alienates us from our own humanity."

Is that really such a bad thing? Afterall what are humans without technology but hairless apes with no natural defences?

The further techology progresses and supresses our humanity as some like to think the kinder people have become, the more rational people have become, the better lives and less diease and death people experiance on the whole.

Perhaps our 'humanity' is overrated

I always loved writing letters and resisted email at first. There was something about a letter written by hand. Of course by the time a letter arrived, my message could have been recieved and replied to many times over, so I gave up my fight against email. The facts are that kids today love to text and talk on FB. I was worried about cell phone minutes when my kids got phones but they never call. They text. I prefer to talk in person or on the phone but who am I to tell a bunch of teenagers how they can communicate?! I see a lot of good kids who do great things in their community. So what if they've never written a letter! I just have to laugh at all the computerization and think back to my days in school when handwriting was such a big deal. I wonder the last time a teacher saw a students handwriting.

"...it's part of a 'performance culture, of the packaged self,' that 'erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity.'"

Oh spare me. It sounds like the ranting of an old coot. "Back in my day, we had this thing called e-mail. We had to type in actual addresses. We used a thing called a modem. And you know what? We liked it!"

And I broke down a got my own Facebook account about a year ago. I wound up getting in touch with people I hadn't heard from in more than twenty years! I liked that, too.

Twitter is too much like ready, fire, aim for me. I've seen some absolutely classic e-mail exchanges that were fact free attempts to place blame. Credibility is easily lost, and not easily rebuilt. For some reason, most of those people don't work here anymore.

Our old mainframe e-mail system had an undo feature. It was used - frequently by a few. I think you can imagine the chagrin of the flamers once we went to a more modern system. "What do you mean you can't undo it?"

College students are generally too young and inexperienced to have developed empathy. They are but a few short years removed from the social jungle known as High School.

Sending antique postcards sounds like a great way to send thank you notes. Neat idea.

James Lileks has a great "found" postcard from a young girl in New York City in 1928. http://www.lileks.com/misc/girlinnyc/index.html

Lileks is a great one to follow on Twitter, too.

People absolutely love getting them. I mostly get ones with no writing on the back -- you have to look for that in the seller descrip -- because I want to give the person the whole old postcard experience, with the aged back and all...but you could also cover up writing on the back.

To buy them on ebay, look up "vintage postcard lots." Remember, I'm a frugalist. I buy many at a time, and when the bidding gets high, I drop out. Eventually, I bid on one nobody's bidding on and get it (usually about 75-100 postcards...think I paid $17 plus shipping last time).

It's sad because they (kids) are at camp, and should be disconnected from the outer world and focused on RL new friends and new experiences at camp.

When they leave camp, it's time for FB chats with their new friends.

My kids just got back from two camps where "smuggled" cellphones were sent home, and with most parent's approval.

It sounds like they're BlackBerrying and FB chatting with their parents and friends. It's communication. What's wrong with that?

It is hard to live unconnected anymore.

I have problems not checking my phone every few hours at least.

Watching older TV shows, I'm always thinking -- pull out your cell and call.

It's Crid's Sunday Morning Offtopic Corner! Welcome!

[1.] Remember, "Islam" means "submission".

[2.] Here in a L.A., we're going through all sorts of shenanigans with pot being legally distributed at "clinics" with garish, wink-wink nudge-nudge signage and marketing. Even for the most devout of libertarians, this has got to be embarrassing. I've seen door-to-door deliveries being made by SUV's with paintjobs similar to what we see for the advertising of energy drinks.

When we see this happening, are we expected to feel sympathy for the diseased wretch receiving the parcel? Or are we supposed to snicker along with them, as if it's totally cool to disavow public rhetorical seriousness so that some quarter-cortex zombie can get his needs met?

It's happening in other communities as well. The pathetic fraudulence of this has reached a sickening new low in Colorado.

Makes you wonder why no alt-weekly every had a chemotherapy reviewer on the staff, right?

A lot more Americans have diabetes than have AIDS. Who demands our sympathy?

Depends on why they have diabetes or AIDS

>>Depends on why they have diabetes or AIDS

That's always a factor for you is it, lujlp?

Okay - so you have a flaxen-haired toddler (say, of Swedish heritage since that can be typical) - with type 1 diabetes, versus a virgin who had an emergency transfusion from a shitty clinic while volunteering in a 3rd world country.

Who most deserves your precious sympathy now?

Whoops, I meant to say blank postcards so you can write on them. And the Lileks link is more of an old letter thing. But yeah, vintage blank postcards on eBay looks like a good deal. The ones I've seen at antique stores are priced rather steep.

Crid, as someone who thinks the war on drugs is misguided and ineffective, I can also see your meaning and can agree with some of it. Last week, in this neck of the woods, two pot-heads had an altercation over a "medical" marijuana garden in the backyard. Wouldn't you know it, one of them stabbed the other in the belly with a knife. I think he should have stabbed him in the leg. That way, he could get a real set of crutches to go along with the marijuana crutch. That would be terrific! They could jump rope and call it the "double *crutch*" instead of the "double dutch". Oh boy.

Also, the mayor of a small town up-river from here wants to grow marijuana in a downtown vacant lot. The idea is to create a Napa Valley for cannabis enthusiasts. Sounds like an interesting idea in theory but we'll see. It will probably come to a calamitous end just like everything else.

"A lot more Americans have diabetes than have AIDS. Who demands our sympathy?"

I didn't realize we could only choose one. I know 2 kids who are diabetic. One diagnosed as an infant, the other a toddler so its hard to feel that they somehow brought it on themselves. Regardless, I can find sympathy for someone who has a debilitating disease whether they did something to cause it or not. You can choose not to. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised at that.

Jody, my comment was directed at crid.

As for your example, my sister has hypoglycemia - its the opposite of diabetes - her pancreas produces a constant stream of insulin. As a result she has to ear constantly throught the day to manage her blood sugar.

I'd have sympathy for both in your example - but slightly less for the aid worker. That sutuation is a well known risk.

Janes Paul Gee has done some great work on how technology (video games are his pet topic) have changed the way that kids think, learn, communicate, and socialize. Television did the same thing for Boomer children back in it's day too. Once upon a time phone calls were vulgar and impersonal. So none of this "technology is destroying our way of life and humanity" is new.

"Sad. Letters from camp replaced by Blackberry conversations and FB chats. :("

It's not sad. (okay, maybe if you're a sentimentalist who saves every letter it would be sad not to have them. Then again nothing on the internet ever truly goes away). It's different. It's not inherently worse and it's not inherently better, it's just different.

>>Jody, my comment was directed at crid.

Understood, lujlp.

I find myself deeply uninterested in why people aren't sympathetic to a particular medical cause. Since they're not going to do anything after they've finished explaining - learning the reasons for their inaction is totally pointless.

As your own comment shows - it's often personal proximity to a sufferer that makes us sympathetic and inclined to DO something. That's how it tends to work for me.

I on the other hand am facinated by peoples interior motivations - why does a person spend thousands trying to keep a dying cat alive but insist they dont want such measures taken for them.

Why does a person noted for slowing down to let animals cross the road let a human being die slowly over a week sruck in her windsheild?

I dont like people, generally, but they make facinating observational subjects.

> Depends on why they have
> diabetes or AIDS

And we'll never know. So what next?

> Wouldn't you know it, one of them
> stabbed the other in the belly
> with a knife.

Have you ever heard of two women fighting over a dose of Herceptin that way? Can we doubt that somewhere in America this weekend, two of them have thought it might it a fight worth having, but somehow resisted their impulse?

> slightly less for the aid worker.
> That sutuation is a well known risk.

Interesting math— Risks are to be avoided, even in service of others?

> it's often personal proximity to a
> sufferer that makes us sympathetic

Or media, or folklore, or fashion or shameless manipulation. If you wanted thumbs up for the best brand of chemo, where would you go? Ebert only does film.

(These weed people are shits. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Tune in next week for another installment of SMOC.)

If you wanted thumbs up for the best brand of chemo, where would you go? Ebert only does film.

I'd ask a number of people -- one of them being the cancer surgeon/researcher/blogger behind Respectful Insolence, and another being a biostatician who is fierce about identifying errors and fraud in studies. And others, but those I have reason to believe practice evidence-based medicine, and don't be too sure your doctor does. It's possible or even likely that he or she doesn't know how to read studies and hasn't read them since leaving med school.

I don't think it's "evidence-based medicine" that's moving all this weed.

Both of them the same Jody. Both are innocent of their circumstances, maybe a little less for the aid worker, willful exposure to harmful circumstances. But sympathy or not, no sane person would fail to mourn the loss of a giving soul. Simply in the aid worker's case, a realistic viewpoint means having to be a little less sympathetic.

...But between the innocent toddler born with diabetes, and the grown man who thought hey, I'll pick up a different prostitute every night for five years...I pick the toddler as deserving of sympathy.

People with self inflicted tragedy, brought on not by their circumstances, but BY THEIR CHOICE to engage in HIGH RISK behavior, deserve very little sympathy.

So yes, lujlp is making a great deal of sense when asking the how of what.

Maybe we won't know "exactly what" circumstances got somebody sick.

But if you know a man trolls for a different woman every night, he probably didn't get it from a botched transfusion. And if you see a man taking a throwing away an empty pack of smokes every day, he probably didn't get lung cancer out of nowhere, and if you see a lone person at a table showing down on a family sized bucket of KFC, he's probably not 350 lbs through genetic predisposition alone, if at all.

Sympathy shouldn't be given in large amounts to people who do things to themselves.

That is why we have to many goddamn whiners, talk shows, and pop pysch crap flying all over the place, because people get hooked on all the goddamned pity.

But back to the main, electronic media and all that is fine.

But...it doesn't replace a handshake, it doesn't replace the clinking of a glass when you say cheers with your best friends after a win on a basketball court or the closure of a great deal in a board meeting.

If electronic media makes those times easier to come by, I'm all for it. If it gets in the way, then it sucks.

Sometimes its one, sometimes the other.

Hilariously, she quotes some University of Michigan Institute for Social Research metanalysis that found that the sharpest decline in empathy in college students was in the year 2000. Um, Facebook launched in February, 2004. Twitter was created in 2006.

Yes, but Free Republic was launched in 1996, so it's Free Republic's fault, Clinton's fault AND Bush's fault that we're all "alienated" from each other!

On Topic Comment! Special start-of-the-month treat!

Amy's fully correct about the hurl-worthiness of this passage:

> and alienates us from our own humanity.

Electronics allow most everyone in the modern world to communicate with almost everyone else for essentially no cost about anything they want. Could anything be less "alienating"?

Spend an hour here.

Electronics allow most everyone in the modern world to communicate with almost everyone else for essentially no cost about anything they want. Could anything be less "alienating"?

Exactly. Just this weekend, thanks to the digital universe, a friend in Belgium sent me a link she found funny, then showed me all her recent work and a photo of her husband (who I have yet to meet) in front of the tunnel under an abbey where he hid and played as a child.

I sent her my proposed book cover for one of my two next books, and told her about what I'm working on and recommended her as a designer on Twitter (with links to her recent work that she sent me).

Then, I told her that Gregg is taking me to Paris in the Fall, and gave her the dates. She tried to get a train ticket over the Internet, but it's too early now, so she'll try back later.

Electronics every which way and Tuesday! If not for them, we have little contact...you know, that alienation thing Peggy Orenstein is mewling about.

Interesting math— Risks are to be avoided, even in service of others?

Interesting question from a man whos only stance on teh consequences of any action seems to be (in the best impression of the knight in Indian Jones) "He chose, poorly."

Risks are to be weighed. No on can avoid every risk, and it be stupid to suggest they could

I think camp might benefit from being non-electronic, myself. I imagine a bunch of kids texting from the back of a horse. Anyway, the new technology is wonderful but maybe the kids should take some time to stop and smell the flowers without feeling the need to communicate the activity to every remote friend/family member they know.

> a man whos only stance on teh consequences
> of any action seems to be (in the best
> impression of the knight in Indian Jones)
> "He chose, poorly."

Is that how it "seems"? Am I "interfering with the way people form their relationships" again? Listen, if you want to pick a fight, have something at issue, OK? Im ready to go. But don't make up quotes. A fevered imagination is not my responsibility.

I nevCrid, that was word for word what the knight said after the nazi drankfrom the wrong goblet

Oh. Good movie?

"It sounds like they're BlackBerrying and FB chatting with their parents and friends. It's communication. What's wrong with that?"

Back from traveling, ....

It's wrong because they are at *camp*, and so intentionally disconnected from the rest of world so they can focus on new experiences, friends, ways of thinking etc.

If this article is about kids chatting with mom/dad usual circle of friends, then they should be disconnected from them. It's camp, not daycare.

They shouldn't be chatting about fashions, silly people in camp, what LiLo is doing, rumors, next school year, next week's trip with mom & dad, or anything.

They should be at camp, a short term, temporary displacement from RL where they can enjoy new experiences, new friendships, new thoughts, and break away from the mold that everyone else has placed around them.

I'll put it more personally. When I have my parenting time with my kids, even over a weekend, their mother texts them 20 times a day. At camp, for two weeks, my kids were not allowed to have cellphones. The cellphones can be very undermining.

The cellphones and the facebooking and all of that is too short a leash and I think can encourage more policing of activity and thoughts, than liberation of activities and thoughts.

"Sad. Letters from camp replaced by Blackberry conversations and FB chats. :("

So reply with a fucking electronic greeting card instead of an actual care package and see if they get the point.

I have very fond memories of summer camp. But in fact, it actually really sucked. I'll make my son go when he's old enough.

> It's wrong because they are at *camp*, and so
> intentionally disconnected from the rest of
> world so they can focus on new experiences,
> friends, ways of thinking etc.

Says who? Maybe they're just there to look at some pine trees, and not to have some bizarre rousseauan indoctrination. Maybe Mom just wanted the kids out of the house for a few summer hours to enjoy a Mint Julep in peace.

" It's wrong because they are at *camp*, and so
> intentionally disconnected from the rest of
> world so they can focus on new experiences,
> friends, ways of thinking etc.

Says who? Maybe they're just there to look at some pine trees, and not to have some bizarre rousseauan indoctrination. Maybe Mom just wanted the kids out of the house for a few summer hours to enjoy a Mint Julep in peace."

Seriously, that's ignorant, even from a one-note contrarian such as yourself. Should you ever have kids, send them to that camp.

Our kids made an intelligent choice of which camp they wanted to go to. However, once there, it's very easily undermined by connections to the outside world.

It's also not a freebie choice either. The choice of camp is a many hundred dollar choice made ahead of time, with various alternatives, including Crid's pine tree gazing camp taken in.

It's not indoctrination to say no cellphone for two weeks, and it's not torture. It's enabling the child to focus on the camp.

It's part of that thing that Amy keeps harping on others to do: parenting.

Year in, year out, this blog is an unending, audacious orgy of CERTAINTY.

People here know what things are for! They know what other people want! They know what values and purposes other people are supposed to find in all phenomena, whether it's movie stars or CEOs or summer camp!

Fuckin' amazing. Fuckin' knocks me out. So fuckin' glad I found this blog, Amy... Had no idea there was a resource like this anywhere on the planet. Really looking forward to your summer beach party in a couple weeks, where I and so many commenters will express our gratitude in person... Before grabbing a beer and playing lawn darts.

One might ponder how Peggy Orenstein manages to justify her salary writing such drivel in this economic climate. Simple - the piece is "flamebait", sprinkled with a garnishing of faux sophistication to give it an air of legitimacy ... it's basically 'professional trolling' where an inflammatory view is deliberately published in order to 'push our buttons', generate lively discussion, and drive hits to their website.

"It's wrong because they are at *camp*, and so intentionally disconnected from the rest of world"

Yes, because your own idea of what constitutes good and enjoyable camping should be deemed 'correct' and projected onto others, since they're not capable of figuring out on their own how to get the most out of their own camping experiences in their own ways. A little controlling/busy-bodyish? Live and let live.

Strange this post is totaly unrelated to what I was searching google for, but it was listed on the first page. I guess your doing something right if Google likes you enough to put you on the first page of a non related search. :)