21st Century Relationships / World: “Un42n8”

Among a few articles that grabbed me over the course of the weekend was a piece by Megan Gressor talked about mobile phones being the substitute for meaningful communication. In her articles not only did she mentioned people being fired via SMS, people asking others out, or dumping them, but also how she received news that a friend “Un428lY took [their life] 2Day”. Eek.

Communication in this day and age appears to have been reduced to almost short strings of characters. Will we see “The Collected SMS and E-mail’s of (insert famous writer here)?

In a sense I get it. The phone is liberating – it increased the distance between us, and rejection. The phone is changing in the manner of our interactions, the mobile also allows us to be late - we say: “Will B L8, CU Soon”.

To quote from the article: “So we retreat behind our electronic barricades, tuned in, but turned off and unable to react”.

This is modern emotion - filtered through the screen, passed on strings of alpha numeric symbols.

I turned the page; and I found another poignant piece, detailing how, even in spite of the prosperity we are supposed to be feeling we live in a climate of fear. McDonald quotes a study which details how children in the 90s report higher levels of anxiety than child psychiatric patients did in the 1950s.

Perhaps this is because the world feels more dangerous, perhaps because we feel more isolated, insignificant, or impotent to cause change. McDonald talks about how though technology promised to make us more connected, instead, we email and SMS - not talk; we (I) chat on the internet; people can watch “reality” TV to view how people relate. Interestingly today we have more one-person households than ever before.

Community has been replaced, and we live in a disengaging, individualistic society. Richard Eckersly was quoted in the article as saying that materialism appears to create less well being, not more; our culture asks that we measure ourselves against criteria which we say is the root of the issue – materialism.

Are these challenges peculiar to our age, or is this anxiety simply normal? Two very interesting articles appearing to reveal a few truths about the 21st Century

The Art of Communication...

My brother pointed me to this site... very insightful.. Well worth a visit and read. The series of entries are are entitled "Sleeping with Pigs IV - VI " [Great comments about reviews, reviewing, David Gerrold's writing and communication].

I was challenged by a large portion of what he said - seeing communication as not simply the transferring of information, but the sharing of experience in relationship; seeing acknowledging the message communicated, not as agreement, or committment to action, but simply - 'I heard what you said'. And I could go on..

Pay his site a visit. :)

Language

I read this interesting article in the Australian this week, Don Watson, (the former speech writer for Paul Keating, and author of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, and Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language)

In the article he talks of the decay of language from our leaders, and the vision statements of our blue chip companies. The language we have left is the;

language of management – for which read the language of virtually all corporations and companies, large and small, public service departments, government agencies, libraries, galleries and universities, the military, intelligence organisations and, increasingly, politics – this language that cannot describe or convey any human emotion, including the most basic ones such as happiness, sympathy, greed, envy, love or lust. You cannot tell a joke in this language, or write a poem, or sing a song. It is language without human provenance or possibility.

In the article he talks about the importance of language, and how, language unites us to the world, and to each other; its mangling always means those tethers are broken.

The paragraph with which he closes his article is quite striking, its constructed from John 1…

In the beginning was the Word. And in the Word was the truth – and the heart and the mind. And if you take it away from us, we are poorer and the democracy is weaker. If anyone else feels that this country is not the home it was, I think they should go to the words, before we lose the power of sensible speech altogether.

The political-speak we see, with Bush, Blair, and Howard, is not inspiring, is not active.. it does not provoke us like we speeches of yester-year, for example, Lincoln, Kennedy or King.

I really want to spend some time reading and reflecting on it. Is it Orwell who talks about our freedom, and ideas are tied into to our language, and to take our ability to express is to begin to take our freedoms??

+++

It has been a lovely week … I turned 26 this Tuesday, November 11. It was a different birthday, for starters, it’s the first birthday since I’ve moved out, but on top of that my parents were having a much deserved holiday in Tasmania, and my sister is over in London, as I mentioned earlier.

It was really nice to come down and have dinner with Karen and Ben. I remember meeting Karen, the first year I was at Uni, and we were paying to go to MYC in 1996. Karen’s birthday fell during the week, and I remember spending the last night chatting with her. Which was really awesome. I really treasure the friendship of both Karen and Ben, that have always been there to lend an ear, and above all, they are true examples of what it means to follow Jesus.

I’m down in Wollongong again now, spending the day with my parents, and brother, celebrating my birthday. Tomorrow, I’m heading back to Sydney, to farewell a couple of friends from England, who will be flying back to England on Tuesday.