Surviving The Age Of Paradox

We live in an age of paradoxes. At a time where communication is the biggest industry on the planet, most people find little time to talk and listen to those around them. Where everyone is sharing their life as it happens on the web, few find people who understand them. We now have thousands of friends on social networking sites but have lost the true meaning of friendship. We crave for interaction with others over the net, but are fast losing our social skills. We insist on privacy laws and yet we have become so voyeuristic that we tweet every thought, every experience.

Through the www we have access to more knowledge that we ever thought was possible, yet all we do is regurgitate quotes and other people’s ideas. Original thinking seems to be at an all time low, especially in our country. In an age where we can explore the entire world on our computers, the spirit of exploration is taking a nose dive. When our excuse to be addicted to our computers is that it expands our knowledge, most people find little time to read a book. Our excuse for not reading is usually that there is no time, and so when time seems to be a rare commodity, we Google and satisfy ourselves with snippets of information. Too many Jacks and very few Masters.

Our children are smarter than we ever were at their age, but according to Gardner there are 7 types of intelligences – 7 types of smart. Visual/Spatial, Linguistic, Mathematical/Logical, Inter-personal, Intra-personal, Musical and Bodily/Physical are all unique intelligences. The current trend of our children to be glued to their monitors is slowly eroding their Intra-personal and Physical intelligences, both crucial to our social skills.

As a management trainer my forte is Leadership and Team Building training. Both require human beings to interact on a one-on-one level, listen, understand, share, explain, develop consensus etc. Most of my participants are of the age where their childhood was not spent in front of a screen, they used to ‘hang-out’ with their friends physically, not in cyber space. Yet teambuilding and leadership does not come naturally to most and that is why people like me are in business. But what about the future? When all the participants have spent their formative years either texting or socializing online? Some would say that would mean our business would boom, but on the other hand what a challenge it would be to make them look into each others eyes and share their feelings and ideas!

Socrates said “virtue is a median point between 2 vices”, if our civilization is to retain its basic character (remember the phrase ‘man is a social animal’?) then we will have to find some way in which we balance our mastery over technology with our fundamental need for social contact. Humans seem to be great at driving without brakes and realizing only after we crash that we should have had them checked. We did this when we drove species after species to extinction, we did this to our climate, we did this to our crops and now we are doing the same to ourselves.