{"id":3684,"date":"2013-10-09T14:26:21","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T14:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3684"},"modified":"2013-10-09T14:26:21","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T14:26:21","slug":"where-have-privacy-and-etiquette-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3684","title":{"rendered":"Where have privacy and etiquette gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I consider myself to be a fairly modern man. <\/p>\n

However, I do find some aspects of modern culture more than a bit off-putting. I’ll give you an example of something I witnessed this morning. Maybe you’ll agree. If you disagree, well, too bad.<\/p>\n

My weekday mornings usually start with a workout at the health club to which I belong. I am up before the sun rises over the Texas Panhandle Caprock and I head down the street, turn the corner and am at the gym in five minutes. I like to get my exercise in at that time of the morning because no one ever calls me; nothing gets in my way. I have no pressing business before the crack of dawn. I usually leave my cell phone at home.<\/p>\n

I finished my workout this morning, was getting dressed in the locker room and I heard some young man blabbing on his cellphone — as he was sitting in the hot tub, presumably to relax or relieve tension or do something therapeutic. But he was chatting up a storm, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the locker room to hear. <\/p>\n

It occurred to me at that moment that the young man had no sense of, shall we say, privacy. I cannot remember a single thing he said this morning on his cell phone, but it strikes that telecommunications technology has removed much of modern society’s sense of doing some things in private.<\/p>\n

Having a personal telephone conversation used to be one of those things. No more. Now mundane, inane, profoundly meaningless conversations become everyone’s business — or at least the business of those who are within earshot in places, such as health club locker rooms, where one doesn’t necessarily need to hear these things.<\/p>\n

You want more ranting? Here it comes.<\/p>\n

This demonstration of the loss of privacy is just one aspect of cell phone technology that has coarsened society.<\/p>\n

How many times have you walked into a restaurant and witnessed a table full of individuals in which everyone at the table is holding a device and texting<\/em> someone who is not sitting at the table? No one is talking to each other. They’re all communicating with someone far, far away.<\/p>\n

And I think at this point I’ll mention as an aside that many men no longer remove their hats when they sit down to eat. I always thought that was mandatory in polite society. Wasn’t it?<\/p>\n

My wife and I recently spent some time at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where we witnessed more than one young parent sending text<\/em> messages on their devices while their kids were tugging on their clothes, trying to get their attention, seeking some assurance that their wait in line was about to end.<\/p>\n

Ah, modern society is great. I’m trying to adjust to it. I’m getting a handle on a lot of what technology is throwing at me. I think I’ll cling to what I still consider “normal behavior.” <\/p>\n

Yapping on a cell phone while sitting in a public locker room hot tub doesn’t qualify as normal.<\/p>\n\n

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I consider myself to be a fairly modern man. However, I do find some aspects of modern culture more than a bit off-putting. I’ll give you an example of something I witnessed this morning. Maybe you’ll agree. If you disagree, well, too bad. My weekday mornings usually start with a workout at the health club … Continue reading Where have privacy and etiquette gone?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[898,3109],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cell-phones","tag-modern-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}