As a kid, we would pull up to the service station, pull down the window, and someone would ask, "How much?"
While the car was being filled, the attendant would wash the windscreen and was probably asked or they thought it might be needed. Most of the time, the friendly banner keeps running backwards. The random story was told to bring a smile to the face.
It comes back when people consider the matter.
These days are quite different, where we are moving towards a growing self-reliant service culture, where we don’t just communicate directly with people. We also use online services where we don't see people at all. Some people like it, because conversations with strangers can be awkward. What many do not realize, however, is that it is an evolving skill and that its development has an impact on other aspects of our lives, such as our personal relationships.
Randomly, the culture has changed a few times today because of Corona. Some people expect things not to go back to where they used to be. They hand out a receipt instead of taking it from themselves and others, hoping the human connection will return to an even higher degree.
I look forward to the latter, since I have a personal idea that we are social animals that have evolved to have certain habits that enrich our lives, such as human contact. What I find interesting is that some people find it a discount, even though they have probably already benefited from it. From birth, parents are driven to communicate with their children. Hold them close and kiss them and make them feel better by hitting them with scraps and bruises. If you've ever heard of a parent who refuses to hug their child, you'll probably find it weird.
It is part of the socialization of children in adolescence and is not conditional on human communication even if we can survive. Denial of identity leaves the body in a state of anticipation, so research has shown that little communication such as handing over changes to a store improves customer service ratings.
However, we have a growing number of ways we can avoid working directly with people. Without considering the cost of doing it. People want a simpler experience, yet nowadays there are many more dramas than this and it spreads all over the world. We are no longer very good at building and maintaining trusting relationships and probably not a very good one in terms of relationships either. Relationships are skill-based systems and those skills are learned from childhood and mature like us but when we avoid the practice of creating them or build them only in an engineered and manipulated environment. Then they will not turn out to acquire good round skills and when they fail to apply in complex environments like the real world.
Yet, even if we avoid the real world, millions of years of evolution have forced us to find connections in relationships and when we do not find it in humans. We will put a surrogate in his place. This surrogate can take the form of a game, a streaming service or perhaps some kind of addiction - but it can be a bad thing. Where mutual harm is not required in a relationship. Basically, we’re creating a “partner” that puts us in the role of owner of our on-demand slave, which we care about. Yet, because of our intense longing for that relationship, we are actually slaves to enjoyment.
Many more consumer products and services focus our attention on achieving our connection needs, as our preferences feel. As we relate to someone with whom someone is unknown, yet familiar. Check out the concept on Instagram where there are accounts that are just a stream of selfies and imagining it from a real-world experience.
The day before, “Slide Night” was a thing where people would go on vacation and then invite close friends to show them their holiday pictures. These can be annoying topics as many have been shown and related stories were “had to stay there” topics. But the social aspect of spending time together, eating, drinking and chatting together was worth what was important to each other. Imagine for a second you were transposed into the karmic driven world of Earl. Just knowing that they were all selfies, in between the weird lunch and the fancy dinner was thrown away. Would you find it weird?
Perhaps - but online, you can enjoy it and personally realize that you are getting a glimpse into someone’s life, building a relationship. Although everything is one-sided and from the single point of view of the content uploader, no matter how many angles of their chin they can represent. It is a replica of a relationship to imply a feeling response to the formation of a relationship, yet there is no social education, no development of skills.
No matter how much we double-tap selfies, it doesn’t make us any better in real-world social interactions. It doesn’t make us better friends, partners or parents. There is no 'human' in it.
As mentioned, I hope that no matter what happens in the world in the future with viruses and technology, there will be an increase in human interaction and skill development that will enhance our experience together. Most of the social problems in the world today are driven by our inability (lack of skills) to live our increasingly complex lives. We can avoid it by going back to our bogged world, but doing so would leave our human perimeter incomplete.
In my opinion, failing to reconnect with each other or relying on consumption to fill a void, increasingly will find a place in an exemplary environment where we will be divided and victorious, selectively. Although, perhaps this seems interesting for the number of people who fail to deal with the human race and want to enter the life of a robot conditioned to follow the code.