The Perfect Vacuum

“Nothing to Say…”

In talking to an old Vet today, he confided in me that nobody knows how to talk anymore.
In fact, most would rather ignore him than start a conversation. Even when he holds the door for some YUPPIE type, she turns her nose up if she notices him at all.

But it doesn’t end there. When he finishes with a teller at his local bank whose concept of service is to be holier than thou, there’s absolute silence. No thank you’s; no appreciation for your business or anything like that. He says that makes him think..

Even when he goes to his favorite restaurant, the waiter throws the menu at him…

He doesn’t know the reason for it, but he suspects that it is the reason more and more Americans would rather deal with machines.

Some of them even go so far as to say thank you in a very lovely English voice; most of all, they don’t give you a hard time. However, it seems to our friend, that this doesn’t speak highly of our ability to communicate. And he has a point there.

He says that just the other day he was talking to the phone and having quite a nice time of it actually when it shocked him to learn that he was having a conversation with a mélange of chips and diodes.

He also told me that he read somewhere that Rumsfeld remarked about fielding an army that will be filled with robots. That makes sense! You don’t have to put armor on robots. And they don’t come home at midnight in unmarked body bags. And it doesn’t take brain science to realize that our troops are not there to exchange recipes.

But all the rest of the stuff leaves my friend pretty cold. I mean if you go way back, you discover that people formed societies so that they could bring people together who had something in common with the idea of mutual benefit. It would seem that talking is one of the things you need to do to determine common purpose.

If we can’t do that, what do we need the bank, the corner newsstand, the Mayor, or even the westernized concept of society. We could go back to caves and forage for our existence.

On the other hand, I heard that you can get your voice broadcast after you die so that when your family visits you at the cemetery, you can talk to all those people you didn’t want to deal with when you were alive.

Maybe not such a bad idea after all.

Les Aaron