Posted 12:54 am Sunday, January 27, 2013
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Interdependence Day
By NELSON CLYDE
isitjustme@tylerpaper.com
Have you noticed how much the way we interact with people has changed, or is it just me?
It makes you wonder where we’re headed. Now our society and its technology have brought us much, but a recent quote I ran across from Albert Einstein made me wonder.
isitjustme@tylerpaper.com
Have you noticed how much the way we interact with people has changed, or is it just me?
It makes you wonder where we’re headed. Now our society and its technology have brought us much, but a recent quote I ran across from Albert Einstein made me wonder.
Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
What is the problem? Well I would like to suggest the problem is we have so sterilized our human interaction toward whatever you want to call it, rugged individualism or the allure of independence, that you must wonder how we will solve our way out of it.
Are we losing the art of human interaction because of texting, face booking, instagramming and tweeting?
Perhaps the opportunities will be to teach people how to sit with one another quietly and enjoy unprompted conversations without the benefit of a facilitator or an electronic device.
Last week, Jamie and I went to dinner and I suggested (insisted) we leave our phones in the car. He didn’t fight it.
Will an entire generation require new etiquette training on how to navigate human interaction without the need to Google something or answer or retweet between courses?
Many years ago, restaurants began to require people to cease from smoking because of the health hazards it imposed due to second-hand smoke. What about suffering from second-hand tweeting and texting?
The pain of watching a family sitting in a restaurant together while every member maximizes their time by focusing on their portable digital devices is almost more than one can bear.
Will group therapy become just that? group therapy — teaching humans to interact and rely on each other just because it benefits others as a priority rather than the individual.
My family and I watched an interesting movie recently by Tom Shadyac called “I Am.”
Shadyac was the guy who directed such classics as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” and “Liar Liar” featuring Jim Carrey.
Are we losing the art of human interaction because of texting, face booking, instagramming and tweeting?
Perhaps the opportunities will be to teach people how to sit with one another quietly and enjoy unprompted conversations without the benefit of a facilitator or an electronic device.
Last week, Jamie and I went to dinner and I suggested (insisted) we leave our phones in the car. He didn’t fight it.
Will an entire generation require new etiquette training on how to navigate human interaction without the need to Google something or answer or retweet between courses?
Many years ago, restaurants began to require people to cease from smoking because of the health hazards it imposed due to second-hand smoke. What about suffering from second-hand tweeting and texting?
The pain of watching a family sitting in a restaurant together while every member maximizes their time by focusing on their portable digital devices is almost more than one can bear.
Will group therapy become just that? group therapy — teaching humans to interact and rely on each other just because it benefits others as a priority rather than the individual.
My family and I watched an interesting movie recently by Tom Shadyac called “I Am.”
Shadyac was the guy who directed such classics as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” and “Liar Liar” featuring Jim Carrey.
The guy made a fortune on the movies and decided there was more to life after a head injury gave him a moment of pause.
I don’t buy all of his ideas, but he suggested that humans are built to respond to each other as a result of their hearts more than their brains.
This would suggest we need each other deeply, and not just logically or based solely on what we can do for each other, but how we can benefit each other. It might even suggest, God forbid, in this modern day and age, we need less distance between the ways we interact.
This week try doing something that involves you and another person spending some time having a real conversation or interaction. Leave your phone in the car. Listen carefully to everything they say.
Be careful, because you might get hugged or kissed, you might even make someone feel an emotion adequately to cause them to cry or trust you with some feelings they have. They might even tell someone else about how your kindness made a difference in their week.
If any of that happens, you might know it was interdependence day.
I don’t buy all of his ideas, but he suggested that humans are built to respond to each other as a result of their hearts more than their brains.
This would suggest we need each other deeply, and not just logically or based solely on what we can do for each other, but how we can benefit each other. It might even suggest, God forbid, in this modern day and age, we need less distance between the ways we interact.
This week try doing something that involves you and another person spending some time having a real conversation or interaction. Leave your phone in the car. Listen carefully to everything they say.
Be careful, because you might get hugged or kissed, you might even make someone feel an emotion adequately to cause them to cry or trust you with some feelings they have. They might even tell someone else about how your kindness made a difference in their week.
If any of that happens, you might know it was interdependence day.
