Thought Picnic: Your virtuality may not be my reality

Distance acting

We all enjoy to some extent, the comfort of abstraction, a little distance from the reality of things, colouring our perspective and affecting a deeper expression of empathy.

Information Technology does not make it any better by offering virtual proximity without the experience, we are deluded into thinking the keyboard and screen is the new reality and hence we are fully engaged with the situation.

None of this offers the truth of walking a long hard mile in the shoes of another which might be ill-fitting, uncomfortable and not suited to our uniquely shaped feet. Reality is always a different world.

Try a little understanding

We cannot always find the means to sympathise or empathise, but we should at the very least be willing to learn and understand so that we do not fall into hubristic omniscience thinking we have full knowledge, second-guessing the circumstances and thereby acting foolishly where our senses or our limbs have had no tangible interaction.

Be it drawings that would never get off the board, road signs crafted light-years away from the traffic, advice given to a circumstance we are completely oblivious of or projecting unto ourselves experiences we have never lived, we slowly lose the integrity of our humanity when we deign to extend beyond ourselves and extrapolate imponderables.

Learn first

That way, we open the door to the unreasonable, the consequences of which might be quite dire for others affected by what we do.

If you have never lived it, learn first before you command or commend and do not let your virtual insight rob others of their stark reality.