An Essay on Human Interaction

The Jonathan Safran Foer fallacy

A word about Jonathan Safran Foer from Wikipedia:

{Foer is viewed by some as a polarizing figure in modern literature, due to his frequent use of modernist literary devices. Harry Siegel of the New York Press, titled an article on Foer "Extremely Cloying and Incredibly False", highlighting the flaws in his style: "Foer is supposed to be our new Philip Roth, though his fortune-cookie syllogisms and pointless illustrations and typographical tricks don't at all match up to or much resemble Roth even at his most inane." Huffington Post contributor Anis Shivani included him in his list of the fifteen most overrated modern American writers.}

The Jonathan Safran Foer Fallacy
Last week, I saw a stranger crying in public. She had just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s essay ‘How not to be alone’ on her iPhone’s NYTimes app, when she was overcome by a wave of deep sadness. I heard her say ‘why is this person so horrible?’ over and over.

I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Or I could look up the meaning and usage of the verb ‘to interject’. (It was a three-way choice.) Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way. I say ‘logistical’ because in my spare time I run a company that specialises in supply-chain management.

An affluent neighbourhood at the beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not someone else. Think about that for a moment.

It is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to start tapping notes on your smartphone for an essay you plan to submit to the New York Times. Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat. The phone didn’t make me avoid the human connection. The fact that I’m a horrible person did. The phone just gave me something to look at whilst ignoring this other human sobbing just metres away.

The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits. I thought of that while someone was crying. Don’t you feel like punching me in the face?

Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. Just imagine! Your reaction to burning your hand on the stove is quicker than figuring out why a person is sad and what you should do about it. Science says so. And the more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care. Nothing to do with being a soulless, self-obsessed narcissist or anything like that.

Everyone wants his parent’s, or friend’s, or partner’s undivided attention — even if many of us, especially children, are getting used to far less. Simone Weil said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” She said other things as well, but by then I had stopped listening. Get to the point, Simone, for chrissakes! I’m working to a deadline here.

Most of our communication technologies began as diminished substitutes for an impossible activity. We couldn’t always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible to keep in touch at a distance. Online communication originated as a substitute for telephonic communication, which was considered, for wh**ever reasons, too burdensome or inconvenient. (I’m so confident about this assertion, I’m not even going to check it against Wikipedia.) And then texting, which facilitated yet faster, and more mobile, messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements upon face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it. I’m almost sure that’s right: a computer is just a more complex telephone. Also, the word ‘declension’: yeah.

But then a funny thing happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It’s easier to make a phone call than to schlep to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone’s machine is easier than having a phone conversation. So we began calling when we knew no one would pick up. Especially our brother-in-law, Frank. How we all h**e talking to Frank.

Shooting off an e-mail is easier, still, because one can hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and of course there’s no chance of accidentally catching Frank. And texting is even easier, as the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide in. Each step “forward” has made it easier, just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.

The problem with accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we, too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.

Is it clear enough that when I say ‘we’, I actually mean ‘you’? This is very important. I’m actually a wonderfully caring person.

With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. I feel that this is a very solid point. Pretend that I argued it until you are thoroughly persuaded.

Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they will live forever. I suppose that if you were going to write a parody of this essay, you might not even know how to tackle that sentence. Did I just say immortality is within reach, and that you would be a fool to deny it? Wow. Let’s assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers. Are you still with me?

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or — being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology”. So let’s all pretend that I hadn’t spent the last nine hundred words blaming technology for my inability to relate emotionally to strangers, and call it a question of balance that our lives hang upon.

Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. Especially the woman in front of me, who’s basically drowning in a pool of her own tears by now, and that I plan to console as soon as I’ve filed this essay. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing of the only animal who risks “getting it wrong” and whose dreams provide shelters and v*****es and words to crying strangers. This is not the time to question if the last sentence makes any sense whatsoever. This is the time to feel and to care .


We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life.

I have plenty more s**tty non sequiturs. There is a market for telling people that their emotional life is impoverished by electronic gadgets, and I’m right in it. It’s me, Nick, and a few others, and let me assure you that we have the genre thoroughly figured out: blame technology for putting distance between people, or between people and nature, implying that before technology the world was more ‘real’; subsume economic and social relations to ‘the internet’ or ‘smartphones’ or ‘social media’ so as to make all of our arguments circular, their logic self-fulfilling; cite uncritically every bit of social science research that supports our hypotheses, and those only; and make a spectacularly dishonest use of the pronoun ‘we’, so as to turn the experience of technology into a bland universal. To really investigate contemporary alienation would require a qualitatively different kind of effort: one that is much more careful in its evaluation of psychological evidence, and much more willing to question the idea that a life less mediated is a life more authentic. One that is aware of politics, and not just of sentiment. But there’s no money or glory in that.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to leave because this damn woman’s incessant weeping is beginning to creep me out, and people are starting to look at me funny.

For someone to claim that animals practice same sex activities, is utter nonsense, and total propaganda attempting to justify a useless and stupid avenue for sexual expression other than that which it was designed. There is no way animals indulge in same sex relationships other than mutual acknowledgement of similarity. Their reasoning is not the same as human reasoning, and cannot be t***sferred into human society as an example of random existance. Any human that visualizes a same sex hoard of animals is just trying to justify their own useless ignorant vision of their own predicament. To know for certain how an animal thinks and knows about sex would require more than biased observation. If you can talk to an animal, ask it what it thinks about it. I imagine if they could talk, they would look at you and say "Duh!" If this kind of sexual behavior were to be called normal in both animals and humans, we should find all the same stupid activities relative to it, Prostitution, rape, dominance, Pornographic exhibitions etc. Even normal sexual activities are based on hormonal episodes that have nothing to do with random attraction, but a biological time table. It is just not part of their world. Nor should it be part of ours. It has no element of love in it, because it subjects both subjects to either dominance, or unnatural submission. It has no redeeming social significance. ....... It is only a diversion of good behavior, formulated to break down society into a meaningless existance. Any one that indulges in it is in my opinion temporarily insane. No different than any other lust or drug induced adventure. What benefit to society or moral life is included in this kind of activity? NONE!!!

Homosexuality is unnatural, used to be unlawful, and is not normal.
No other species on the planet practices homosexuality. It doe's not allow for procreation and the survival of the species. If it doesn't produce offspring, the species will go extinct. That alone should tell us all something about the practice. Now that q***rs are trying to infect the whole world with their unnatural, immoral, and dangerous ideas, they are trying to force and coerce normal people into accepting their way of life like it is superior to the normal way. The Bible and God accept it as an a*********n. America's motto used to be "In God We Trust", now it is "In Sin We Tryst"? If they wish to have that lifestyle, I say ok, but don't try to force it on the rest of us.

BY NOAM N. LEVEY
WASHINGTON — As congressional Republicans move toward another v**e on repealing the Affordable Care Act, new evidence was published Wednesday about the dramatic expansion of insurance coverage made possible by the law.
Nearly 17 million more people in the U.S. have gained health insurance since the law’s major coverage expansion began, according to a study from the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica nonprofit research firm.
That tally takes into account 22.8 million newly insured people and 5.9 million who lost coverage in the last year and a half.
Researchers found gains across all types of insurance, including employer-provided coverage, government Medicaid programs and policies offered through state insurance marketplaces created by the law.
At the same time, the vast majority of Americans have seen no change in the source of their coverage, with 80% remaining in the same insurance, researchers found.
“The ACA has greatly expanded health insurance coverage in the United States with little change in the source of coverage for those who were insured before the major provisions of the law took effect,” concluded the authors of the study, published online by the journal Health Affairs.
The Rand study, based on surveys of 1,589 working-age adults, is not as large as other polls. But the findings are consistent with national surveys by Gallup, as well as with data from the federal government, which have all shown a dramatic decrease in the nation’s uninsured rate since the health law’s coverage expansion began.
Importantly, Rand’s survey, which has tracked a panel of the same people since 2013, provides an early snapshot of where the coverage is expanding.
The biggest growth has been in the marketplaces created by the law, which now have about 11 million adult customers, about a third of whom were uninsured in 2013, according to the study.
Medicaid, another pillar of the health law, has seen enrollment grow by nearly 10 million adults since 2013.
The marketplaces allow Americans who do not get health benefits through an employer to shop for health plans that must meet basic standards and cannot turn away consumers, even if they are sick. And more than half the states have expanded eligibility for their Medicaid programs through federal aid made available by the health law.
Rand also found substantial growth in employer-provided coverage, with some 8 million more adults now in a health plan provided by an employer.
In fact, employer coverage was the biggest source of new coverage for previously uninsured people, the study found.
“The law has expanded coverage to more Americans using all parts of the health insurance system,” said Rand economist Katherine Carman, the study’s lead author.
Nearly half of the newly insured people in an employer-provided health plan had access to such coverage in 2013 but elected not to sign up, Carman said. That suggests the new requirement in the law that Americans have insurance may be having an effect.
The researchers did not find a large number of people who lost coverage when the health plans they had purchased on their own were canceled in 2013 or 2014, a phenomenon that generated fierce criticism of the health law at the time.
“There were some doom-sayers who were saying that this would have a major impact,” Carman said. “That wasn’t the case.”
Whether the coverage gains can be sustained remains unclear. The Rand survey shows that increases in insurance have slowed this year, compared with 2014.
The insurance gains could also be reversed if congressional Republicans succeed in repealing the health law or if the Supreme Court this summer backs a lawsuit that argues that insurance subsidies provided through the law should not be available in more than 30 states that rely on the federal government to operate their insurance marketplaces. noam.levey@latimes.com  

In case you haven't figured it out yet, that was intended to lighten the mood, and perhaps get he discussion back to civility. apparently it has not done that.

There is a great deal of evidence that Jesus existed. that others wrote about His life and teachings, according to Christian scholars (of which I am not one, by any means) makes His existence more believable. He was from the House of David which made Him not poverty stricken but what would be considered "middle class" had such a concept been in vogue back then. His earthly father was a sk**led carpenter, a respected profession. They were not uneducated, but writing things down was very uncommon two thousand years ago. The normal way of spreading information was by messengers from area to area. One of the most interesting facts of the gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, which were passed down by word of mouth and not recorded for around fifty years after Jesus death is that they are essentially the same, only differing in slight ways, not essential concepts.

Now you can go back to denying the identity of Jesus Christ as both God and man. the Son of God and the Son of Man as He declared Himself to be.

Hey girlie man, though your attempt at trying to be witty like me is farkin' hilarious... I mean who doesn't enjoy a good laugh now and again?

You are too cretinous to know, you just suck at it!

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm "written between the lines.", ohhhhhh like the fact that you sound like a closet homo ya mean?

Speak with authority, because I post God's Word? That would be God speaking dipstick, not me... You do understand the difference I'm sure?

My words ring hollow, who sez so... YOU? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

You are a boy lovin' putz, that's why ya h**e God... you fear retribution, am I right?

I belittle you for two reasons MarredDufus...


1) I do not respect you and,

2) I do not like you one little bit

Bart is a homo just like you who couldn't deal with the notion his immoral ways would earn him a trip to the sin bin someday...

How's that ringin' for ya Dorthy?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: