Look Down, Go Down

Back in the good old days ( were there EVER good old days? ) I took lessons in the new fad... rollerblading. Roller derby was still a possibility for me if the acting thing didn't stay fresh as well as my generation wanting to get in with the new technology, Computers, snow boarding, the internet (who remembers the thrill of getting your first AOL screen name that no one else thought of) and rollerblading. I was in Idaho, surrounded by beauty and buff and was at a group class at a public park. Nappy, I don't know his real name was a white, thiryish jock with a great big challenging personality and an even bigger smile, gathered the newannabee roller bladers and taught us the basics. His first commandment was " If you LOOK down, you will GO down."

The idea was that you needed to keep your eyes looking ahead, arms out in front and that looking down was a certain ignominious cascade to the pavement and sure embarrassment.

I've noticed that now that we are in the bad new days, political conundrums, international embarrassment and an obscene addiction to celebrities and their human frailty, I've noticed that we ALL look down, all the time. It started with computers. Who hasn't stood watching an airline reservationists (a very tough job) while they tapped into their unseen by you screen with that permanent slight grimace of "Boy are you F%$#&d." It followed with our little digital cameras. As soon as the image was on a display screen we had to look. It is followed by the ubiquitous PDA/Blackberry/Textometers that have a gravitational pull of a neodymium magnet. In the car, on a plane, in the market, coffee shop, school pick up lines, treadmill... we have stopped looking up. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the plethora of video games, RPG computer games and everyone's home DVD library and giant screens. Even the stalkarrazi only look up and scream your name until they have you in their device. Then they stop screaming, and freeze and stare down at their captured bit of your soul. Teenagers seem now to only text and in the NY Times this morning I noticed an article about the great divide between parents and teens as they seem to even text another person in the same room, car rather than talking directly to them. They say it is for privacy. Isn't that why God invented whispering?

I am fed UP. I now seem to stop talking as soon as someone's eyes are yanked away by the PULL and wait till I get them back on my eyes.. It is annoying I know but please, enough is enough.

Nappy was right. We are going down as fast as the job market. What is next? Those horrible prophecies of little pod people making all babies in test tubes OR can we realize the problem (see Global Warming ) and start to TALK about it EYE to EYE and use our wonderful minds to create space for communication, humans communicating with humans.

I am here, eyes at the ready. Are you?

 

 

 

Comments

[Nanners]

08:53 AM on 03/23/2008

A wonderful post Jamie Lee.

The other evolution I've seen due to an anonymous and disconnected /connected digital world is a upwelling of brutality towards others and a genuine lack of civility in how we communicate with and treat others. Manners, politeness serve a purpose and are disappearing, time for it gone. Respect for others eroding into a giggle-giggle, tee-hee of deliberate hurtfulness, disrespect one would not dare do eye-to-eye because of the social consequences.

The 'art' of live communication with others is also suffering. Facial expressions, body language, listening and interpretation of intent is overwhelmed by a flood of content and comment. Greeting a person preoccupied is impossible, simple and basic thoughtfulness towards others lost to ever increasing demands for attention to our devices in the car, in the purse, in the pocket or on our ear.

Story telling is replaced now by techno-wizardry; it is hollow and most unsatisfying. Its evident in all we see and hear and particularly evident in the entertainment industry. Caring about a character in a movie is hard when that character has no personality or human attachment or failings. Its sad.

[freerbird]

09:49 AM on 03/22/2008

Jamie Lee, I am a great fan of yours, and I just became aware of your posts in here, and I had to sign up to answer you. I am sorry, but you never knew what the good old days were, because you were brought up with a golden spoon in your mouth, while I was brought up with a wooden spoon in my mouth. (With respect to the WHO, plastic was not invented yet.) I am just a little bit older than you are, I am 53. But I was raised by my Grandmother, because both my father and my mother worked full time. But every Sunday, I went to chruch with my Grandmother and my Mother, and every Sunday my Grandmother made a big meal, and we all sat down and said Grace, and ate together. I do not belong to any organized religion now, but I do appreciate the years that I spent in Sunday school, which shaped my morals and beliefs into what they are today. And at my grandparents house, I learned how to play many different card games, and board games, and we put jigsaw puzzles together as a family. I learned logic from my grandparents and parents by being interactive with these games. When I got married, and had children, I knew that I wanted my wife to be at home, to raise our children. And we played card games together, it is amazing how many different games you can play with one deck of cards, and I tought my children how to play different games of solitaire, using a real deck of cards, and not a computer. And we played board games together, like Clue, Sorry, Monopoly, starting with easy games like Candyland. But in todays very busy world, with everyone chasing the almighty dollar, and trying to have the biggest TV, the DVD player, and the video games to keep the children occupied because Mom and Dad are too tired to spend anytime with the children, so the children get the best toys that money can buy to make up for the real love and care that they should be getting from their parents. That is why our children are growing up so very screwed up, because parents are relying on schools to do the parenting for them. I find it very funny that you have to get a license to drive a car, but any idiot can have children. It is too bad that there is not some process to qualify parents, to teach them how to raise children, before they actually have children. Oh, and by the way, my three daughters are all doing very well, and they thank me for the things that I tought them, like taking them fishing, and hiking, spending quality time with them, and most of all, they appreciate the time we spent together playing cards, and my teaching them logic, which you can never learn in school. Plus my teaching them morals, and right from wrong, even though I never brought them to church, I instilled in them the values that were instilled in me.

[susanlno]

01:59 AM on 03/22/2008

Yes, Jamie, I am replying to your plea for direct communication ... by posting a comment on your blog. Kidding aside, you make a good point. I'm going off on a tangent here, but I see a link between the seemingly ludicrous practice of text-messaging someone in the same room and one of my pet peeves, bad spelling and grammar and the lack of any desire to correct the same. My point, in hectoring my unresponsive colleagues (I've since given up that practice), was that language is for communication; if we all make up our own spellings and use words to mean whatever we choose instead of following the dictionary, we end up speaking and writing in codes that narrow, rather than expand, our field of communication. Sadly, that seems to be a huge part of the point of text messaging. OMG.

[JimReed]

03:09 PM on 03/16/2008

Global warming might damage some continents and lots of people and their food supplies, and be the end of some other species, but it won't be the end of humanity. We as a species and some of the other species will survive and find a way to create a new world for ourselves under the changed conditions. If you want to talk about it, then great, but let's at least be honest. There is still $50 trillion of oil in the ground, and to some that investment is more important. After the bulk of the oil has been pumped and marketed, then there will be time to solve the energy problem, and meantime the forward looking part of the population can make good use of the 50 trillion engineering their new world order. What else can you say? You need to either come up with something else, or return to acting.

[hope4theflowers]

09:03 PM on 03/16/2008

jimreed,
youre attitude is everything that is wrong with this world..and especially the United States. You know what you can do with your oil stock options,jim.
Jamie,
your words are spot on,and I applaud anyone..anywhere,who takes the time to remind us that we should not give up ever..in fact we must start standing up...and admit we have not only looked down..but have been on the floor for too damned long.
we do not have to make it easy for people like jimreed to dismiss us....oh no..we we do not.
Need jim be reminded that we would not be oil dependant if long ago..the powers( the oil industry notably) had not stomped out real positive alternatives..
Inventors who offer real alternatives must jump through hoops and even fight in courts to get patents!
The war on intelligence has reached a new era..an era where we are fighting back...

[jamieleecurtisonline]

08:26 PM on 03/18/2008

@JimReed: And exactly THAT is the problem. Ignorant, moneygrabbing people.
The fittest survives! (Are we talking about humanity?) If you feel good what do you care about the others that don´t. I can´t believe that. Yeah, let´s distinguish some other species what do we care.

I am an European and I never really figured out how someone can vote for president George W. Bush twice. After reading this comment I finally understand.

America needs more minds like Jamie´s.

[nyboomer]

11:08 AM on 03/16/2008

In our society we are kept busy with frippery so we won't pay attention to looming head on crash or the fall off the cliff.

The circus of the immensely unimportant is kept flashing before our eyes so that the sleight of hand artists can manipulate eveything that would cause us to exile them if we were aware of their deeds.

Three cheers for America's main stream media for keeping us away from anything that is substantive.

[TheRealDude]

03:29 AM on 03/16/2008

How to overcome the negative effects of looking down.
Psst. Pass it on.
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/12/02/brain-fitness-program-and-neuroplasticity-pbs/

[Dajo]

11:03 PM on 03/12/2008

Jamie said,


""" I've noticed that we ALL look down, all the time."""

We all never ever do anything all the time.

While it is always a good idea to look where you are going it is also a good idea to once in awhile look back from whence you came and every now and then to take a look down at your feet to make sure they are firmly planted on the ground. After all looking down will result in safer landings when you are comming back down to earth.

[coffeeyogurt]

03:07 PM on 03/11/2008

I'm amazed as I listen to Gen-texters describe their text-fests that masquerade as conversation. Will they be texting "I do" at the alter and "a little to the left" under the covers?

[kmurtitowardchange]

08:46 AM on 03/11/2008

It really is about focus. Attention, et cetera. But sometimes your interlocuttor is only known thru the intonations & weird cyrillic patterns of their vox, & meanwhile we're comfortable imagining there something we need not know. Still, once we SAY this enough, even when we should be challenged, we're now tuned out. Like Bob Marley lyric'd, we just want to get over the little trouble. These Others perhaps don't know that conflicted part of themselves til now they have marginalized--they want a payoff. If any one of us is ready for assuming a body-conscious goal & intellectual priority, I'd applaud & try to awaken to the possibility.

[ibsteve2u]

02:58 AM on 03/11/2008

Some people have an innate yearning for servitude, is all I can figure.

Why else would you buy one, two, three or more electronic masters?

[dahpunkster]

01:18 AM on 03/11/2008

GREAT POINT
I used to be really shy, had almost no friends and spent all of my time inthe house watching tv .In 1999, I went to camp for a week, and lived in a cabin and rode horses and learned how to cook my own food and make my own tent and swim.
I had this really wonderfully outspoken,middleaged counselor,
who said ,look at me when I talk to you , why do you always i look at the ground, there is nothing wrong with your face !!! Its shows you care !!! That week totally changed my life, I still talk to this
this woman some times.
If I had money like Oprah I would like to send kids to a camp for a week, away for tv, away from video games and processed food and schedules and just be with nature, so they learn to relax and be happy so they give more to the world .

[Locksley]

10:30 PM on 03/10/2008

Jamie Lee has a great column ... it is absolutely on the mark. Technology is supposed to help humanity not hinder it.

Although I should let Jamie know that the findings last week about the 1 degree drop in the atmosphere wiped out the credibility of that attempted assault on our common sense, global warming, one of the sects of the secular religion, Environmentalism, as Michael Crichton defined it.

For historians it's just the latest version of Gnosticism-Manicheanism-Albigensianism, the periodic geno-suicidal attempt of humans to wipe out the species.

[jotunloki]

06:25 AM on 03/11/2008

Where are the links to this supposed drop? Yes, North America average for the last couple of months shows lower than recent average temperatures, but this is not true worldwide.

[UncleDave]

11:39 AM on 03/16/2008

'Assault on our commen sense'? What is common sense about poisoning our air,our water,our earth for personal comfort and the enrichment of corperations? And it is NOT common sense to stop our own demise? I would argue that our poisoning of our home best describes 'geno-suicide',than the eforts to regain Common Sense.

[elizard]

08:26 PM on 03/10/2008

Ms. Curtis,
Now that I live in LA, I have noticed some people are more interested in the conversations going on elsewhere then with the person they're sitting across from.
I actually do exactly what you hope for - I look people in the eye, even when walking around where I live in Sherman Oaks. I want to see the individual, my neighbor, my fellow American as he/she goes about their day. I teach online, so I very much feel the pull of technology and the need to be with people.
I would say there is one exception and that would be celebrities. Once I take notice, I consciously look away. Why? Because a part of your life I would dread and that is a lack of privacy. I want to give you what I suspect you don't get enough of and that's to just be a person going about your day.
So for you, I will make the exception. If I see you walking around Ventura Blvd as I venture over to my favorite restaurant Mon, I'll be sure to look you directly in the eyes and smile.
-Elizabeth.

[cybersense]

07:00 PM on 03/10/2008

Nice, just plain nice Jamie.

Thank you!

[josephjsalas]

06:41 PM on 03/10/2008

Thus here we go again looking down @ our computer screen only to be sucked-into to the latest
sex scandal while overhead-Bush just foisted a Mi$$le deal with Poland sure to provoke that
melodramatic adversary of ours Putin!