Calvin's Mischief to Modern Isolation: How We Lost Connection in a Divided World
What a rebellious cartoon character can teach us about respect, connection, and the growing epidemic of loneliness.
One of the reasons we are such a lonely and isolated nation is because we forgot how to respect each other. We have decided that if you don't like my team, my faith, my politician, or my medical opinion, then you don't like me. How did we go from appreciating different perspectives to hating a different opinion? Now, I should take this opportunity to be clear: devaluing the humanity of another person or group of people is not an opinion; it is hate. There is no room to accept dehumanization as a matter of personal perspective.
The First Time I Saw Calvin Go Rogue
It was the mid-1990s that I recall seeing this for the first time. I witnessed a Nissan pickup truck that had a silhouette of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin was taking care of his natural business, but he was taking aim at a Ford emblem. I remember thinking how strange this was. First, why was poor Calvin left out in the open that way, and why did someone hate the Ford Motor Company so badly? This was distasteful at best and, at worst, downright disrespectful.
As time went on, I saw more and more of poor Calvin on the back of windows, and there were more and more targets for his aim. There was the number 3 of Dale Earnhardt or the star of the Dallas Cowboys. Eventually, it got so bad that even the presidents’ faces became the object of Calvin’s aim! I remember thinking that if my mother saw this on my vehicle, I would be in for a long lecture and some severe punishment. I mean, this was back in the day before we had a back windshield filled with political stickers or pickup trucks with items attached to the back hitch. Maybe it sounds like I was clutching my pearls, but I was sincerely troubled that someone would paste poor Calvin acting this way.
Calvin Goes Viral
I did some research and found out that, according to reports online, the first image of Calvin committing the unspeakable was first witnessed in Florida, and the object of Calvin’s aim was the letters FSU, standing for Florida State University. Apparently, Bill Watterson, the artist and creator of Calvin and Hobbes, and the folks who syndicated the comic strips were not happy at all with how fast this trend was growing. Still, to this day, the owners state that this was not a sanctioned use of Calvin’s image. It may be a copyright infringement, but what can they do? Calvin had gone rogue, folks, and Calvin, in all his rogueness, was spreading like wildfire, and there was no cultural object or famous person who could escape his wrath!
Nowadays, social media is splattered with such disrespect that even a half-naked Calvin on the back of a pickup truck window would blush! How did we get to the place where we can act so cavalier and spew disrespect on almost every form of media? Is Calvin the cause? Did the hate in the world that we see today really begin to show itself as a symptom with Calvin, and we just missed it?
If Billy Joel were singing this song, he would remind us that Calvin didn’t start the fire. In reality, hate and hateful rhetoric have been around forever. The problem is, we just have faster ways of spewing it all over the place now. Calvin was the moving billboard in the 1990s, but now we have faster, more compact billboards in our pockets. We have a fast, easy way to read more hate and to get even angrier in response to what we just read. In turn, that can cause us to retaliate with hateful comments, and the modern Calvin continues to take his aim on and on and on.
The Modern Calvin
I realize it is funny and a little satirical to use Calvin as the scapegoat. What is not funny or satirical is the lack of respect and true human connection that is prevalent in our world today.
In the mid-1990s, we took Watterson’s inkwell and molded it into a sword. We keep doing it today; we just find new ways to drive that imaginary wedge between us all. I say imaginary because many of us are very similar, not different. I see this all the time as a pastor and also as the director of a nonprofit mental health facility.
We are looking for someone to understand us and also to help us understand ourselves. Many of us are looking for love, significance, and connection. In all the rhetoric in our world today about division and separation, they are imaginary fences swirling around in our heads. Our perceived divisions have no more permanent value than the imaginary Calvin and Hobbes.
One Part of the Solution
One key to ending loneliness and isolation is to break free from the illusion that we are not all interconnected. Maybe the next time you get so riled up at something you read or see, you could take a step back and look for the human value in that person. They are made in the image of God, and so are you. Let’s see if we can begin to embrace diversity and not confuse it with disgust. Of course, the alternative is to keep pointing and shouting at the imaginary cartoon characters on the back of windows.
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