Reply #33: As segments of society lose touch with what makes us human...

[Javaman]

via image, information and sound overload, our ability for social relationships falls by the waste-side.

How many little bizarre stories to you hear on the news regarding relationships; "he broke up with me on twitter, IM, email", these days?

My wife's son is obsessed with texting. He thought us crazy when we told him he should be less accessible and to take a break from texting for a while. His response, "are you kidding? How will they know where I am?"

"How will the know where I am". What a truly sad statement. The self absorbed belief that they are indispensable.

We stated, "if someone needs to find you or contact you, they will. However, if they give up, then it wasn't important or they really didn't need to find you that badly. See how it works? They will survive and figure it out". He still texts no stop.

As society becomes more and more plugged in and tuned out, social morays fall by the side in favor of on line socializing.

We can easily refuse to text back someone if we feel confronted with an issue we don't want to deal with and may never want to deal with.

In the past, we had to deal with issues, because we knew as right as rain that, "I will bump into him/her and I will have to deal with it".

The constant stream of information, the "need to know now" mentality, fails on many fronts but mostly in the ability of allowing one to "think about things" to "think them over" before reacting. Everything is reaction now. No thought, no reflection.

The "unfriending" of our society becomes the new cold social norm. Where physical contact and confrontation becomes socially awkward in favor of, "I'll just text you". The removal of consideration of the other persons feelings becomes the cut and dry method of dealing with life. Everyone is their own CEO. Personal confrontation requires people to have empathy and a level of compassion. Texting removes the ones conscious from the equations.

One can text someone that they are a schmuck, but in person, how many people would actually call someone that to their face?

These "cuddle parties" are a direct reaction to the disassociation of our society. People, regardless of what is now socially acceptable, still need/want that physical contact. Certainly, they require it on some unconscious level.

The next step in the right direction would be to have parties where all cell phones are checked at the door.

Forcing people to actually communicate and exercise their social skills would serve them better in the long run.

But frankly, since I'm middle aged and am on the verge of turning into that old man on the block that tells kids to, "Get off my lawn!!", I find it a truly disturbing trend that people feel they are on 24/7 call for inanity.