Thank you, Bettina and Aggie, for pushing me. I have been a little under the weather lately. June is grass pollen time in Germany, and I have hay fever problems with this. The past two weeks I have been suffering. Now it is better, but still not back to normal. Aggie, it is not warm anymore! We have constant rain, high winds, and highs often only 20 degrees Celsius, or 68 Fahrenheit, and mostly cloudy. Where did the sun and heat of April and May go?
Sebastian returns to the apartment on Monday from his time in Cologne – I am looking forward to that. I can live alone, but I much prefer together with someone, and since Sebastian is one of my best friends, you couldn’t ask for more!
I’ve been inviting people over a lot. What do you cook? I found a tuna fish pie recipe – all ingredients are cold, so it is good for those hot summer days – wish we had some right now. Yesterday evening I made a tamale casserole and Mexican rice for two friends. And later today Steve and Marita, my friends from Pirna, are coming for the weekend. I’ll have pics of their visit up on my blog soon.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about moral and ethical accountability in the high tech age, because I have been very disappointed with one particular situation. Think about it: if a person is standing in front of you and can reach out and touch you, you see immediate reactions to your communication to them – body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and a host of other signs. And, if you spike their ire enough, they could even get physically violent with you (but hopefully not!). You can always find them, since you probably know either their phone number or postal address.
Internet forums remove this access to the other party, but the other party is still there – probably sitting at a computer and typing on the keyboard. So, the moral and ethical accountability is still present; our words – typed this time – still affect the other person. But I am finding out that it is sadly more common to think that because the other person is not literally in front of me, because the other person has no other access to me other than that internet forum, this would release me from any ethical or moral responsibility. I can say what I want, I can treat them any way I desire, and since they cannot “find me”, it becomes okay to conduct myself in the this way. Perhaps this is simply a further stage of the reasoning some use when speeding – “there is no radar trap here, so nobody can catch me, so it is okay.” The other person cannot catch me, so I can do whatever I want.
I welcome your thoughts and observations on this topic!
Finally, below are some thoughts on rising suicide and affluence in the world. I welcome your thoughts on this also.
China: Rising prosperity is giving Asian youth a buying power and lifestyle unimaginable 20 years ago. Major Chinese cities feature clubs, venues, simply the western scene with youth eating, drinking, dancing and wearing clothes you see in NYC, London, Paris, or elsewhere. And the suicide rate among youth is the highest it has ever been.
Plano: In this, one of the wealthiest suburbs of north Dallas, youth go to elite private schools, ivy league universities, and sport designer clothes and cars as their parents’ wallets often fulfill every wish they could have. And the suicide rate among youth in this suburb is one of the highest in the state of Texas.
An affluent family and unhindered access to technology should provide the seedbed for unmitigated progress; you have the money and the flexibility to do anything. This is the postmodern world: my story, my world, my life, my space. I buy anything I want without working and planning. I go on the internet and find a virtual life with no hassle or conflict. This is the ultimate convenience. No charge, no wait, no effort – what could be easier? Just swipe your credit card through the machine, type in some words or digits, click the mouse, and voilà, you have created your own world – your own space. And you soon have your own world of friends, and a network of relationships emerges in this, your space. And, if anyone does not fit into your space anymore, the solution is only a mouse click away – delete, block, and forget about it. No charge, no wait, no pain, no effort, and no way will this work in the real world!
And perhaps this is the key to the high suicide rate among those with diminishing financial worries. Life is not simply buying and adding and deleting on a computer; life is above all about fulfillment, about realizing deep goals, finding real relationships, real love. These things require work, pain, effort, vulnerability, and living with the possibility of failure.
Yes, the real world has pain, embarrassment, and failure. But those who have not lived in it enough are at some point confronted with reality, above all when a situation comes in which they cannot “solve” the problem with a swipe of the credit card or a click of the mouse. Having perhaps only the most rudimentary social skills, or no self-confidence in conflict situations, some, in desperation, turn to suicide. Others set themselves up for a life of dysfunctionality, unable to truly relate to others and living an unfulfilled life. Perhaps this is an even greater tragedy than suicide – a life of constant frustration.
