In a January 17th article for Bloomberg.com titled, The World Depends on You Throwing a Party, Ben Steverman argues that although humanity is more connected than ever, we are also lonelier than we’ve ever been. Steverman’s article begins with two short and arresting sentences:

“You should host a party. Our civilization depends on it.”

I don’t know about you, but after reading those two opening sentences, I knew exactly what I would be doing for the next 20 minutes: figuring out how to host a party (which is supposed to be enjoyable!) under that kind of post-apocalyptic pressure. The demand to “Host a party, enjoy it…or die” hardly inspires what it demands!

But instead of giving in to the fear of dyscatastrophe, I decided to read Steverman’s article for however long it would take me to do so.

After giving evidence that he’s not the only one thus concerned, Steverman writes, “The biggest reason things have changed? ‘The internet,’ says Julia Bainbridge, creator and host of the popular podcast The Lonely Hour. ‘Yes, it can alleviate loneliness—social connectivity with a click!—but that’s only a temporary form of self-soothing.’ Our innate desire for community and connection is why we rushed onto social media in the first place. We friended, shared, liked, argued. The smartphone let us reach anyone at any time.”

So, to “save our civilization,” what are we to do in a world where the internet and smartphone are here to stay? Are we doomed for catastrophe?

Can Friendship be a Eucatastrophe in a Smartphone World?

Steverman recommends that we host a party in order to save civilization, in order to avoid the dyscatastrophe of becoming utterly “exhausted and unhappy when [we] spend too much time on [our] screens” (Sociologist Eric Klinenberg as quoted by Steverman).

But what if the answer lies a bit deeper than just hosting a party? Might we engage a fuller and richer understanding of friendship? Can true friendship provide us the eucatastrophe we need: that sudden and unexpected turn of events that produces “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world” that could rescue us from the smartphone world of ever increasing isolation (J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, 153)?

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis provides us with a profound insight into the inner-workings of undistracted friendship (i.e., enjoying friends with our smartphones safely hidden away in our pockets or purses). The inner-circle of the literary gathering known as the Inklings was J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. The friendship of these three became the soil out of which Lewis’s insight grew. Charles died in 1945, and the many years that followed provided Lewis ample opportunity to reflect upon his friendships with Charles and Tolkien. So, after over a decade of reflection, Lewis wrote the following in his 1960 book, The Four Loves:

“[I]f, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but ‘A’s part in C, while C loses not only A but A’s part in B.’ In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth…Of course the scarcity of kindred souls—not to mention practical considerations about the size of rooms and the audibility of voices—set limits to the enlargement of the circle; but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share them increases” (Lewis, C.S. “The Four Loves.” The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis, 261; emphasis mine).

I remember when I first read the above paragraph. It felt like it took my breath away. It was similar to how I felt the first time I drove up BC-99 in British Columbia along the coast of Howe Sound to Lions Bay, to Squamish, and eventually arriving in Whistler. The scenery was stunning, and the drive through it awakened fresh wonder within me.

Sometimes we need paragraphs like the one above to awaken us to the wonders to be found in friendships—especially face-to-face ones. Yes, Lewis did indeed grieve the death of his friend Charles. But his grief was not only for the loss of Charles, but also for the loss of ever again seeing the parts of Tolkien’s personality that only Charles could fully bring out. To lose one friend is to lose parts of another.

Yes, I frequently text my wife, children, parents, co-workers, and friends and I also interact with people on social media. But those interactions are not the ones I cherish. What I do cherish, though, are those times when I sit around a table of family or friends laughing so hard that tears stream down my face. Or when I’ve been brought to tears at a coffeeshop when friends have shared their struggles. Those are the interactions that come to my mind most often and that have made me feel most fully alive.

To borrow from Lewis, in each of our friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By ourselves we are not large enough to call the whole person into activity. We need other lights than our own to show all our friends’ facets.

Inklings of Friendship in Middle-earth

One of my favorite friendships (and a very unlikely one at that) in The Lord of the Rings is the friendship Legolas and Gimli forged in the Quest to save Middle-earth. The long-standing enmity between dwarves and elves was no secret when the Council of Elrond assembled. When Glóin, Gimli’s father, spoke harsh words to Legolas for allowing Gollum to escape the Elves’ keeping, his words “were stirred of his [long ago] imprisonment in the deep places of the Elven-king’s halls.” So fiery were Gloin’s words that Gandalf was quick to rebuke him, “Pray do not interrupt, my good Gloin. That was a regrettable misunderstanding, long set right. If all the grievances that stand between Elves and Dwarves are to be brought up here, we may as well abandon this Council” (FotR, 268).

If the interactions between elves and dwarves at the Council of Elrond were the sole reason for the reader to have hope that a friendship between Legolas and Gimli would develop, no hope would we have.

But where at the start of the Quest there was no inkling that a friendship between Legolas and Gimli would ever develop, when we find them talking with one another after having survived the Battle of Helm’s Deep, it’s clear a deep friendship had been forged. Gimli’s “light” drew something out of Legolas that before had never existed: a desire to see the wonders of the caverns of Khazad-dum.

Gimli waxed eloquent as he described the beauty of those caves: “immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as far as Kheled-zaram in the star light…gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on in the dark recesses where no light can come…It makes me weep to leave them” (TT, 152-153).

Legolas’s response? “‘You move me, Gimli,’ said Legolas. ‘I have never heard you speak like this before. Almost you make me regret that I have not seen these caves. Come! Let us make this bargain—if we both return safe out of the perils that await us, we will journey for a while together. You shall visit Fangorn with me, and then I will come with you to see Helm’s Deep’” (153).

Think of it this way: if Gimli had not been a member of the Company, “far from having more of Legolas, having him ‘to ourselves’ as readers, we would have had less of Legolas.” We needed Gimli’s light in order to see more of Legolas’s facets.

Friendship in a Smartphone World

Although in many ways the smartphone has made humanity more “connected” now than at any other time in human history (and I’m grateful for that), what it does not provide us is in-person, across-the-table laughter or the ability to see the loving empathy that’s written large on our friend’s face. As human beings, we need consistent non-smartphone (or non-internet) interaction with our families and friends.

Do you recall Galadriel’s words to Frodo and Sam? “But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true” (FotR, 372). In Galadriel’s mind, Middle-earth could be saved if the Company remained true. But what might Galadriel have said to Ben Steverman if she had read his article The World Depends on You Throwing a Party? Maybe she would have said, “Your Quest stands not upon the screen of your smartphone. Stray for a while away from your screen and you may find you have more of your friends and not less. Hope for the world remains while your smartphones remain in your pocket.”

In a January 17th article for Bloomberg.com titled, The World Depends on You Throwing a Party, Ben Steverman argues that although humanity is more connected than ever, we are also lonelier than we’ve ever been. Steverman’s article begins with two short and arresting sentences:

“You should host a party. Our civilization depends on it.”

I don’t know about you, but after reading those two opening sentences, I knew exactly what I would be doing for the next 20 minutes: figuring out how to host a party (which is supposed to be enjoyable!) under that kind of post-apocalyptic pressure. The demand to “Host a party, enjoy it…or die” hardly inspires what it demands!

But instead of giving in to the fear of dyscatastrophe, I decided to read Steverman’s article for however long it would take me to do so.

After giving evidence that he’s not the only one thus concerned, Steverman writes, “The biggest reason things have changed? ‘The internet,’ says Julia Bainbridge, creator and host of the popular podcast The Lonely Hour. ‘Yes, it can alleviate loneliness—social connectivity with a click!—but that’s only a temporary form of self-soothing.’ Our innate desire for community and connection is why we rushed onto social media in the first place. We friended, shared, liked, argued. The smartphone let us reach anyone at any time.”

So, to “save our civilization,” what are we to do in a world where the internet and smartphone are here to stay? Are we doomed for catastrophe?

Can Friendship be a Eucatastrophe in a Smartphone World?

Steverman recommends that we host a party in order to save civilization, in order to avoid the dyscatastrophe of becoming utterly “exhausted and unhappy when [we] spend too much time on [our] screens” (Sociologist Eric Klinenberg as quoted by Steverman).

But what if the answer lies a bit deeper than just hosting a party?

. . .