I’ll probably get “Hate Mail” for this one!
I believe Americans are losing their ability to communicate in any meaningful way. Pick up a book written by our founding fathers and tell me it isn’t true! We’ve become “Simpletons” when it comes to language! (I know this has been bothering you and you’ve probably been asking yourself – “How did this happen?”)
Well, here’s my five minute synopsis.
Once upon a time, people had to make an effort in order to talk to one another. They had to leave their house and drop whatever it was they were doing (work or play) and walk down the lane, across the fields, over the hill or across the street so that they could look their neighbor in the eye…. and they had a conversation.
The telephone comes along and now we no longer have to take an hour or two to visit a nearby neighbor, we can just give them a ring. We can save all that travel time and still do whatever it is we want to do. Conversations were shortened just by virtue of the fact that we probably had to stand in the hallway to talk into the phone. We no longer had to look our neighbor in the eye and conversations became more superficial.
Now we have cordless phones so we don’t have to stop anything to talk, we just go on with our daily routine and rather than giving that person our complete attention, half of our mind stays on our tasks and they get the other half! That’s why no one gets their stories straight anymore.
Oh, and did I mention Caller I.D.? We know who’s calling before we even pick up the phone – and once we see who’s on the other end, we might not pick up at all! Oh, we’re very selective who we give our time to these days, and the machine can talk you….. um….. ah….. I mean those other people! “Oh, did you call? Did you leave a message? Something must be wrong with my answering machine!”
Radio and television comes into the picture and now we no longer want to take the time to even call because we are engrossed in our favorite programs. If someone calls us, we want off the phone because quickly… well, you know, Perry Mason, Gilligan’s Island or Gunsmoke was about to begin (my wife says that “dates” me). The television has been called an “Electronic Fence” and rightly so because it put up a very effective barrier between people and their neighbors. I’m sure that most everyone is aware of the fact that TV executives and producers change camera angles or scenes at intervals no longer than 6 seconds because people’s attention span begins to wane after that and we get bored with the program we are watching. Boy, there’s a testament … Americans have a six (6) second attention span!
CB radios came along in the 70’s and FCC rules dictated short, to the point communications so as not to tie up the airwaves. We even came up with 10 codes to shorten our conversations more. Add to that, the fact that everyone within range could hear your conversation so you learned not to say anything personal. It was training us for what was to come.
Computers come along and with them … e-mail. We now dumbed down our writing skills as well because our friends can answer us back the same day. We don’t take time to craft a letter any more! No more anticipation while waiting for the Postal Service to deliver a letter for us, and then a reply in return. I used to hear about all the communications people had with a whole network of e-mail friends – they could send their little snippets of information to 50 or more people with one keystroke. Of course they are all our friends… really! And we learned to leave all intimacy out of our conversations… and our relations. Oh, and with Spell Check and Grammar Check we don’t much care if we can spell or not, our computer takes care of that for us.
Next come the cell phones and all this texting stuff. We had to invent a whole new language in order to keep our communications short. We can’t even spell words correctly because that takes too long and takes up too much memory (the phone’s….. or ours? I’m not quite sure!) I spoke with a father the other day who told me his daughter’s cell phone bill recorded 3000-6000 text messages per month. I’ve heard other parents who tell similar stories and are so proud of how popular their child is. These texts, they say, are just proof of how many friends their kids have. Am I missing something somewhere! This started with the e-mail groups. Is it possible to actually believe that anyone can have hundreds of friends. I can tell you right up front, there aren’t that many people who give a rip about me! Can we really call these friendships? In my experience, cell phones can actually get in the way of any real friendships or conversations left to us. Who of you hasn’t been cut off in a real conversation because the person you were speaking to had to take a call on the cell phone or read a text? It just goes to show that whoever is on the other end of the phone is a whole lot more important at that moment than you are!
Blogging comes along….. and we now can tell our side of the story (just like I’m doing now) and we don’t even know if anyone is listening….. and maybe we don’t even care any more. We can go to great lengths portray ourselves in any light we please, and no one is the wiser. For the most part, it’s a one sided conversation … but that’s OK because we’re so busy we don’t have time for a two sided conversation anyway. I’ve heard that in order to be a good conversationalist, you have to spend a lot more time listening than talking. That’s because the other person gets to spend all the conversation time talking about what’s dear to them – themselves. If they have to listen to us talk about ourselves, they get bored with the conversation. What does that say about me as I write this blog?
Then there’s Facebook – Just put out information about yourself! Read what other people say about themselves. It used to be called being a busybody or a gossip, but we’ve gone beyond that. But only if you’re invited!
And now, Twitter. Damon Darlin, Technology reporter for The New York Times has called Twitter “a hyperspeed form of blogging in which you write about your life in bursts of 140 characters or less, including spaces and punctuation marks”. He further suggests that Twitter is the enemy of human intellectual progress. Have you counted the number of characters in this blog post, including spaces and punctuation marks? It’s just a few more than 140 characters (that’s a joke!) and I’m having a really hard time really expressing my true feelings on this subject! I don’t think I can say anything in 140 characters or less! In fact, if you look back over most of my posts, they tend to be just a tad long. Some might call me long-winded! Twitter asks one question …. “What are you doing?” and millions of people respond by “tweeting” what they’re eating for dinner, or some such. Come on, who really gives a rip what you’re eating unless you have asked them over for dinner and they are sitting across your table eating that food with you!
I concur with the Officer in the picture above ….. “NO OFFENSE FUTURE MAN, BUT IS EVERYONE IN YOUR TIME RETARDED?
Give me a neighbor I can just talk to over the fence! Give me “Back Door Friends” whom I can sit down with over a cup of coffee! Let’s have a conversation and see the sparkle in one another’s eyes, the curve of a knowing smile, the touch of a hand, a mischievous wink, a knowing nod, ! Give me authentic relationships!
In slightly more than 140 characters….
Allen
