How did we come to this?

He looks at me in that way that tells me I already know the path to find the answer. Cyrus knows me so well.

What is needed is self-awareness. I need to be in touch with those elements that make us human.

As much as we might like to think of ourselves as purely modern individuals, as women or men, guys or girls, or intersex or transgender individuals completely shaped by contemporary social forces, we are heirs to at least five million years of human history. To deny this aspect of ourselves is to deny our humanity and the common ancestry that makes us one species. Our human past is the foundation of our posthuman present.

There is also one other element that is needed to understand how we come to be where we are today: imagination.

Imagine:

You’ve never known loneliness. You’ve always lived