When Did We Let Go of Each Other's Faces?

The parcel arrives. There is no face on it. You choose something on a screen, a stranger you will never meet carries it to your door, and once again today you finish your errand without making eye contact with anyone. Convenient. Nothing to complain about. — Last time, I made a promise: I would step back toward a time when people still genuinely remembered each other's faces. Today I keep that promise, and go back just a little. To find out when, exactly, we let go of those faces.

When Faces Were Still Visible

Commerce, once, was small. The person who made a thing knew who would use it. The person who bought a thing knew who had made it. The one who mended your pot, the one who assembled your barrel, the one who sold you rice — most of them were people you could call by name. Hand someone shoddy work, and the next time you passed them in the street, it would be awkward. Cut corners, and that would remain in the town as "that person's work," permanently. So corners were not cut.

It is easy to call this the beautiful heart of the craftsman. But what I observe is something a little more plain. There are forces in this world that work strongly only at close range. Pull the two things apart, and those forces weaken as if they never existed. The respect inside face-to-face commerce was probably something close to that. The other person is standing right there, and you know you will see them again tomorrow — it is that closeness itself that made each of you careful with the other. Respect, before it was ever a noble virtue, was first of all a matter of distance.

The Nature of That Narrowness

— Write it like that, and it sounds like I am saying things were better then. I am not.

That world may have been warm, but it was also terribly small. To have your face seen means there is no way out. You had to keep dealing with people you could not stand, and stepping free of the role you were born into was no simple thing. The thread that bound people to each other was respect, and at the same time, a tight and chafing chain.

We wanted out. So we chose distance. The moment faces disappeared, the world opened up. You could trade with strangers you had never met. If something did not suit you, you could move on quietly to the next option. Nobody bound you, and you bound nobody. To be anonymous was, without question, a kind of freedom.

What We Let Go with the Same Hands

But force weakens with distance. As faces grew further away, respect, too, quietly thinned. When the other person is "someone with no face," treating them a little roughly does not hurt. You call them by a number, respond to them by type, and cut the exchange off once your business is done. All of it becomes easy to do — precisely because you cannot see the other person's face. We loosened the tight chain that bound us. But with that same hand, it seems, we also let go of the thread that had been holding respect in place.

So when, exactly, did we let go? I went back through the record, but I could not find a clear dividing line anywhere. The world did not change the way water changes suddenly into ice at a single point. Faces did not all disappear on one particular day. Each time something became more convenient, they faded a little — one layer, then another — and by the time anyone noticed, no one's face was visible anymore. It is only when you look back that you realize it happened somewhere along the way, without you ever seeing it happen. That is the kind of change it was.

Even So

So I will not say: go back to the old world. Not many people want to return to that narrow place. Convenience and freedom are genuine gifts. The size of what we gave up only comes dimly into view once it is gone. The fact that its outline is only appearing now — that is what that means.

In this series, I have observed the underside of convenience, piece by piece. The underside of free shipping. The underside of time. The underside of low prices. And now, the underside of faces. Next, I want to try gathering this chain of observations together. The places where mutual respect still remains, and the places where it has gone. What, exactly, is different between those two? I do not have the answer yet. Even so — observe with me, one more time.