Public speaking is supposed to be the number one fear people possess. Not wanting to potentially look foolish or something along those lines is understandable, but it seems that no matter the format or setting of communication nowadays, many people fail at it, and they fail miserably. More so, they don’t seem to care or understand that they do.
A big chunk of interaction now a days occurs via social media. Your friends and relatives likely want to know what’s going on with your life, but the rest of the human race likely doesn’t, so for starters, don’t make your account public. At the same time, don’t live on it to the extent that you don’t have a real life, nor do you need to share every detail of your life either. Not using it is advised, but I only use it to keep in touch with some more distant relatives, geographically and biologically speaking, and don’t post or type anything that should ID me in any way, just small talk, so I should be (hopefully) okay to get on. I can get multiple messages a day from Facebook when I check my email the next day, sometimes on the same thing, saying you have a message or someone posted this. I only get on once a day, and despite having a decent number of friends and family as contacts on there, I can be off in 30 minutes or less sometimes, as they either don’t have anything new, or posted something like a cat trick video or said they wanted to eat a hamburger today.
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Social media has also apparently destroyed people’s communication capabilities, where it seems if something can’t be expressed in an abbreviation like LOL or an emoji, then it apparently can’t be expressed at all. That might be why it can take a week or more for some people (friends, relatives, work/school project members) to reply sometimes, although I’d imagine they did get my initial message, as they call, text, email, or post about something else to me in the time between my initial contact and their reply to it. When they do reply to my initial contact, their initial reply is often very vague, like “sounds cool”- thereby info that would answer questions such as “Do you have any other ways you want to try this?”, “Are you coming in the first place?”, and so on is never provided. The real /old school process isn’t as hard as these people are making it and/or perceive it to be. If anything, the new spin is the hard route, so stop it already!
Social media seems to have encouraged people to communicate via incomplete and grammatically poor sentences, if they don’t use an emoji instead. However, blogs and what not still might be too much of a direct approach for many of today’s (at least in the western world) rather pacified masses. On the other hand my posts might come across as more of one of those long, boring, and old book things they might have heard of. Since many of my source authors have been deceased for a while, there’s a lot smaller chance of having to confront someone who shares or even knows about their views. Furthermore, a book has always been a one way communication method anyway, and thereby is more inviting to them.
Social media/ technology has helped globalization along, but despite living an allegedly more interconnected world, sometimes it seems we’ve never been more separate from each other. An email can connect you with someone on the other side of the world in an instant, but you only get a wall of text, and the emotional and/or physical aspect of communication is gone. You can attach a video or pictures, but those are separate files from the email. An older method of contact, the phone, can also link you with the other side of the planet in a little slower fashion, but you can at least hear the other person’s voice, which covers the emotional part, so the more technologically advanced option isn’t better in that aspect. I suppose Skype is okay for the communication purpose, as it kind of covers the physical, and can do the emotional.
Social media distances people in other ways as well. There are people who text while sitting across from each other. They may be trying to be sneaky since they’re not paying attention to class or the board meeting, and/or what they’re talking about is “secret” or the like (if you wanted to be secret, don’t use this as they are recorded). They are constantly looking down and maybe even laughing, crying, or so on from what was in the message will make them noticeable. Some people do this even when it wouldn’t be a problem, like during lunch break. Linking with lunch break is an even worse situation. I’ve noticed plenty of times where children are climbing all over and trying to talk to the adult they’re with for some form of attention, to no avail most of the time, since the adult is on their phone at restaurants, stores, and other public spaces. A lot times, if the child does get their attention, the adult then just gives the kid the phone and has them amuse themselves, and then the adult seems bored (it’s just terrible to actually spend time with (aka interact with) and not just occupy the same area as, your children, niece/nephews, grandkids, etc. If the kids don’t get their attention, then the kids pull out an electronic device of their own in a good chunk of situations. In this attempt for attention, or if a child is just being energetic like any good normal/natural child would be, they may run around, yell, or cry, and then someone else would have the nerve to tell them and/or tell their adult to tell them to keep quiet and stop it. This is an issue beyond not telling people how to raise their children, as again, it’s just what children do, and furthermore, their noise and movement isn’t preventing you from eating, putting items in a cart, or walking the trail at a park. Furthermore, it’s a public space, not your private domain, so be prepared to encounter things you may disagree with. What it might be doing is preventing/distracting you from thinking about what to put in your next text though. The complaining people are the ones who need to be silent and calm, not the children. Or, one could say they need to actually start talking, and communicate verbally instead of with text for once, but not to complain about insignificant things.
Some people say my body language (I talk with my hands a lot) is distracting or even crazy, especially when paired with talking to myself. They might also call me extra crazy since I might yell (this doesn’t happen at all when talking to myself). Yelling, even when paired with pointing or the like, is perfectly acceptable and natural, especially if someone feels strongly about something, and even more so if they’re defending it or attacking its opponents in an argument. Who sits perfectly still and monotone in these situations? Seriously, come on already. A good chunk of people do talk to themselves, as it can be a way to remember things or go over ideas, like trying to come up with a speech or covering that misplaced grocery list. Saying “eggs” and “milk” at the grocery store out loud while by yourself shouldn’t be a cause of alarm for anyone. If talking to yourself involves the conversations of the killer from a movie, then that could be a problem, but it isn’t otherwise.
Trying to spread a message is hard enough, let alone now a days. An all too common response, or more like the lack of one, to an argument is silence. One could think that the letter got lost in the delivery process, the phone or email service was glitched, or the person was really busy. This approach could work the first one or two times, but is rather unlikely if repeated attempts are made. Another option is that they are a “deer in the headlights”, aka they know something is going on, but not what. They could also be so shocked and awed that they just keep thinking “How’d I miss that” over and over, or turn that shock into motivation to share it with everyone else, and are so active spreading the message that they haven’t got back to you. They could also be someone that likes the current system, and are shocked that you found it out. If they are silent in this case, it’s possibly due to them trying to make it seem insignificant (not worth the attention) and/or they don’t have anything to counter your argument. This group isn’t guilty of ignorance or ignoring the problem, as they are (again) promoting it, and if they promote it, they certainly know it exists, and likely how it works. Despite looking similar, ignorance means being unaware of, and ignorings means not paying attention to. I might have to borrow one of their tactics and invent a new word for what this action is. What I particularly enjoy is when people say they disagree with most of my ideas. I’ve had family, friends, and coworkers distance themselves as a result, although none have stopped contact like some other authors’ relations seemed to have done. The contact we do have is more sporadic, and it’s more reserved, at least on their end. Most would suggest that they agree with some of my points, or at least can connect with them on some level, but when I ask about this, they don’t reply, or say, “oops, I messed up, I actually don’t like any.” They could have said most in an attempt to be nice, but I’d like to think that the door was opened just a little for a short time, as deep in there somewhere, they know it’s true, but then it was slammed shut again, since “can’t think that way, it’s bad” is ingrained even deeper.
Now for a rundown of some communication that the opposition, and some “neutrals”, as much as that can exist, have said in reply to my views. Some people say that nothing’s real in attempts to counter my ideas. This could be true, but that still supports my ideas, as that would obviously include what I say isn’t real. Even more space would be available for my views if you take the outlook that there are multiple realities or that no one can truly comprehend reality. Folks might also say “nothing matters” as an attempt to counter me. Again, this could be true on a grander level, but you need to eat to live for instance. Expanding further, people find things without immediately applicable functions to be meaningful, such as art, and if there’s no incentive to do something, it probably won’t be done. Also, how do they know that the original or main promoter, along with current followers, of the various ideas currently followed didn’t create and promote them since they were misanthropes that didn’t like anybody and wanted to harm society? Even if the initial undertaking was an attempt to help, what’s stopped these ideas from being twisted to injure instead?
Using these old and catch-all replies makes the opposition look weak. It reflects a lack of creativity, an inability to think for themselves, and an inability to notice details. It could also be a “straw man”, as they are now focusing on other topics besides what was initially stated. Putting all of these together, one could say that using these replies may be viewed as admitting defeat, albeit indirectly, along the lines of “I’m done arguing” or “I’m not going to argue with you”, meaning they gave up and you win by default. People do put their heads in the sand a lot of times, but if they are forced to defend their actions, they then remove their heads from the sand and insert it into their asses, as they come up with the most shitbrained ideas in the attempt to do so.
I do have a college education, and some people try to use that against me, saying this is where I got my crazy ideas from, and that school has messed me up. Yes, lots of crazy ideas are promoted on a campus, but they don’t match mine very well. Mine likely aren’t going to be promoted, as the majority of fellow students and faculty I talked to called my ideas crazy, or at best, misguided. They then would go on and promote the true mess they desire.
Another way people attempt to turn things around on me is by saying that I label things (such as artificial, abstract, and imaginary for starters), and I only label them since I don’t like them, so how am I not a liberal, SJW, progressive, and so on as well? First off, I label things so I can better approach them, and those groups label things to appeal to emotions, and perhaps a twisted version of morals, but don’t usually back it up much with the brain power. I use all three, but I direct the morals and emotions to be the catalyst to save one’s self, not to destroy one’s self or someone else. Not having an area filled with non-natives that are gay, transgender, and take all the jobs while destroying the original inhabitants and their culture is not an actual problem, but having that happen is.
Furthermore, every word is a label. Language lets us describe our world and interact with each other, which are necessary things to do. I call a television a television, thereby I must be insulting that machine. Ooops, hold on, machine is a label as well. Can we try item, object, or thing instead? Nope, can’t do that either. Do I hate televisions? No. They also try to use label in a more logical or scientific way, and they combine this with the bigger picture approach, and possibly the college education route as well, for a tag team attack on me. They say something like “You break down everything and call it this and that, and spend most of your time discussing this and that, but didn’t you say people need to care about the bigger picture. You’re missing the forest for the trees.” (Well, many people I’ve encountered didn’t seem smart enough to use phrases like the forest and tree thing.) Yes, the bigger picture is the end goal, but to reach the end goal, you have to understand why that goal is is desirable and why the current set up is bad, and ways to reach your objective. Once it’s enacted, you’ll have to do things to keep it going as well, meaning there are lots of things that are necessary to cover, so hope that chair of yours is comfortable, as this might be a while. Sometimes planning and logistics is the hardest part.
A different approach is to say my ideas, which I can mention in another post, represent greed because I’m allegedly wanting more than I can produce, but I don’t know where they’re coming from with this. If you want to get real picky about the wording, I suppose we should take away just about everybody’s car for instance then, since they probably wouldn’t be able to assemble one by themselves. Furthermore, I’m not promoting excess, such as multiple fancy cars and houses for everybody, especially when I mention there’s plenty of people who don’t even have anything to eat, even in the allegedly advanced “western” nations. There are some lines here and there about sharing, so perhaps I’m “greedy” since I wouldn’t mind sharing things, meaning I might have something that I didn’t produce for a bit.
Greed can link with jealously, which has been put forth as a reason for me having these views. What I’m supposed to be jealous of is other people’s success. Again, I’m not angry if you have mansions and fancy cars. If anything, I feel you’re wasting your time and are misguided to chase after and acquire those items, so that’s certainly not jealously. Furthermore, removing the mentioned obstacles should only increase the odds of success and fulfillment in various definitions, be it the commonly accepted material version, which isn’t the best route, to cultural and spiritual.
Two sayings come to mind here: “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” and “the nail that sticks out gets pounded down” (sometimes with a sledgehammer it seems). They allegedly praise and attack individualism respectively, but if thought about, both sayings can promote conformity, since in both situations the key object is no longer an annoyance. Some people are more than inside the box. Not only are they inside it, but they’re wrapped with a tight shrank wrap layer and held firmly in place with packing peanuts.
Summing it up, miscommunication and the masses goes hand and hand. Perhaps they have truly become less intelligent, but for certain they have become more lazy and distant. If humanity desires to regress, keep it up. If humanity desires progress, put an end to it.
(Yes, the mass media is a form of communication that promotes negative things via its films, music, and so on, but I focused on more personal communication, as it’s the foundation of communication.)
