Has ultra-modern technology made us any more mannerly?

Sep 01, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
There exists a rather pervasive irritating situation that often riles one up to boiling point – really gets one prickled. I’m speaking about the uncouth dumb manner of some grown adults, but more so our young people in using phone devices; both cell phone and land-line, the way they address and respond to making and receiving calls.
The opening of the floodgates of modern day technology has propelled us, no different from other nations to an advanced stage of mass-media and mass communication. We are not lagging in successfully exploiting the endless advantages that are available. Unfortunately, on the other hand, the quantum leap in this realm of electronic technology as can be seen, has not in any way contributed to a finer quality of our behaviour.
Who would want to deny that this age of superior technology, world web information and an ubiquitous and extensive range of touchscreen gadgets – the world at your finger tip, have not brought along some of the most depraved and repulsive things. Yes we have been derailed more than we would want to imagine, ten steps forward and multiple times that number backwards. Like the youngster said, “instead of advancing we devance”, nicely put.
Now, what can be more annoying on almost a daily basis to encounter experiences like these: your phone at home rings, you pick up and answer; “Hello, good morning/good afternoon’ or as is common these days with Christian folks; “bless the Lord, good day” and the response comes through, “Jackie home, ah waan Simone”; “who is this, is who ah talking to, ah want talk to Abby, you wasn’t fuh call me, whey yuhmuddadeh, call she.” Or conversely you put through a call – again on land-line, and in the background there is terribly loud music, you are having difficulty communicating; you are at your wits’ end hoping that the person will do the sensible thing, but no way, the person at that end just keeps on shouting foolishly: “Is whayuh want, is who yuh really want, is who ah talking to?”
They can hardly hear you and you in turn are being tortured by loud, lewd, cussing music in the background. And don’t you make the mistake of trying to reprimand them, then, you get exactly what you were looking for. And sometime, all of this goes on even when parents/elders are at home. Don’t we teach children to be polite and respectful anymore? But understand too that this conduct applies to business places as well, some hardly have time to answer your queries and are eager to dismiss you, while you can hear in the background the “gaff” going on, and if you are forced to follow-up you become a nuisance. Yes! This is we; internet, face-book, Instagram, youtube, google, whatsapp, rat-trap, twitter, hitter and thither – lost!
Has modern-day fast moving high-tec. really made us any better in terms of quality? Seems to me that with every improvement comes a corresponding “deprovement”. Maybe – we should seek the services of Joyce Jones and Joyce Sinclair to design and restart a programme on “bad manners”; put on phones some sort of exquisite tips that nicely instruct how to be courteous every time the phone is picked up and hope against hope that it helps, at least in some small way. Some will argue that these “magical” gadgets weren’t made to lift morals and I concede; still don’t we as a society require a modicum of good manners, some semblance of decency.
Frank Fyffe

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