Societal Disassociation

[Larry King]

I think that people today have the wrong priorities. They are all screwed up. Living in worlds held up by Twitter, and Facebook. When an actual human may be hurt, and that human is The Science Guy!,  they do worse than rurn a blind eye, they observe and report to a bunch halfwits that actually read that crap.

Humanity is doomed.

[The Mighty King Cobra]

Twitter, Facebook and the intarwebz do precisely ZERO to change people's natures.

Had this happened when I was in college, we would have probably seen the exact same thing, only with people whispering and giggling and thinking it's a joke...

It's easy to SAY that we're different, we would have done something, but we weren't there.  We didn't see what happened, we have NO IDEA how we would have responded.  What was the layout of the lecture hall?  Would there have been people able to reach out and help him, or would they have had to get up and climb stairs?  

Would the situation have been the same if it WEREN'T the Science Guy onstage?  Say Maya Angelou fell over, or Ray Bradbury...  Different circumstances, different people, does that change the response?

Using a situation like this as emblematic of the downfall of human civilization trivializes both the possible injury to Bill and the downfall of human civilization, which will not come about because of tweeting and sexting and picture messaging.

Final moment of zen:  I've spent twenty minutes composing a response on the internet about this, but have done nothing today to help anyone or better anyone's life.  How am I any better than the people we're discussing in this thread?

[Navarre]

How do you know you didn't help someone? You helped me learn a little more about you and the way you think and feel. I consider that to be very important and not to be taken for granted.

Helping someone doesn't have to mean physical aid. It does in the case of this situation we have been discussing but I look at helping the world as being a much broader thing.

So were the people in the audience "helping" by sharing their thoughts and feelings to others? Yes. ... But I think it shows skewed priorities.

I don't think humanity is doomed nor do I think the internet is the evil pathway to destruction. I do, however, think someone should have physically tried to help the man.

Maybe someone did and we haven't heard about it. Maybe.

[Addicted2aa]

How do you know you didn't help someone? You helped me learn a little more about you and the way you think and feel. I consider that to be very important and not to be taken for granted.

Helping someone doesn't have to mean physical aid. It does in the case of this situation we have been discussing but I look at helping the world as being a much broader thing.

So were the people in the audience "helping" by sharing their thoughts and feelings to others? Yes. ... But I think it shows skewed priorities.

I don't think humanity is doomed nor do I think the internet is the evil pathway to destruction. I do, however, think someone should have physically tried to help the man.

Maybe someone did and we haven't heard about it. Maybe.

They did. When he fainted the second time stage hand jumped to help him out. This whole thing was blown way out of proportion.

[Navarre]

It doesn't surprise me if it was. I brought it up because I think it deserves commentary. It is good for us to occasionally stop and think about how we act in the world but I find a lot of people only react.

[Addicted2aa]

Nothing wrong with reacting. Budda says live in the moment, for that is the only place where you really exist.

[Navarre]

Well, I have a whole line of philosophy about that but I don't guess this is the best thread for it.

But I agree that we should live in the moment, having learned from the past and being hopeful for the future.