Is this what being 'Technologically Advanced' garners...?

We have become, in this nation, a society subject to the unfettered exploitation of individual, emotional expression!  Conducting oneself with manners, etiquette and respect is becoming a lost behavior.  Restraint, constraint and social protocol have taken a backward step and have, now, allowed boorish behavior, disrespectful speech and interaction and, finally, verbal and physical, violent rebuttal to become the behavior of the masses. 

     Technology is making it easy to forget our humanity.  Months back, I read Eugeny Morozov’s column titled ‘The Internet’s False Promises’, interested to see if he was going to make mention of my point of contention regarding the internet and the impact this technical advance has had on our personal lives.  He didn’t go into detail but, peripherally, he identified one of my critiques of our dynamic information highway, especially regarding the easy access to information; it is not always used to serve the best interests of society but, oftentimes, those most callous.

     Plain citizens, community activists and elected officials are shouting out of turn in public forums totally forgoing social convention and training attributed to good manners.  No, now, those that dream of celebrity or those with public aspirations hope that someone captures them on video and sends it to You Tube.  If the responses measure favorably, the footage is used on their political campaign website or facebook page!

     Extremists hide behind the mask of anonymity that the internet allows and gleefully spit ethnic, religious and racial epithets, indiscriminately and with the comfort of non-disclosure.  With the technical availability of ‘up close and personal’, real-time, private and sometimes tragic, everyday interaction between folks captured with the click of a camera button or the on switch of a recorder, it is like we have become actors of life instead of people living our lives.  With the life-like realism of a combat zone, the seamy side of the street or an urban jungle as the background scenario for all of the adult video games, do we wonder how we have come to accept a violent culture? 

     We have become divisive and vindictive and anxious to show our willingness to be confrontational rather than congenial.  With such easy access to our personal lives and information, we have created a doubtful, distrustful, disturbed underclass…the middle-class that has always been the base of this nation!  We don’t trust anyone to do the RIGHT thing, anymore and constantly, calculatedly await the moment when we can capture our own ‘gotcha’ moment and parlay it into instant riches. 

     Violent outcomes to seemingly innocuous, initial engagements don’t even shock us anymore and the reality of a close call only registers on the radar screen if it is a matter of national security.  Then something like Austin, Texas happens and we are reminded of within as well as without.

     Passionate expression took the life of a young lady from University of Virginia, allegedly at the hands of a former boyfriend who apparently lost all rational thought and slammed her head against the wall, repeatedly.  Where and when did he become hardwired to resolve a situation, as bad as it could have been, by slamming a smaller, physically- mismatched, young woman against a wall?  The adult video games on the market that have so de-sensitized the act of physical violence as to label it a fun, fast-paced, leisure time activity to engage in with other on-line combatants, worldwide, and not have to leave your home to meet new friends could be a negative influence.  A young girl in Florida was punched, kicked and stomped into a coma over a text message, at the same school where, previously, a young man was sprayed with lighter fluid and set on fire over a video game. 

     How can teenaged children become that violent at any age, let alone as young as they are at twelve to fourteen, to zone out to the extent that they can set another child on fire and watch him cry out, in torturous pain, without a hint of remorse?  How, again, could a bigger boy jump on, punch, kick and stomp on a smaller, fairer, young lady, regardless of the personal tragedy he was coping with, and think that his behavior was suitable?  Watch some of the amateur video on the world-wide-web and realize where the seed may be being planted; watch some of the reality TV programs and you will find a likely culprit for presenting and exploiting that type of behavior. 

     The benefit of our technological advances can not be discounted, by any means.  A teacher in Houston was fired after compelling evidence of her physical abuse toward a thirteen-year-old was captured on cell-phone video.  According to what I’ve heard and read, corporal punishment has never been meted out in the manner that teacher abused that child.  Proof captured with technological advance!  But, the masks that the same technological advance provides allows us to be less likely to truly engage with one another and can contribute to our future demise…humanity must engage to remain humane.  

     In a strange irony, television programming of generations past was designed to provide us an escape after a long day of keeping our noses to the grindstone.  Now, reality TV and the advances of the Internet present critical information and a raw dissection of society’s everyday lives with all of the good and bad; the ugly and uncensored, captured to entertain us by allowing us a view into someone else’s real or imagined misery…like we should be entertained!  So then...let the people say!