Emotional illiteracy
by Bob on October 7, 2007
Emotional illiteracy. Not being versed in how to speak the language of what we feel in an honest and meaningful way. Or even saying silly meaningless things in lieu of expressing true emotions.
This phrase came to me whilst walking in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday.
I guess it was a result of seeing so many emoticons in messages and people talking on the cell phone with meaningless and content-less banter.
If we look at the purported emotional algebra of internet chatting via immediate messaging, or email, or now even "talking with comments" on MySpace and similar online social interaction networks, and bulletin boards, we see how really emotionally empty these communications are, despite the overt message imbedded in them. Everything seems to be one big happy smily face. Would that the underlying emotions be so sincere and not a knee-jerk response on a computer's mouse button.
There is an "algebra" of these missive items which makes sense only in their manipulations, symbolically, but there's nothing underneath it all, backing up and holding up the expressed pseudo-emotion. So the algebra of these emotions looks fine, but it is barren.
This new concept of "speaking by leaving comments" to each other on our pages, is insidious. It's mostly now automatic pretended emotion. We might as well have a computer program generate it randomly.
So we find people not know about real emotions anymore. How to express them or how to feel them.
Wherein lies the blame ? Technology misused to the bemusement of the corporations profiting off it it all, I suppose. And being hypnotised by technology and believing in it blindly.
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U.S. Patent 6987991 for composing text using emoticons. The patent text opens with:
[0001] 1. Field of the Invention
[0002] The present invention relates to the field of textual or non-verbal communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and apparatuses associated with the employment of emoticons in textual or non-verbal communications, such as email or instant messaging, practiced on e.g. mobile communication devices, as in the case of wireless mobile telephones.