"Intimacy doesn't scale".

"Intimacy doesn't scale." This got me thinking. Technology lets us talk to more people, advertise to more people, get audio, video and written content to thousands, even millions. In spite of all this technology that gives us the ability to communicate, we are still left to develop relationships in our "primitive" ways.

You can grow a business customer base or a community of common interest, but in the end, we all come down to our need for and ability to maintain personal one-to-one or one-to-few relationships.

Here's an ancient example of intimacy scaling poorly. King Solomon with his hundreds of wives. Do you think he had a close relationship with all of them? NOT! Geez, he couldn't have given each one but one day a year to talk personally. That was completely nuts! For the wisest man who ever lived, this is a character flaw you could fly a plane through. It certainly wasn't what God wanted for him. Maybe he thought, “If I just marry one more, I’ll finally understand women.”

If you want to be close, stop spreading yourself around so thin. Don't expect technology to allow you to scale your relationships in any dramatic multiple of what your "primitive” abilities allow. Even Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, couldn’t get around this limitation. He had 12 close friends and of those only 3 were his tightest buds.

How does intimacy get created? What destroys it? What advances it? Maybe I should ask MJ. What are your thoughts?

======================
Here is the inspiration for this entry, From Hugh McLeod's blog, Gaping Void :

More thoughts on "How To Be Creative" from Hugh here.