THE NUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA

'He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Have the woes of others merely become our own private reality show,
our modern gladiator games?

Take American Idol or

any of the amateur talent shows.

It seems the audiences revel in the humiliation

of the less talented contestants.

I waited for what seemed an eternity at the DMV.

A mother with her 10 year old boy sat down beside me.

She busied herself with FB on her phone while her son pulled out an Ipad

and promptly started playing the latest CALL OF DUTY.

For an hour, he rocked back and forth as intently shot and maimed silicon enemies.


Was he becoming numb to the realities of violence and the finality of death?

Is Technology
numbing down America?

We view the world and one another through the filter of a smartphone screen ...

distancing us from directly experiencing emotions and ugly realities.

The Internet desensitizes us to shocking images and diminishes our empathic skills.


Videos of gruesome events that we view online for the figures are so tiny that the humans do not appear real.


The shock value of the loss of human life and the cries of misery have lessened.

Desensitization has become

the new normal.

Do we give up on tragedies and the people in them...

because the lack of action by politicians,

and little or no long-term coverage

by main media sources

gives a tacit message that

we are not like those suffering the tragedies.

There has been a shift in the way we communicate; rather than face-to-face ...

 Changes in the style and type of

interpersonal communication.

Young people use smartphones rather 

than interacting with the people around them,

to the detriment of being able even to make eye contact for more than a few seconds.

The Twitter and text bytes sent back and forth have reduced our ability to focus for any length of time

and have made it easier to be insensitive with impunity.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?