In the past couple of weeks there are been several stabbing incidents that have people remarking on the evils of the world and how the Devil is running rampid. It is not violent video games and television. It's not the devils hand being played. It is our lack of humanity that is showing.
Humans are pack animals. We have been that way since the beginning of time. Traveling in groups, settling in groups and spending our lives living and dying surrounded by the same faces. It wasn't until recently that people really started to shift and settle in places they didn't grow up in. A big move used to mean you moved across town. Now a big move might mean you are moving across the country or to a new one all together. You lose something when you sever bonds built over a lifetime.
We have so much technological options for keeping in touch. These were supposed to make these transitions easier and help us stay connected. Unfortunately it's not working the way it was hoped it would. We now use technology to connect us to not only our distant relatives and friends but we spend more time texting our neighbors then we do sitting down with them and having a conversation. It's easier to send someone a picture and a 6 word quote then it is to going out for coffee and explaining our experiences. It's getting to the point where people are losing the art of conversation. Have you ever had a conversation and have actually "lol"ed instead of actually laughing? Text slang has become commonplace in basic conversation. We are dumbing down our vocabulary every year.
But the worst part is the lack of emotion. We can't really feel anything through an online conversation. We only have our own emotions reflected back to us. We interpret how we think the other person is feeling by the emotions we give their text or we take all emotions out of the equation. A conversation is more about interaction then it is spoken words. A dance between people that tells others of our experiences, how we are feeling, where we come from and so much more. It's at the core of who we are and we are losing it.
Every generation is growing up with more technology and less communication. We don't even know how to connect anymore. You see a group of kids sitting together at the mall and they are all on their phones texting and no one is talking. We sit together and watch a movie and we think we've had a great time because we've been flooded with an emotionally rich film, but we can't figure out why we feel so empty by time we get home.
We also don't touch each other anymore. It was common for men and women to be seen holding hands with their friends. Talking closely and sitting side by side. Now a days people worry that if they graze someones hand at a table the person might think they are trying to make a sexual advance. If you hold a friends hand everyone around thinks you're dating. We don't want to be seen as something we're not so instead we avoid physical contact all together.
Unfortunately this doesn't go over well for our mental states. Our bodies were made to touch. We release good chemicals in our brains when we are touching another person. It's what drives us to want to hug someone who is hurting. It's the reason babies who aren't held don't thrive as well as those that are. And when you take away contact we release other chemicals that make us depressed and lonely.
We are like any other pack animal out there. If you take any well adjusted pack animal and remove it from it's pack it will start to lose it's mind. Unless it is able to join up with another group it will turn "wild". They become violent, untrusting and show signs of depression. All things that are starting to show on larger scales within our societies. We are turning on ourselves because we can't connect to each other, and it is breaking apart what makes us human.
What the world needs is to unplug and reconnect. We need to relearn how to connect again. How to hold a conversation. We have to stop worrying about what people might thing and start holding hands again. We need to come together as a community. We need a return to the neighborhood. A return to humanity.
