Dump your Blackberry

I have come to realize how impersonal and mechanical our society has become. The daily interchanges we share with each other are increasingly had through some form of technology, and in the fleetingly rare case that we can actually interact face to face there is some sort of technology that interferes. This isn't to say that the development of new technologies and better communications is a bad thing, but it is certainly inhibiting the ways in which people have communicated for millennia.

For instance, at work, I have found that as more and more people get Blackberries, people in any form of service industry are treated more and more like they are part of a machine. You simply walk up to the counter and tell the thing behind it what you want and after paying and waiting a few moments, you are on your way. And thanks to your Blackberry, you have been emailing, texting, web browsing, etc. all along. The "hello, how are you?" routine is becoming increasingly rare.

There is more to this than just the loss of face-to-face interaction and curtosy. The more we allow each other to exist solely through various technological mediums, the less likely we are to maintain the image of the humanity of others. People stop becoming people and just become names stored in hard drives. This disconnect doesn't allow us to see ourselves in others because we are real, and they are simply data arranged in ways that represents what is supposedly a person on the other end. When we forget this basic tennant, we submit our own humanity.

The human experience has and always will be a social one. Without each other our species would have never survived. It took groups of people to hunt game and gather nuts and berries before we figured out how to farm. And once the aggricultural revolution came about, it took groups of farmers to provide for a society. The induction of the written record has allowed scientists to work hand in hand with their predecesors in history despite living centuries apart. In essence, we rely on one another for our survival and for social progress. Now that we have reached a point where technology is erasing our sense of others and simply focusing our concerns on ourselves, what will become of our society?

Thankfully, another aspect of humanity is that people are capable of adapting to change. So will the loss of interpersonal interaction lead to humanity's downfall? I doubt it. I would like to think that this is some sort of intermediate stage and that in the future, further developments in technology will bring people back together.

...or maybe I'm just crazy.

And yes, I realize the irony in writing all this on a blog, while checking my email, texts, and Facebook.

You should read this

It was suggested to me that I start a blog, and like the rest of us, I am highly susceptible to suggestive thinking. I have no idea what purpose this will serve, or what I will write here. Chances are it will simply be a collection of stream of consciousness writings. So let me apologize in advance to any of you that stumble across this thing for subjecting you to my various rants, mostly political.

So where to begin? Well I'll start by explaining the title. The line comes from Tool's Jambi. I thought it worked in that blogs are just a means to project your opinions onto others. And we never think we are wrong in our opinions, do we? So this blog will serve as my mountain upon which I give my sermons or something like that. It's not that I am preachy, although I can be, but sometimes blogs only serve to feed the ego (I will try to avoid this).

Like I said, this blog is a manifestation of suggestive thinking. Suggestive thinking is usually harmless (case in point: this blog), but it can also be disastrous. Let's pretend that you are a factory worker in some state in the Southwest. You work for a large multinational corporation which has decided that in order to save money its going to be moving the job you do over to Southeast Asia because the labor is so cheap. So you are laid off. "What the fuck?!" (that's you talking). You're pissed but you don't know who to be angry at because after all, the company did give you and your family pretty good benefits for a while there and you were able to buy your house and send your kids to school because of it. Nearby, there is a politician who really wants your vote. He feels for you, man, he really does. So he comes to your town and holds a rally and says to you, and others like you, that the reason you are out of work is because those damn illegals are crossing over the border and stealing everyone's jobs. "Hell yeah," you say.

And so you buy into a lie that helps you channel your frustration at something tangible. The politician gets elected. Everyone is happy right? Well except for the fact that there are lots of people buying into this and there has been a significant rise in anti-immigration violence in the U.S.

So suggestive thinking can either lead to blog creation or social unrest.

It's amazing to me how easily people are swayed in their daily lives, and how unaware they are that they are being swayed. As a personal example, I work in a cafe that sells mass-produced coffee and food filled with corn syrup, enriched flours, and hydrogenated this and that. What never ceases to amaze me is how people will order whatever it is that is on the back menu boards. On the back wall there is a three-part menu and six pictures of various items for sale. I figured out that between the various food and drink options there are literally hundreds of thousands of combinations people could order (if you want to count things like regular vs. decaf as a discernible difference), and yet most people will order whatever the pictures tell them to order. And once a month when all those posters change, so too do the popular orders.

Sure it's not like people are being duped into buying things they necessarily don't want, but if people are this willing to allow outside influences to dictate the flow of their daily lives, what are they willing to decide for themselves?

You should buy a peppermint mocha latte and a classic coffee cake.

You should blame the illegal immigrant for taking the job that your company actually just moved overseas to save money.

You should agree that Iraq is a threat because they have weapons of mass destruction.

You should get an iPod, everyone else has.

You should support Israel in her search for peace because she is our ally dammit!

And so it goes...