I do not understand the language of texting, or bar codes containing paragraphs of information. I do not understand how people do not know how to count change, what their own phone number is, or how communication and society have morphed into a world of antonyms.
Words such as cooperation, negotiation, impartial, conversation, politeness, and respect are no longer understood. They have become foreign concepts in this foreign land I no longer understand.
“Customer” service now means self service.
A “doctor” visit means getting a prescription.
“Friendships” have become 1,000 or 100 strangers I don’t really know.
“Conversation” was an informal exchange of ideas but often appears as a one-sided dump.
Once upon a time a “debate” meant a public discussion of opposing arguments on a particular topic. Today it is who can interrupt the most and shout the loudest slander.
Microwaving a prepared meal is called “cooking.”
“Excuse me” has fallen to the wayside for immediate interruption or unacknowledged bumping into.
Here you go replaced “thank you.”
Intimidating hurtful trolls lurk on “social” media.
“Personal responsibility” now looks like lawsuits and blame.
Family time means individual members sitting next to each other staring into screens.
“Unbiased journalism” is dead. Infomercials disguised as articles, and fake news abound.
Health “care” is really the health industry.
“Public” servants are politicians passing legislation written by lobbyists.
Marketing is the sugar-coated word for lies. Companies tout their products to take my money yet when I attempt to get help for the “failed product” it is usually in the Philippines, Dubai or any other place I can barely understand the instruction to fix the problem for the “inferior product” that was advertised as “the world’s best” that I now wish I hadn’t purchased.
My telephone landline use to bring news from friends or family. Now, I cannot answer it for fear of telemarketers and scammers breaking into my home.
The tech industry told us they were making our lives simpler, less complicated, paperless, and more convenient when in truth our lives are more complicated, more disrupted, more vulnerable and disconnected, and I pay to discard more junk mail than food or household waste.
I do not recognize what I was taught in school. Like being an American meant I was free and there was liberty and justice for all when in actuality my government sold out my rights to self-serving corporations.
America has turned topsy-turvy, upside down into a country of antonyms. I am native to this foreign land where nothing is as it’s purported.
My dictionary indicates virtual reality is “not physically existing but made by software to appear to do so.” As far as I’m concerned it’s based on a book of antonyms. I’m not ready to discard my dictionary and thesaurus for a new reality. I prefer to call it what it really is while I still have the mindset to know what it really is.
Reality – “the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.”
wRighTing My Life 
Human behavior, the species in fact, has transformed into an entity that wouldn’t have been recognized 200 hundred years ago. A paradigm shift that has taken us out the heartfelt sensual into a superficial techno-sphere. I think it’s the way of the mystical winds of Tao, the why unknown. But here’s the beauty, we remember that way of life that turned on the greased grooves of humanness.
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Your elaboration is sad but true. Do you think enough will eventually care before that word has also vanished from society, left only as a distant memory in elder generations? Or are most too overwhelmed by the complexities and apathy of our society, and poor choices made in one’s own life to make the effort to change?
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Very good write. We have only ourselves to blame for most if not all of what you said. For it seems we have forgotten to teach those we have brought into this life, the meaning of those things. Rather than fighting for the rights to keep them alive, we rolled over and exposed our bellies to say we give up. We became lazy as we were preoccupied with gaining more things not to keep up with the Jones’s, but to out do them. We expected others to raise our offspring and wondered why they hid in their rooms making friends through the blue light mother who gave them comfort. The baby boomers busted and dropped out for they had no cause to fight for. Hobos/bums became homeless and they are us. We bought into homes that you could reach out and touch your neighbors house, but we forgot how to let anyone into our life. We isolated everyone and let virtual reality become real. No one dies in a game. You start over with new life. This is why no one realized that when you pull the real trigger, the game really ends. We are to blame. And only we can even try to fix it. Only if we can find enough to care .
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