Look into my eyes.
Does it look like I give a fuck?
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but it is more that they are windows to our intention, telling how we feel, how much effort we are putting in, and if we are lying. Body language is a huge part of our communication stream and the less we understand it, the more prone we are to all kinds of negative consequences, from relationship challenges, to being conned out of our life savings. I can't really think of any "good" from having poor body language literacy skills.
Can you?
Just like learning to read, exposure is necessary. Yet, the direction our technology has nudged us has meant that our interpersonal communication exposure has shrunk dramatically, and our abilities to not only read non-verbal cues, but also deliver them has been warped. I suspect that our non-conscious signalling has also changed, though I have no information other than personal observation to back that up. The change can be seen by watching young people interact with each other, but older people have changed also, because everyone has been affected.
Are interpersonal skills dead?
Perhaps in the future everyone will be using AI-driven smart glasses (or retina implants) that will monitor, analyse and give real-time feedback on what is happening in front of our noses. It can look at a face, measure the micro-expression clusters, extrapolate a meaning and tell us if we are being lied to, or if the person is interested in us. We can then be told what move we should make, what words to say, or perhaps an automatic signal can be sent to our brainstem so we don't have to worry about applying it ourselves. That way, we won't get it wrong.
Why should we need to learn human behaviours when a machine can do the work for us?
I don't know about you, but it seems pretty Black Mirror to me, yet due to the convenience the corporations offer us, we keep on buying into the new technology that saves us time, effort, and thought. All for the small price of our humanity. Many of us are already cyborgs, it is just that our machine parts are not integrated with our body directly yet. Our memory is external, our thought processes external, and even much of our activity is made while we are sitting stone still.
I wonder if at some point there are going to be courses sold to teach people how to act like a human again. It won't even be a refresher course, because many people have never been human, instead growing up as the physical representation of a digital landscape. A puppet controlled, rather than an agent of control.
I shouldn't care what others do.
This is the advice I often get from people. But selfishly, I have to live in a world filled with other people, and their behaviours and practices impact on me directly and on the people I care about. If you see an individual causing harm to others, are you going to "not care" and walk on by?
What is the difference?
Just because the harm isn't immediate or acute, isn't it still violence if someone is inflicting harm on another over time? Is a child forced to sit in a room filled with smoke from their pack-a-day parents not your business? Parent's choice? Do you expect the child to extricate themselves from that situation? They can have life-long damage to their body and brain, but hey - their fault.
Walk away.
I get that I can't do too much about so many of the things I talk about here on Hive, although I do try to influence the thoughts of others in the physical world too, and get them to think about their own behaviours. But still, maybe one or two people make a change that makes a change, that makes a change and the ripple continues on. Perhaps there is some kid out there who will have a slightly better environment and set of opportunities in their life because of something someone read here.
Maybe not.
But I don't see it as beating a dead horse, because at this point, there is still plenty of opportunity for individuals to make a change in their life that improves their personal condition, and their surrounding conditions. It might be too late for humanity, but it doesn't mean it is too late for individual humans to open their eyes to what is happening, and make a conscious choice to do better.
A thousand-yard stare.
It used to come from having seen to much of the horrors of the world.
Now it is from seeing too little past the screen 18 inches in front of the face.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
- Comment on the topics of the article, and add your perspectives and experiences.
- Read and discuss with others who comment and build your personal network
- Engage well with me and others and put in effort
And you may be rewarded.
First of all, the eyes of the dog are overloaded with cuteness. I don't know what those pretty eyes are trying to say, but it expresses affection.
Secondly, your writing is indeed making a great change. Occasionally, I send some of your writings to a close friend of mine, and I can see a clear change in her perspective as well. She often quotes the exact word of your's, of course in our native language. Although, she is not using this platform, still she is a big nerd with lots on interest in books, philosophy, betterment and all that. So, yes, words of your are reaching out and making a change.
Thirdly, it does feel like Black Mirror, not because of some distant dystopia, but because the trade offs are happening quietly and mostly voluntarily. Fun part is we are not being forced into anything; we are choosing convenience over friction, easy over real. Or maybe, we are being pushed indirectly, but still, we all got a mind.
What’s unsettling is not the technology itself, but how easily we outsource parts of being human: memory, attention, even decision making. Until we are left with less need to struggle, and maybe less capacity to.
Btw, it feels like it is too late to act upon.
He was laying on a sheepskin I gave him for the first time - he was pretty happy!
And this makes me happy. Small things might not amount to much, but at least they are something.
Sad isn't it? It is like choosing to be a slave.
Definitely not flogging a dead horse. Being thoughtful about the ways of the world is much better than denying it and basking in the cancerous conveniences. Socializing it is as much therapy to us as it is making the connections to resurrect that which is not quite dead yet!
Amazing how when we were young, it felt to me like the race was filled with too many people better and smarter and more able than I was to do well myself. Now, I take personal encouragement in seeing the folly of others and painfully seeking out my own weaknesses and working on those.
I won't let the general stupidity of the world get me down so that we can be crushed. I choose to spend time finding others who are of the same mind so we can make something better, insignificant or not.
Love seeing these thoughtful notions and spending a few minutes contemplating them and connecting across the world through the blockchain.
Bring out your dead!
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a societal change in support so that those who are willing to work, get supported to work better? So many are looking for the shortcuts, even to unknown destinations.
Keep reminding me, so then I might have a chance to hold myself back from the edge!
I think it's funny that micro expressions seems to be more of a current thing. Did they just not have a term for it back in the day or was it just not a thing. It's funny how important they are. It seems to be the popular thing to try and read them in the past decade or so. I don't know, I'm probably rambling.
I think back in the day, they didn't put as much weight on them because video wasn't available. I also think that from the 50s and 60s on, more effort was put into studying psychological factors - for better and worse.
I think we have always picked up on them as humans, but I reckon our ability to read them depends on adequate practice through exposure. We aren't getting that now and younger people wonder why their relationships suck.
Yes, that is probably the case.
My wife is like a human lie detector, comes from her years of working for a German embassy in Kazakhstan. So I don't even attempt to lie to her anymore, because she used to get really upset about it...
I have a friend who was an interrogator in the US army - he is pretty good at spotting a lie too :D
The course to become human again will be very expensive, extremely expensive, because it's like going back to the Stone Age.
If you look at the bus, everyone goes around like zombies staring at screens, that's what you see here.
A handful of crazy people with their heads down, having no control over their actions.
Wearing out their eyes, their spine, and their head that weighs more than 5 pounds, straining their neck.
All for what? To watch how other idiots live their lives.
Well, human behavior is strange. Look at it here on Hive: people come and go, and only a few crazy ones like you and me, who know that the future is just around the corner, are still here talking like parrots to ourselves. The good thing is we have company.
Pepple thought reality TV couldn't get worse - but now it is reality everything, all scripted and still believed by the increasingly gullible.
A flock of talking parrots :)
Some people witness the horrors, other people live through them. There's a fine line of distinction there. The first one is for people who believe god won't give you more than you can handle, the second one is for people acute to body language stares.
What about those who don't believe in god?
That's where your first paragraph comes in handy. lol.
I also wonder if gesturing will remain, we use it a lot but once technology will do everything what will it serve for? Body language reading tech to "prevent" crimes will be the trick to add control to our life
Perhaps like how we lost our tails, we will lose our fingers - since we don't create anything with our hands anymore.
In the future, humans will likely be blocked by robots before they commit a crime. As soon as they develop a firm intention, they will be stopped.
Was it Minority Report that did that?
A.I will replace aspects of interactions just like blockchains replace the incentivization layer. It's all feedback if you let in the positivity the change occurs over time otherwise you keep going down the endless rabbit hole of self destruction 😊
I have a strong sense that in a decade or two from now, most people will lament being so positive :)
I want to live slowly, as in SLOW LIVING.. besides my phone and my laptop, I don't really care for all the AI, augmented reality crap.
and its true, u can say one thing that might have that ripple effect that makes a change..
You know the communication approach of KISS? Keep It Simple Stupid. That is what I would like my life to be :)
Maybe the uncomfortable truth is that caring comes with responsibility. It means you see something and can’t unsee it And most people would rather not carry that weight.
But then again if everyone looks away, what kind of world are we building?
Ignorance is bliss, you think?
My response to "To help others when someone is hurting them" were a couple of real life incidents when someone helped a person in this situation and got robbed, everything was staged.
Reading your next words, your examples, explanation of conditions/situations to help others - I had no words to oppose to.
I still don't take any risk in the situations I mentioned above, though.
And this is the only way people can get hurt that you could possibly help with?
I get the point. You are right.
I did miss a few words in my previous comment, though. I meant to write, "My response to "To help others when someone is hurting them" in my mind were a..."
Your next words did get me to the point when and where we should be helping others in order to keep the society healthy and following a moral compass. It does need a lot of courage in the current time but it is necessary if want to leave the next generation something to follow with.
Body language are very helpful in trying to say what words try to hide that's normal.
Sometimes it's obvious that we are drafting away from what really makes us humans, maybe I think we need to pause and find our way back to ourselves
No time to pause - only time to scroll.