Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Internet Road Rage

Earlier this month, Real Simple magazine sponsored an event known as “Be nice on the Internet week.”  When I came across the advertisement explaining the idea, I have to admit I was intrigued.  I immediately had simultaneous conflicting thoughts.  First, what a good idea!  And then quickly followed by, why is there a need to be nice?  The Internet is not a person with feelings.

But that thought alone made me realize just how critical such an awareness of our Internet manners probably is.  In the grand scheme of things, the Internet is really still in its infancy.  We learn more each day about our individual interactions with the global community through cyberspace and how that affects our own lives.  Therefore, learning how to interact politely and with respect should probably be a high priority. 

In point of fact, how many times have you looked below an article you just read and saw a plethora of nasty or, at the very least, thoughtless comments?  Rarely do I come across a comment following an article that is helpful or thought provoking.  Most are simply nasty jabs or shallow one-word exclamations of praise.  My personal experience of browsing comments following an article I’ve read online has prompted me to almost always skip the comment section altogether.  I seldom gain any further understanding of a subject by reading what the global community thinks of it.

When I saw the week being sponsored by Real Simple magazine, it made me really think.  Perhaps we need new lessons on etiquette for the Information Age?  As our world grows smaller and we are connected to people across the globe by a simple website, perhaps we need to relearn some of the simple lessons from our childhood. 

As youngsters we are taught some basic levels of etiquette that are sometimes easy to forget as we grow up.  I think these are especially easy to forget when we are online with no real feedback from someone’s body language or facial expressions to keep our instantaneous criticisms to ourselves.  Remember, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”?  Or perhaps, “Think before you speak.”  And maybe most importantly, “Treat someone else like you would want to be treated.” 

If we are to try and impart how essential it is to maintain some basic level of humanity, even when faced with a computer screen and not another human, are there new rules that apply?  What exactly is the issue behind Internet etiquette?  Is this something that should be taught at school or taught at home, as lessons of etiquette used to be?  In other words, is this a writing issue or a manners issue? 

My instincts tell me it’s both and that we need to recall those early childhood lessons and turn them into useful techniques for modern times.  Instead of reading the newspaper and discussing its contents, we now email each other links to articles with our own comments attached.  Therefore it is essential to teach both good writing, in the form of critical thinking when faced with contrary ideas, and good manners to form those criticisms into complete sentences that wouldn’t offend your grandmother, were she to happen upon your name in the comment section.

In gathering information for this column, people have given me suggestions as to why thoughtless comments abound on the Internet.  Perhaps society as a whole is simply ruder now.  Etiquette isn’t taught like it used to be, so we are simply less educated as to what is polite.  Or perhaps we are simply comfortably protected at home behind our computer screens. 

I’d like to think we haven’t descended that far and that humanity, like the Internet, is still learning how to adapt to a rapidly changing world.  Certainly interactions in the real world have not descended into such baseless one-line razes as you can find below any number of articles, columns and videos online.  But perhaps we could all use a refresher course in being kind to others and reminder that if you wouldn’t say it in front of your grandmother, don’t say anything at all.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Stories to inspire at all ages

It seems to me that as our world has changed from the hunter-gatherers we once were to the high paced technological world we are today one thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the way a story can impact your life.  After all, isn’t that what the ancient cave drawings were?  They were telling a story.  It’s also clear to me that this isn’t a vein of teaching that is reserved strictly for the classroom.  We begin telling stories to our children in infancy and continue listening to stories our entire lives.  

Any night of the week at my house finds my daughter cuddled in the crook of our arms, cozy in her footie pajamas reading a book.  Right now, we are in a transition period.  We’ve left the simple board books like Goodnight Moon behind, but we’re far from chapter books like Little House on the Prairie and even farther from Harry Potter.  But as we’ve moved from those simple rhymes into books that have actual stories behind them, I find myself strangely moved as I recall the lessons they imparted upon me when I was a child, even if I don’t remember reading the actual books.

Sometimes as we read these slightly complex moral tales, I wonder how much my two-year-old is actually taking in.  Is it possible for children, let alone adults, to learn from anecdote?  If we read Green Eggs and Ham enough times, will she really be willing to try something new, even if it looks kind of strange?  Does she know that The Little Engine That Could is forcibly convincing herself that she is the master of her own limits?  Is it the slightly creepy Wild Things that are giving her nightmares, or are they telling her to use her imagination when times get tough?

Almost by definition, a children’s book must be teaching something.  Whether it is something academic like the alphabet or something moral like being kind to others, somewhere someone decided we had to take every second we could to impart these important lessons upon our impressionable children. 

I wonder, in our current world of high paced entertainment, if adult fiction requires as many guidelines.  That’s not to say we don’t get lessons out of the stories we read as adults, we do.  But when talking about the books we read as children, I find that there is a special brightness when these stories from our past resurface.  As if we are remembering a moment in our lives where a good story utterly changed our world.

I’m sure that since I was a child, there have been volumes of wonderful chapter books written that are more time-appropriate for children today than the ones that I read.  Even so, I can’t help but anticipate the day when my daughter might want to read Little House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables.  Books we read as adults rarely inspire the kind of emotions we hold for those stories that most likely did change our view of our world when we were young.  I think the stories we read as adults are still woven with the life lessons we were taught as children, they are just not quite as apparent to less impressionable grown-ups.  Be nice to strangers, inner beauty is what’s important, share, say please and thank you, everybody uses the potty; we’re all really very alike, but different too.

At this stage in my daughter’s life, I still have 100% authority over which moral lessons she is getting from her books.  I know this period will not last.  As long as it does, perhaps I’ll be able to instill enough of these ideas into her subconscious that if she ever finds herself lost, she’ll remember that it was Winnie the Pooh who taught her that sometimes you have to get lost first to find your way home.  Or when faced with a hard challenge a mantra from the distant past may surface in her head: “I think I can I think I can I think I can.”


Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. January 11, 2012