“Change comes from within”
Something struck me yesterday around Memorial / Remembrance etc. Day postings on my social media — delivered with sincerity and from a personal perspective, even a non-military like me can hear and accept them.
And that is IMHO the way out of the sickening atmosphere of referendums and elections that have past and are to come on both sides of the Atlantic:
1) please keep it personal and speak from the heart
2) deal with your ‘stuff’ and don’t spread it around
3) offer alternatives and outcomes helpful to others
Alistair MacLenan said yesterday on LinkedIn: “no one cares what you can do, they only care what you can do for them”.
So please, please don’t project your views & opinions on others: Take a few deep breaths, look your interlocutor in the eye and speak to them no to you. Only then will we be heard : Not only do we all have feelers that innately signal sincerity vs. projection, but also our interlocutor’s eyes will glaze over as soon as we don’t speak to their issues.
Alistair Maclenan above used #election2016 as a textbook marketing case contrasting presidential candidates. Look at the body language in the montage above, turning toward and away from each other above and below, respectively. That mirrors the tone of ‘reaching out’ vs. ‘fighting against’ during a recent presidential visit and an election debate, respectively. This seems obvious but it’s remarkable nonetheless.
And therein lies the rub: Social media remove that direct contact. We broadcast messages but only get feedback after-the-fact. There isn’t ‘that look’, the body language even the smell of sweat that signals a transgression. Neither is there that smile or glint in the eye, that warm acceptance we all crave for. From the “I love you” virus almost a decade ago to the current social media bullying, the internet offers few checks&balances. Not only have we not had so long to adapt new behaviour as a society, but also the internet removes barriers to control and is thus difficult to police.
If the internet make eunuchs of us, then it’s up to us to reclaim our integrity.
And the stakes are not low. I wondered here earlier on what the implications of this year’s events in UK & US will have for our relations globally. And my first posted poem over 15 years ago (check out ye olde HTML look here) said, before any of this was discussed on-line but are real issues in the real world:
…let’s not isolate and think it’s ok
let’s not act out on others unawares
let not sex, money, guns and drugs look cool
let’s not accept lying ads and misleading newslet us reach out and touch someone
let us be healthy role-models by simply being
let us speak the unspeakable
let us act intelligently and think before be ‘brave’
let us be a leader but not in isolation
let us all have a vision beyond today
So to pick up on the earlier quote: when is all is said and done, what’s in it for us? I think each of our rational behaviour is ground-zero from which may grow a more rational society. We want change? Change comes from within!
Commercial break: If you want to learn more about where I come from, get my book “Entre deux Eaux - Midstream” here and find the poem above too.
