Neil Labute Part II: The constant test of being human...

I love to push and probe and mess around on the page. To create a set of fictional characters who can stand in for me or you or whomever and put them to the test. The constant test of being human. What little victories and failures make up who we are? Why do we as individuals or a group or a country support one cause but not some other? Pretty fascinating stuff, at least to me.

I think we live in a time that is completely accommodating to our many whims, be they good or bad. I mean, things like the Internet are given lip service like "Look how close it's brought the world together!" Well, yes, I can now speak to someone in Belgium in an instant, but we're both alone, sitting in the dark, off in some corner of our respective houses, and when we become bored, we don't even have to go through the formalities of saying good-bye. We just click a button and this person disappears. Even in a barroom setting, we'd have to make up an excuse, find a humane way out of the physical situation, but not with technology of this high an order.

It's like carpet-bombing Hanoi from 30,000 feet. It's a whole lot easier when there are no faces to contend with. We all sit around waiting for AOL to come up with 8.0, but we hardly ever walk the eight feet across a lobby to help someone who has slipped on a wet patch of linoleum. And I guess that's the failure I see around us today: the failure to connect. We're making things faster, easier, better. But nothing that brings us any closer. I can send you a picture of me over the Internet or even to your phone now, but do I call you up when I'm in town so we can see each other? Less and less, I'm afraid.

We keep trying to find ways that make it appear that we are nice and that we care, without really being nice or caring.
neil labute