I came late to K-cups and I’m not talking about brassieres. K-cups is the not-so-new-craze in single coffee-making originated by the Keurig coffee maker.
I hope I won’t be handcuffed for this, but I am not much of a coffee drinker.
Recently, however, at the home of a friend – mixing after lunch with about a dozen people, we were offered coffee – one at a time. Regular? Decaf? Hazelnut? French Vanilla? Etc. One at a time … so many choices.
One at a time. In this instance, it took what seemed like forever for all of us to get the coffee of our choice, although the hostess, busy “manning” the machine, assured each of us that it only takes a few seconds as we stood in line waiting for our cup of choice. Right! One cup only. If we wanted a second, it just wasn’t worth the trouble. Yes, I know. She could well have made a single large pot, but she chose single individual … one at a time … choice.
And that got me to thinking about the duality this presents. What a schizophrenic society this is. How very much we are into “singleness,” and yet how we reach out for “groupness.”
We talk on our cell phones, privately. No one else picks up MY phone. We huddle alone at the computer (or smart phone or iPad) and privately communicate by e-mail, text, and whatever new cyber connector appears almost daily. We “Facebook” with the world – alone. Even as we “link in,” we do it alone.
Our smart phones provide us with total connectedness, even as we experience it while alone. And we can opt for our coffee maker to brew, in a second, one cup of our choice. The dichotomy of this seemingly seamless blending of singleness, while operating within a group, is a phenomenon that probably will be researched by social scientists into the next millennium. What does it mean for society?
The collective unconscious has fallen into a complex state of duality. I am reminded of the words to an old Jimmy Durante song: “Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go – and still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?”
It seems that in our new social contract, people have the feeling that they “vant to be alone,” while they still have the feeling that they want to be part of a group. And, indeed, we cannot be sure if the new technology is a response to that need – or if the new technology gave us permission to pursue what had merely been a dormant yearning. But it is more and more apparent that – alone, we are connected. And, in that “connection,” the 21st Century now gives us such a basketful of choices on every level of our knowable life that it allows us to maintain a certain emotional distance, while still finding ourselves “engaging” in what some people have called “sterile” relationships.
I know I am not the first person to take note of this. My grandkids’ generation will be working on it long after I’m gone. Meanwhile, enjoy your K-cup.
