Look into my eyes.
Does it look like I give a fuck?
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but it is more that they are windows to our intention, telling how we feel, how much effort we are putting in, and if we are lying. Body language is a huge part of our communication stream and the less we understand it, the more prone we are to all kinds of negative consequences, from relationship challenges, to being conned out of our life savings. I can't really think of any "good" from having poor body language literacy skills.
Can you?
Just like learning to read, exposure is necessary. Yet, the direction our technology has nudged us has meant that our interpersonal communication exposure has shrunk dramatically, and our abilities to not only read non-verbal cues, but also deliver them has been warped. I suspect that our non-conscious signalling has also changed, though I have no information other than personal observation to back that up. The change can be seen by watching young people interact with each other, but older people have changed also, because everyone has been affected.
Are interpersonal skills dead?
Perhaps in the future everyone will be using AI-driven smart glasses (or retina implants) that will monitor, analyse and give real-time feedback on what is happening in front of our noses. It can look at a face, measure the micro-expression clusters, extrapolate a meaning and tell us if we are being lied to, or if the person is interested in us. We can then be told what move we should make, what words to say, or perhaps an automatic signal can be sent to our brainstem so we don't have to worry about applying it ourselves. That way, we won't get it wrong.
Why should we need to learn human behaviours when a machine can do the work for us?
I don't know about you, but it seems pretty Black Mirror to me, yet due to the convenience the corporations offer us, we keep on buying into the new technology that saves us time, effort, and thought. All for the small price of our humanity. Many of us are already cyborgs, it is just that our machine parts are not integrated with our body directly yet. Our memory is external, our thought processes external, and even much of our activity is made while we are sitting stone still.
I wonder if at some point there are going to be courses sold to teach people how to act like a human again. It won't even be a refresher course, because many people have never been human, instead growing up as the physical representation of a digital landscape. A puppet controlled, rather than an agent of control.
I shouldn't care what others do.
This is the advice I often get from people. But selfishly, I have to live in a world filled with other people, and their behaviours and practices impact on me directly and on the people I care about. If you see an individual causing harm to others, are you going to "not care" and walk on by?
What is the difference?
Just because the harm isn't immediate or acute, isn't it still violence if someone is inflicting harm on another over time? Is a child forced to sit in a room filled with smoke from their pack-a-day parents not your business? Parent's choice? Do you expect the child to extricate themselves from that situation? They can have life-long damage to their body and brain, but hey - their fault.
Walk away.
I get that I can't do too much about so many of the things I talk about here on Hive, although I do try to influence the thoughts of others in the physical world too, and get them to think about their own behaviours. But still, maybe one or two people make a change that makes a change, that makes a change and the ripple continues on. Perhaps there is some kid out there who will have a slightly better environment and set of opportunities in their life because of something someone read here.
Maybe not.
But I don't see it as beating a dead horse, because at this point, there is still plenty of opportunity for individuals to make a change in their life that improves their personal condition, and their surrounding conditions. It might be too late for humanity, but it doesn't mean it is too late for individual humans to open their eyes to what is happening, and make a conscious choice to do better.
A thousand-yard stare.
It used to come from having seen to much of the horrors of the world.
Now it is from seeing too little past the screen 18 inches in front of the face.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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