Sensitivity.

I was wiping the espresso machine in my coffee-stained apron when I wondered to myself if I should start the cleaning process.  “Julie, is it too soon to start closing up?” I turned to ask my boss.  She wasn’t in sight, so I poked my head around the doorway into the back room.  There she was on the floor.

“Julie! Are you all right?”

“I’m having a seizure.”

From there, what started out as a perfectly good, rainy day unexpectedly turned out to be terribly stressful.  The paramedics, our supervisor, and another café worker arrived quickly, and I volunteered to help close.  As they were helping Julie onto a stretcher I started the closing process, but found myself repeatedly interrupted. 

Apparently, seeing a woman on a stretcher in the middle of the room isn’t enough to indicate when a café is closed.

Person, after person, after person came up to the counter doing that dazed menu-scan business.  Slightly irritated, I told them “We’re closed.”  Only a group of three women, obviously regulars because they knew Julie by name, had the courtesy to even ask what was going on. 

I’m not sure if these people were oblivious, selfish, or just insensitive…  but I can’t help but feel that this situation reflects some of the negative characteristics of our modern culture.   Working in the café I see an everyday disregard for other people.  So many customers don’t even take the time to look their server in the eye –or worse, they fake friendliness.

When did “How are you?” become a rhetorical question?

In a world where someone cares more about their convenience than the person in front of them I think these are questions worth considering.

I think we’re all aware of how much technology probably plays a role in this cultural shift.  How many times a day do I text while someone’s trying to talk to me?  Ignore a message on Facebook?  Block my roommate out because I’m listening to my ipod?  A lot. Technology affects relationships.  This is an obvious fact, and already much-beaten dead horse. 

But going a step beyond the technology itself, let’s consider the presentation of fiction within the media.  I discussed in my last blog post how easy it is to get caught up in the story our lives, and how that can cause us to misperceive our world.  However, there’s an even bigger danger here than our own misperceptions: glossing over seemingly unimportant details. 

In the grand epoch of your life, does it really matter if that woman was ok?  Probably not -the movie wouldn’t show that scene.  But in real life it matters.

In real life the person that got shot matters more than the chase for the criminal, but all our crime TV shows won't tell you that.

"Dying to Entertain," a report written by The Parents Television Council recounts a number of particularly violent and disturbing scenes presented on television.  In February 2006 an episode of C.S.I. aired called "Pirates of the Third Reich" in which the dectectives' investigation takes a particularly bizarre turn. In one scene they find a basement lab with a Nazi symbol on the wall, and the words "Arbeit Macht Frei."  It appears as though the two men, who are already suspects in a murder case, have been conducting experiments on humans. Confirming their suspicions, the detectives find "two Asian men in a bare room on the floor in their underwear.  They appear to be sewn together along the spine.  One of them is dead; the other, barely alive.  There are some sheets over them. They are barely alive."   

Sick.

And yet, you'd be hard-pressed to find a person that hasn't watched an episode of a modern crime show or an action movie of the same nature.  Even if we ignore speculation about the effects these types of stories are having on crime statistics, one thing remains glaringly obvious: we are so engrossed in the extreme, thrilling, fabricated fictional world that something like a seizure seems unimportant, and unfashionably inconvenient. 

I hate to discredit fiction, because there is so much good in it.  I hate to bash technology and the media because it feels cliché. Yet, I wonder, how did this all get so out of hand?  When did our world of fiction become a force of its own, rather than something we have the ability to create, control, and enjoy?  And, even harder to answer: are we concerned enough about these effects to alter our behavior, or will we just continue to be entertained and desensitized?