Why We Text and Drive

In this poignant social commentary, the comedian Louis C.K. points out why it is that people are constantly staring at their cell-phones: because they don’t want to acknowledge the loneliness that is inherent to human life.

What the phones are taking away is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty, forever empty. That knowledge that it’s all for nothing and that you’re alone. It’s down there. And sometimes when things clear away, you’re not watching anything, you’re in your car, and you start going, “Oh no, here it comes. That I’m alone.” It starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it. . . .

That’s why we text and drive. I look around, pretty much 100 percent of the people driving are texting. And they’re killing, everybody’s murdering each other with their cars. But people are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard.