Human Communication- Part 2 Cyber bullying, social media FB Twit Narcissist Haven?

The concept of anonymity was discussed. The lack of identity etc. You get to be whoever you want. The next major issue is how communication has changed, or lack of communication more precisely. Think about it, regardless of you religious affiliation, oh sorry Spirituality and beliefs I mean, you still have to consider human beings are mammals evolved animals. What sets us different? Opposable thumbs, of course and hence cutlery, and big old evolved brains. Huge brains with massive overgrown cerebral hemispheres, relative to everybody else in the animal kingdom. so what comes with that? Well verbal communication, It started out as eye contact then grunts and it evolved into words. Yeah we lost all the other cool senses and non-verbal communication that other animals still have with each other, instinct etc. (See "New Age Spirituality" of  the last 25 years Metaphysical or whatever it is called in 2010. you can work to get some of it back it is actually not a special gift for all the clairvoyants out there, it is actually something old humans lost hold of.)
Anyway so humans evolve, we loose our old instinctual communication, we grunt, we speak we make up languages, lots of them, based on where we are geographically, sort of still around, global neighborhood etc, based on who invaded who, I mean why don't the British speak French as primary language. (Rhetorical).
Then you throw in the opposable thumbs, and we start drawing on Cave walls and we get symbols and signs. We can draw. We start to draw lots of symbols and make up symbols for those grunts that are now words. Verbal and now written language. We communicate through it.
The original verbal language of humans was very intimate. It was all about eye contact and gestures, just slightly beyond the other animals.  you had to be in the same cave or vicinity to communicate. you knew where you stood.
The written stone tablets changed everything, you did not need to be in the vicinity of the person to communicate. Throw in ink and paper over the centuries, and finally the printing press. Communication became more massive, and less intimate. And nothing much went on for a few hundred years.
Then very recently, (relatively speaking to how long humans have been on earth)  just the last two centuries or so, all hell broke loose. The telegraph, early 1800's really brought out the immediacy of remote communication. Then of course the phone, TV and radio, in only the last century.
The telegraph brought in immediacy but not intimacy. no eye contact, no inflection. soon the phone brought even more immediacy and a strange new  pseudo-intimacy. Inflection, and voice but remoreness. No facial expression, no smells, no gestures. But lots of auditory.
TV really revolutionized the pseudo-intimacy. Now lots of one way communication, with two dimensional visual. and lots of sound. in your home no less, but still not real communication at least in a truly intimated two way human form. You can't bully someone through the TV, but you sure can demonstrate lots of it, even in high def now.
interestingly, people used to harass and beat the hell out of people over the phone, crank calls, etc. Just as the Internet, was taking off, some genius thought of caller ID and *69, and all of a sudden no more anonymous terroristic threats, people stopped playing games and harassing each other in that way.
Then emerged the Internet and simultaneously cell phones they sort of became the same thing as far as cyberbullying is concerned.
It was great we got rid of those clunky typewriters. Printers got better. We all learned how to type, if we hadn't in high school, except, the darn keyboard lingered as a remnant of the old typewriter. Now emerges the touch screens.  Smart boards etc. Thank God for modern technology right.
The anonymity is back with the Internet, you really have no idea whom you are talking to or listening to. Sorry but you don't. Of course now we have the crude innovation of skype, That of course will only get more perfected, but it will still only be two dimensional, no smell, no touch, until we can do molecular transport like Star Trek.
So now we communicate with the Internet. At work we email somebody across the hall. Parents and kids text each other in the next room. Why is that? Because it is a lot of work to communicate with someone face to face, and we as a society have started to develop a distinct anxiety about it.
Probably as a society the only thing we are more phobic about than direct face to face communication and intimacy. We are probably lazier than ever as a society. Think about it video-conferencing has taken off V-tel and all that, but it will never take off as it could have by now at least in the workplace.
We will always go for real life face to face meeting, if it involves excessive travel, why my God we can't do a video conference for that, we have to go for London for  five days for that one hour meeting. Because when you are traveling you get to get out of doing actual work, and still get to do all the self-aggrandizing- you know the type, always busy, gotta be somewhere. Check any airport.

The bottom line in communication is that it isn't what you say,  it's how you say it. Or at least that is 50% of human communication. At least that is what I have told students and anyone else who wants to know the art of developing an empathic connection with a patient.
Eye contact, inflection, volume, gestures, body posture that is 50% of human communication.pauses, facial expression. We call these non-verbal forms of communication but in reality human communication is one entity, and those are all components of it. Anything less than that is slightly less than human, say something like the Internet and social media for example.  We don't call it less than human communication though we call it virtual. But face it, when something is slightly less human isn't it easy to behave in a less than decent human fashion say cyberbullying?

cyberbullying, social media, facebook, twitter, a haven for narcissists? part 1

So what is all this cyberbullying really about? Has it always been there, the concept of bullying that is and now there is just another really convenient outlet in social media? Is it getting worse? Have teenagers always been attempting and committing suicide because of the vile ways they are treated by other young adults? Are we just more aware of it? Is it just in our faces more because of the instantaneous virtual connection and immediacy of the Internet?
There are so many frameworks to understand it, yet it is still not understood well, we know it is bad, but we don't know how to really stop it as a society. There are maybe three things to think about in terms of this whole problem. The concept of anonymity, communication, and narcissism.
Think about it, you really have no idea on social media outlets,  on the Internet for that matter exactly whom you are communication with through the concept of electronic printed word, that's why it is called VIRTUAL. With the concept of true anonymity, anyone can be anything and anyone they want. It is amazing how many people lie about who they are and what they are, but that was happening long before the Internet, but I think it is safe to say the Internet really propelled that pathology forward by light years in just a couple decades. Why would someone do that?
Well we like to think a person just feels bad about themselves, low self-esteem, etc etc, yes that is true, that why people brag and boast. But it is deeper than the everpresent low self esteem. The reason the self esteem is low and the person is constantly lying trying to reinvent themselves, it isn't low self esteem, it is more that there is really nothing there on the inside at all, a big hole of emptiness in ones sense of self. The sense of self is a big lofty concept, but it also sounds quite simple. It is our sense of reality of ourselves and the world around us. It is our sense of who and how and what we are in the world and how the rest of the world (people) relates to us. That is our so called "ego-strength". The more developed ones ego strength the better they can cope relate and navigate through the world. Now when someones ego is developed in a healthy way, it gets really sophisticated in that when that is developed the next thing that develops is a sense of right and wrong, in reference to the world and others. Unless you have a true sense of self, a sense of right and wrong the so called "super-ego" can't really develop. How we relate to others in the world is our so called "object relations". Pretty much all these things start to develop and build upon one another from the time a person is coming out of the womb. an infant has no sense of self, they pretty much think the mother and they are the same thing for the first few months of life. no separation, no boundary. Pretty much everyone figures out they are a separate entity, right. To psychologically separate is a lot harder and a longer process through the early years.
What does all this have to do with the anonymity of the Internet and social media and cyberbullying and teens? Well the teenager struggles with their identity, their ego there sensee of self. They learn to think abstractly,  they have to figure out how to go from childhood to adulthood. The have to figure out how to use their super-ego (The sense of right and wrong) if they ever developed it ( comes FROM the PARENTS) to get through the world. Every teen struggles with identity and sense of self, it is a growing period. It is all based upon how things went in those first ten or twelve years of life.
We hear the old adage"he is she is basically a good kid- he or she just got into the wrong crowd" Well hears news, Every kid is basically a good kid, no one ever asked to be born right?
so since every teen struggle with their sense of self and identify, isn't it cool to have the Internet and facebook and YouTube and myspace and this and that and the other thing to help facilitate that? You can be whoever you want, who cares, it's really right? Well virtually anyway.
you could see how the anonymity and the flip side of the coin VIRTUAL INTIMACY and connection really helps the old psychological developmental process along in the teenage years.  Oh and it is really immediate and convenient too. But it is just you and your computer, or laptop of iPhone or whatever, and you are pretty much cut of from developing and sense of object relations or really how to get along or connect with other people when it is so important to refine in those developmentally turbulent adolescent years. Just the kid and his keyboard hmmm, sounds pretty powerful and omnipotent doesn't it. Well at least virtually. Hmm with that in place why would there not be cyberbullying? Throw in the communication issue, (the only form of human connection be it physical, spiritual, intellectual, or virtual communication it is connection, but what about virtual?


NB: when I use the term omnipotence or all powerful, (sitting at the keyboard), it may be derived from then anonymity, or that bubble or shell around the person, it is the same concept as why some people are outrageously aggressive people when they drive, Road rage etc. There is a false sense of power and security being in a car and as such the keyboard and the Internet.