We've recently begun watching the BBC series Monarch of the Glen. All 7 seasons (2000-2007) are available for instant viewing on Netflix. (We've only reached Season 3.) It's an enjoyable, witty, British-humour, eccentric Scottish family type of saga. Like most types of humor, either you like it or you don't. I love British humor, but I know it's not universally appreciated. Pity the chaps! (Yes, I'm part Scottish but I don't wear a wee kilt to work with my tie.)Either way, despite my plug, the show got me thinking last night that all too frequently we know more about fictional characters and their lives (from TV, movies, books, etc.) than we do about real people whose lives intersect with our own. Uncanny, particularly since new forms of social networking and communication being created every day now are supposed to bring us closer together. (?)
In one of his treatises, Aristotle concluded that the highest form of happiness (on the natural plane, versus the spiritual) is a true friendship. This speaks volumes for the value and priority of personal relationships. I am not going to dig up studies now, but I have read various articles over the past few years that point to the fact that over the past five decades or so, the average American has fewer and fewer friends than in times past. Bowling alone. In a word, a reticence to reveal thoughts and feelings and lives has come to characterize so many people.
