Achieving inter-personal influence and “success with people" has risen to the level of frenzy without much improvement in the decorum of the social sphere.
Buzz words of the day abound: “process,” “best practices,” “evidence-based,” and “soft skills,” not to mention the obsession with concepts such as “continuous learning,” “learner-experience,” “user adoption,” “user experience,” “user-generated content,” “personalized learning,” and “mobile learning.”
Seems everyone wants to become better at something and someone, somewhere, wants to capitalize on that.
A list of the most popular TED talks of all time include:
“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”
“Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are”
“How Great Leaders Inspire Action”
The Power of Vulnerability”
“How to Speak so that People Will Listen”
The Puzzle of Motivation”
“How to Spot a Liar”
“What Makes a Good Life”
The pathway to happiness is also a recurring topic, no surprise there.
I have to say, I don’t get it.
Probably because I am a child of:
—"Interpersonal" grandparents, meaning old people who interacted with me and my siblings on a one-on-one basis and weren’t micro-managed by my parents.
—Gifted and dedicated public school teachers who were hired because they were competent to teach—in their own way according to their own “best practices,” which usually meant common sense coupled with mastery of the subject and a sincere love of teaching and students.
—Parents who matter-of-factly put a roof over my head and food on the table and who subscribed to a no-nonsense parenting style (which generally agreed with 99% of all parents at the time).
If I got in trouble at school, the way the school handled it was right. My parents sided with the teacher.
If I sassed back to my parents—attempting to stage my own little coup of family operations—I was quickly short-circuited by DAD and never attempted it again.
If I was mean to or fighting with the neighbor kid, that kid’s parents put an end to it shortly and sweetly by admonishing both of us—not calling the cops on me and not complaining to my parents. Adults in my day were the adult, and they corrected the child. As it should be.
I could go on and on. I fear that these things I am talking about are going to become so rare as to evaporate into non-recorded history, lost forever at great social cost to people everywhere.
All the TED talks in the world cannot bring back disciplined, no-nonsense parenting.
All the “best practices” in the world cannot steer and keep a child on the right path.
All the "soft skills" we long for in our millennials will never take root in this new era of “every individual is right” (even if they aren’t) and "every person’s voice is a worthy one" (even if that voice is one of chronic complaint, eternal whining, and voracious victimhood that begs “look at me”).
We have gotten to the place in time where, if there’s a TED talk on it and a “best practice” for it, then that alone makes what is said and practiced legitimate. Even if it’s pablum. Even if it’s silly. Even if it’s shallow trendiness.
Common sense—having a gut for what is right and wrong; polite and rude; self-centered and other-centered--can only be developed into a person over time, from people willing to model and encourage it.
We are losing the ability to own this common sense because nobody wants to follow common courtesies anymore: the common courtesy of respecting privacy, revering social protocols (like holding the door for someone, talking in a low voice and not cursing in public), and sincerely “celebrating diversity” by not having a melt-down the minute we come into contact with a person who might see things a bit different than us.
We are so bombarded with “better” ways of living that we have lost the foundational best way: simple respect for others.
dictionary.com defines respect as “esteem for or a sense of the worth” of a person; “deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgement.”
Respect. By losing it for others through personal narcissism, we lose respect for ourselves too.
We crave kindness but have disconnected it from the very respect necessary for it’s existence.
We so want “love” and “inclusion” to be our personal calling card but completely miss the fact that without a foundational respect for others, we can never value them and therefore never love or include them.
We go around saying we are all about “Kumbaya” until we run into someone who thinks and acts opposite.
Just take this quick test: how would any of us react to someone who takes a varying stance than us on the following:
Global warming
GMO’s
Organic eggs
Chickens
Meat
Electric cars
Ford Trucks
Republicans
Democrats
Vaccinations
Walmart
Black Friday holiday shopping
The saddest part of the above is the narcissism, self-righteousness, and personal identity attached to each (and just about any other topic one would encounter nowadays).
We are so entrenched in "me" that we have completely lost our sense of “you.”
And yet we scramble to and gobble up incessant TED talks on “kindness” and how to be happy; how to make friends; how to lead.
How about this for a TED talk:
Forget Yourself Long Enough to Engage with Someone Else in Humility and the Ability to Listen, Hear and Play Back What was Said.
In this TED talk, we will decide beforehand that we don’t already hate or dislike the person we are about to converse with, and that we will withhold formulating an opinion on anything until at least we’ve done the playing back part (hearing and understanding).
In the age of either hitting the “thumbs up” key on Facebook (or unfriending someone), and anonymously hammering out sarcasm on the internet in response to being offended, we have trained ourselves in the ugly paradigm of not thinking, not respecting, and not conversing.
We as a people have become a bunch of noise going up to space, with nobody seriously hearing and nobody sincerely caring.
And then we kick back at the end of the day and watch a TED talk on “What Makes a Good Life.”
The problem is, these TED talks and “continuous learning” attempts merely bounce off of a hard heart. Which is what many of us have had. And do have. And will continue to have.
And that’s the point. We are becoming a world of hardened hearts, cordoned off at the boundary of, and thinking only to protect, one’s self and one’s individual perspective.
In this is the inability to ever live in any semblance of community and inclusiveness and diversity.
The more we strive for “loving kindness” from a place of self-centeredness, the more inevitable it will be that life is hindered by an obstruction of platitude that says one thing but lives out another.
The sound bite of “nice” is swallowed up in the reality of a general lack of respect for other people.
Copyright Barb Harwood
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