Questions and thoughts that came up in our Tea Talks at Magellan House at the end of 2014.
Why don’t people communicate anymore? Is quality of conversation better in a room or on twitter? The one to one conversation possible on twitter can be intimate where you really get to know people you are conversing with. Yet it has an anonymity meaning anyone can say anything….
…like trolls, is it all a little unreal, de-humanising/ robotic even …follow me LIKE me..is this really a sign that we are #lonely, a desperate cry pleading #loveme ? Or a marketing game?
Has technology killed the art of conversation? If aliens looked down from above, what a strange sight they would see. Huge volumes of individuals locked into handheld devices. Is this a bad thing? What do we miss? Look up. Look Around. And what do we gain through technology? Knowledge. Wisdom. Connection. Or is it just Noise? Or is it the natural evolvement? Does it make people lonely or create global communities? Does it have to be one or the other?
What stops you in your tracks? Kindness. Laughter. Beauty. Cruelty. Unfairness. Seeing one person argue and shout on the street or at their kids in a supermarket…its one of those things you react to moment to moment. I try not to judge. I don’t have the full picture of the situation. So when do you intervene? I have asked before if everything is ok when I have seen two people arguing in a way that it seems like one is at risk from the other.
If you had the power what would you do? Throw the Tories out. Thats my answer today. Put someone in government that cares about people who need help. If I had the power, I would get rid of greed. Take away that and it takes away a lot of the problems. Is greed the driver in motivating growth and change though? What would you replace that with? Love and self knowledge is a motivator too. Passion to become more oneself.
Should we be smarter about the way we work? Could we strive for balance that allows each person to flourish? We live in a world of extremes. There is an old japanese saying about dropping down dead from work. And people often do. Maybe we could re-define the standard of living. Consider – is this existence feeding my soul as a ‘being’ too? Could we value time over material? I would choose love over time and money. Love is everything…living, doing, breathing, experiencing. I never want to feel like I need to retire. I would rather earn nothing and find another way to live. Working can be just putting yourself into a form of slavery. Why would you do that if you had a choice?