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This is the problem. People no longer know how to communicate.
Sometimes, I'll say something, general courtesies, and the other has a blank look on their face, and appears to have no idea how to respond to that. 'How are you? That color looks great on you.'
Them: ....
Me: ....
Them: (mouth hanging open, confused look on face, fear in eyes) ....
I walk away after that.
It was not always this way. Some people out there still know how to communicate, but the numbers are dwindling. It's not an age thing, either. All ages have people who know how to communicate, easily, and have a good sense of humor. All ages have people who have that vacant look behind their eyes.
The first time I saw that look, (I'd read about those types of looks but had never seen one in the wild), it was disturbing to the point that I've never forgotten it. Absolutely nothing going on in that head of theirs, and that is creepy as hell.
I long ago stopped trying unless I had to talk because of my job. Dealing with people is exhausting enough as it is.
Yes. I think of it as a trance. I see whole groups of people going about their daily business swaddled in that private cocoon. Wake 'em up and they are in shock.
This is really noticeable in the shopping arena which is designed to keep consumers in a buying trance.
But I don't think of all of them as being unable to properly respond. Many just haven't been aware they were in a different brainwave condition - running on automatic until their consciousness is called to account.
It's like when you are in a different room trying to calculate something and someone in another part of the house asks a question. You might not even register them at first.
There is another kind of blank stare I see from members of the technological era. And I genuinely believe that it comes from an excess of relying on tech communication rather than face-to-face conversation.
Where is the template for how to do it? Chances are your busy nursery school caregivers didn't offer a role model for the casual just-another-human-being chat. Too many kids to process every day.
Your teachers teach. That can involve interaction but not the casual kind.
At home in the evening with a tired working parent chances are good there isn't going to be much more than random chatter as the bedtime chores get done. I've watched parents here double task by exercising after supper with dog and kids in tow. Both parents have their faces in their phones, doggies anxiously pulling on leashes and little ones trotting along saying, "Daddy, look at this" to deaf ears.
Add to that a couple of generations who have been well-meaningly told "You do you" and it kinda puts you in the dark about how others manage.
And there's one more - the well-meaning enemies of casual stranger acknowledgement who scorn anything short of true confessions as phony and insincere.
I think there is definitely more mental illness going on. For example, I have noticed that almost daily now, murder suicides are in the news. These used to be a rarity and made front page news. Now they're commonplace. Often it's fathers, sometimes mothers, sometimes a child, taking out a whole family. It's definitely a sign of the times and the erosion of the lines between right and wrong. Behind this, everywhere are the signs of evil influences and a coming apart of the veil of civility and once strong moral codes. The adage that we are upside down in a world where evil is promoted as good, and goodness as evil, is not too far off.
But beyond the crazies, I find most people these days to just be extremely shallow. It's like they don't want to think about anything below the surface. Ever. Distractions are welcomed, hard truths are shunned.
Talk about the weather, sports, some stupid TV show, TiKtok craze, or other mundane thing and they are fine. Try to engage them in talking about the things that are seriously going on and that will impact our lives soon if we don't start paying attention to them, and they zone out, or look confused. You can tell fairly quickly that you've penetrated their little "bubble" world. It's frustrating and a little frightening. It's also exhausting when you are not one for meaningless chit-chat.
I guest that's why forums like this are good places for connecting with others who are at least thinking about some of the things that matter, and can debate and talk about them.
I do think that we also have to acknowledge that today we get detailed news from all over the country for things that in decades past we wouldn't have heard about.
Lines between right and wrong. True. But I can't say that there wasn't just as much wrong as there was in...just for example...the slavery era, the era when little children worked in factories, etc. The good old days weren't all as good as people remember.
I do agree with you completely regarding shallowness.
How can you live in this world and not come to the self realization that we live in an absolute madhouse. Wars, sweeping global epidemics, wealth inequality, rampant drug abuse and the dumbing down of education at every level.
Like foot soldiers in a war zone we march forward expecting at some point peace and tranquility, sanity and peaceful resolutions but it never comes. There are millions of disoriented people out there facing an irrational world collectively suffering post traumatic stress disorders.
How can you live in this world and not come to the self realization that we live in an absolute madhouse. Wars, sweeping global epidemics, wealth inequality, rampant drug abuse and the dumbing down of education at every level.
Like foot soldiers in a war zone we march forward expecting at some point peace and tranquility, sanity and peaceful resolutions but it never comes. There are millions of disoriented people out there facing an irrational world collectively suffering post traumatic stress disorders.
I have to believe at this point that it's willful ignorance.
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed" - Neitzsche
Sex, religion and politics - off limits. If you bring one up, you're the one who is out of line. You should more or less expect strange responses if one of those comes out.
Now go back and recount, and tell us what your experience has been, subtracting the conversations you tainted, if any.
How can you live in this world and not come to the self realization that we live in an absolute madhouse. Wars, sweeping global epidemics, wealth inequality, rampant drug abuse and the dumbing down of education at every level.
Like foot soldiers in a war zone we march forward expecting at some point peace and tranquility, sanity and peaceful resolutions but it never comes. There are millions of disoriented people out there facing an irrational world collectively suffering post traumatic stress disorders.
Yes there are people who lack much awareness and simply sleep through life. Maybe most people.
But for the rest of us, we can also "see" things differently from one another. It is all about perception, interpretation, and bias. One may see a madhouse, another may see normal. Things are different today than they were 75 years ago, yet in many ways things have not changed much at all. The details have changed, but human nature is still what it was then.
Some are very much aware of world conditions and yet tend to put a negative spin on it, some are aghast, some panic, others put a positive spin and simply move on doing the best they can despite all the fuss. So how is your judgment ( spin ) any better than someone else's ? It isn't. It is just different.
I have to believe at this point that it's willful ignorance.
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed" - Neitzsche
I think we need a dose of denial or the horrors of human life would drive us all mad. But a path of blind denial leads to self-destruction. We watch people and nations do it all the time. That, in itself, is a horror.
What about ourselves as individuals? I suppose we need enough alarm, fear, concern in order to try to make things better, but not so much it does us in.
Neitzsche, that incestuous party pooper, also wisely advised, “And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” The rest of the quote was a warning that when we fight monsters we run the risk of turning into the very thing we fight.
The balance, I think, is knowing the world as best we can and still striving to make peace with what we can't fix. We are not called to superhuman tasks, only to do our best.
Things are different today than they were 75 years ago, yet in many ways things have not changed much at all. The details have changed, but human nature is still what it was then.
Good post. I've recently been watching the original Twilight Zone episodes, which aired in the late 1950s/early 60s. There's a lot of interesting character psychology portrayed, a stark (and dark) comparison to typical TV shows of that era where everyone's picture perfect (Leave it to Beaver, etc).
Even 60+ years ago the show's creators had the mindset to crank out plots around topics like complaining about crowds and too many people, technology making humans obsolete, doomsday prepping, and showing the fallacies and general stupidity of man.
I have to believe at this point that it's willful ignorance.
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed" - Neitzsche
And Nietzsche himself had a psychotic break and spent his last several years incapacitated, thus refuting his own contention that 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'
I think we need a dose of denial or the horrors of human life would drive us all mad. But a path of blind denial leads to self-destruction. We watch people and nations do it all the time. That, in itself, is a horror.
What about ourselves as individuals? I suppose we need enough alarm, fear, concern in order to try to make things better, but not so much it does us in.
Neitzsche, that incestuous party pooper, also wisely advised, “And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” The rest of the quote was a warning that when we fight monsters we run the risk of turning into the very thing we fight.
The balance, I think, is knowing the world as best we can and still striving to make peace with what we can't fix. We are not called to superhuman tasks, only to do our best.
Kind of a minor issue given the overall content of your post, but the book wherein Nietzsche purportedly claimed an incestuous relationship with his sister is generally considered to have been a forgery, i.e. not actually written by him. Pre-mental breakdown, he lived a pretty solitary life, from what I've read
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