Chapter 11: Mindless Communication
How easy it is to get caught up in mindless communication and ways of being. We interact with people everywhere from the grocery store to the bank, but how many of those interactions are performed on auto pilot? We either use scripts or phatic communication that becomes a part of the transaction. "I'm good thanks, how are you?" as we swipe our debit card and enter our pin. If the purpose of this communication is to be polite and show common courtesies, then it achieves it, but does little else.
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I sometimes think mindless communication is good, in the right setting. For example, at work with all the customers we get and as much as I'd love to have conversations with people most of the time I have to do the whole mindless communicating. It usually consistes of "oh hey, who are you here for? Oh *inster dog name* did great, he/she is adorable" and so on. Unless there are urgent things I need to tell them, I unfortunatly have to go into that mode. Good thing about it is, though in time they will usually come back and I'll be able to step away from that mindless state.
ReplyDeleteI also started to think about the mindless communication I engage in my daily life after reading this chapter. At school especially. How many people do I interact with in class, exchanging the same observations about the material or the professor or the weather, over and over again? I think sometimes though, it helps to just have some simple smalltalk, especially in the stressful times like finals week.
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