There was a time when the measure of a man — or a woman — was found not in the size of their following or the polish of their online image, but in the quiet and consistent act of showing up. I wrote about this recently, about the sacred obligation of standing beside a friend or loved one when the air is heavy and the road is hard. I thought it was simple and uncontroversial. But the responses — some of them sharp and cynical — told me otherwise.
Somewhere along the line, “showing up” became suspect. An intrusion. A threat to the self-sufficient myths we’ve been sold. Our culture now thrives on the idea that we don’t need each other. That independence is the highest virtue, and connection is optional. This isn’t by accident. There’s money to be made in our isolation.
Once, the things we needed most — counsel, comfort, the passing down of wisdom — were woven into the fabric of family, neighbors, and community. Now, those things are outsourced. We buy courses instead of seeking out elders. We pay for subscription boxes to send meals rather than cooking together at home. We hire therapists — valuable as they are — because we no longer know how to lean on a friend’s kitchen table at midnight, coffee going cold, until the words finally spill. We have apps to tell us when to breathe because no one close enough is there to notice when we’ve been holding our breath for days.
The machine prefers it this way. The less we depend on one another, the more we can be sold.
And the machine has its willing prophets — reality TV, dressed up as truth, but built on humiliation and betrayal. Shows that turn infidelity, family fractures, and public shaming into plotlines. We applaud contestants for cutting each other down because we’ve been told that winning matters more than being whole. Our entertainments train us to cheer for isolation, to accept the destruction of trust as inevitable.
Even violence — the kind that once would have driven people into each other’s arms — is now another currency. We scroll past death in high definition, processed into algorithm-friendly clips, sandwiched between memes and ads for things we don’t need. It echoes the old coliseum, except now the arena is digital, and the crowd doesn’t even have to leave the couch.
And then there’s AI. It promises efficiency, companionship, and even creativity. But beneath the marvel, there’s a subtle and dangerous bargain: if we can outsource our conversations, our art, our thought, we can also outsource the messy, difficult work of being human together. What happens to empathy when we can simulate its language without its labor? When our words are polished but our hearts stay untouched?
This erosion of empathy is not just a cultural inconvenience — it is a slow unspooling of the threads that hold us together. Without them, mental health frays. Communities collapse. The moral muscle that once made us rush to the side of a grieving friend weakens from lack of use.
Showing up — in person, in spirit, with presence — has never been about convenience. It’s about resistance. Against a culture that profits when we stay alone. Against the idea that our worth can be measured in clicks and comments. Against the creeping belief that we can do without one another.
Showing up still matters. Maybe more than ever. And I am still stunned that anyone would argue otherwise. But I also know that, in a world where connection is commodified, showing up is an act of quiet rebellion.
The question is whether we are willing to rebel. Whether we are willing to remember that no app, no feed, no AI can replace the feel of someone’s hand on yours when you can’t speak. Whether we are willing to reclaim what we’ve lost before the last of it slips away, sold back to us at a premium.
Because if we’re not — if we continue to mistake isolation for strength — the erosion of empathy won’t just be complete; it will be irreversible. It will be irreversible.
By Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
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