Internet dating - pragmatic solution or imaginative triumph?

There seem to be two dominant strains of thought concerning the phenomenon of Internet dating. One holds that it is dangerous, a last resort for losers, a prey-ground for sexual deviates and a sign of the “End of the Times”.

The second holds that it is an integral part of our Orwellian present, a realistic solution to a perennial problem and a cutting edge tool for cutting a fast track through outdated and time wasting forests in order to get to the most desirable tree on our horizon.

I have listened to exponents of both sides, and have both agreed and disagreed with varying aspects of each. It’s not a question upon which I have spent a lot of time pondering until recently but, now that I have, a third option presents itself to me.

Perhaps Internet dating is a response to an entirely separate problem in our society: the imminent atrophying of our imaginations.

From Neolithic times onwards we have ample evidence that the human mind was capable of abstract thought - from animistic scratches on cave walls to inscriptions on tablets, and through memorised ballads. The Renaissance was not just a flowering of humanity’s intellect but a soaring of the imagination once let loose from ecclesiastic confines. The birth of the novel has now proved to be even earlier than was once thought: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko provided the genesis for an entirely new path down which our imaginations could wander.

For the next few centuries we spun tales, painted pictures, read blood-chilling books, absorbed poetry and lay on our backs and saw pictures in the clouds.

Come the late 20th century, however, and we turned to technology. Those gifted with the capacity to compute logical results from the interaction of wires and circuits and power input, began to present for us imaginative pre-packaged resources in desktop boxes, or finger-tapping machines. Our minds, that no longer needed to search for the answer as to what change we should give or receive when making financial transactions, no longer needed to grapple with how to entertain ourselves either. The variety of boxes and devices provided for this purpose were legion.

Which was just as well. In order to take advantage of all this pre-packed leisure time we had to rise earlier, work harder, stay at work later, and travel for longer; trapped in other boxes. And because the human mind was seen to degenerate into primeval road rage when condensed into traffic jams, crowded roads and snarling humanity we were able supply these boxes with other devices churning out an endless diet of chatter in order to keep us from each other’s throats.

The dedicated could also choose to transport our work with us on mobile phones or palm pads to ensure we could afford bigger, better swallowers of our leisure time.

By the dawn of the 21st century the result of our intimate familiarity with technology was that we became very, very sophisticated as well as very, very busy. Our brains were too fatigued with the realities of life to spend time curled up reading and pondering whodunit, or why.

Documentaries and travel programs which once fascinated us on our boxes and caused us to dream of exotic and faraway places were simply far too removed from the reality of our lives - how could the Khalahari bushmen or the dolphins of Crete help us with a crashed computer?

Magazines which we once flipped through lazily to get to the short stories or poetry were now feverishly scanned for hints and tips on how to dress for success or gain the instant orgasm.

And clouds? Well a build up of cumulous vapours indicated how we should dress for that day and had nothing at all to do with peasant superstitions such as fairy castles. We clamoured for other peoples’ realities in our scant leisure moments, in order to reassure ourselves that our sterile existence was at least on a par with that of everyone else.

But the human animal has, over millennia, proved itself an adaptable beast, and one of the major tools with which we have been indelibly programmed in order to adapt, has been the imagination.

It is our imagination which has led us to explore, to invent, and to innovate. It is the imagination which conjured up a video game or a television program. And, it appears that however much our lifestyles may work to stultify, corrode, dissipate or regiment our imaginations, that small spark remains in order to draw the dividing line, some believe, between us and other forms of life.

It also appears that the basic instinct for companionship which first led us in from the steppes to prehistoric caves and Neolithic villages and which, in our increasingly separate and compartmentalised modern lives, was apparently thought by many (especially town planners) to be extinct, still stutters to life within us.

Internet dating therefore need not be viewed either as a refuge for losers, nor as a fast-track and unsatisfactory speed-dial to intimacy. It could, instead, be viewed as a sophisticated and entirely linear step in the field of human relationships in the technical age. With our newly-awakened penchant for reality, Internet dating could be said to be a realistic and 21st century solution for those citizens who are unable to participate in traditional rituals attendant upon by-gone mateship ceremonies.

But, even if I am the only one to perceive it this way, it could also be said to be a triumph for the imaginative side of men and women that it has not yet been squashed by the technological, fast-tracked and reality based life many of us are forced to live.

I take heart in knowing that despite the moulds into which modern living has succeeded in pushing so many, some still resist. Straight-laced men in business suits, barking orders from their cars into mobile phones still look for love. Pragmatic women with designer laptop-cases and no-nonsense glasses still long to be cherished. Hard-bitten survivors of disastrous unions who maintain they have done with that side of life forever still dream of relationships that work.

The click of a mouse to an Internet dating site allows possibilities for thousands of people across the world and - construction worker, academic, restaurant worker or entrepreneur - they collectively are enabled to experience that same anticipation that this time, or maybe next time, a scroll down a virtual page might bring them what they seek.

As to the cheats, the doctored photo’s, the white lies? No one goes through life without encountering those, in some form, every day. But in the world of Internet dating, if a young man with buck-teeth and pimples who is ignored by reality can stride across the pages as the tanned and toned hero of his own myths; or a thin-lipped mousy woman with three squalling kids under the age of five can slither through men’s minds as a tempting seductress, will the world tilt on its axis? Will the lives of thousands hang in the balance?

I am inclined to think, rather, that a little bearability might be brought into an otherwise empty life. I rejoice that the ability to let the imagination soar might save someone from desperation. I am pleased at the ingenuity of humanity in overcoming the seemingly impossible odds that modern lifestyles throw at us to try to stop us ever connecting with each other.

Above all, in a world which seems determined to quash that wonderful capacity of humans to set their minds free to dream, to wonder and to imagine, I consider that Internet dating sites, with great ingenuity, play an integral role.