Multitasking and Manners

There is only the here and now, is the positive refrain for us to live in the present. Rather than being a prisoner of the past, or distracted with things yet to be, the idea is to give whatever you are doing your full attention. As such your focus is sharper, productivity increases, and your mental health better because multitasking even if done well is stressful.

There is perhaps a more important reason – consideration for those around you. That is the focus of the article by Daniel Gulati Multitasking’s Real Victims. My own experience was hosting a film night, specifically for a friend that had never seen an Al Pacino film. Those of us that had suggested “Scarface” was a good introduction. However for the whole of the film night the uninitiated Pacino friend was on his smartphone texting on social media.

During sexual intercourse, even with a hands free set, no one would dream of calling someone or dictating a Facebook update status. Why should that be different for social intercourse?

There is however a crucial difference regarding intended shared experiences and choosing to do something else. Those old days, when there was only one television in the house and the VCR remote control had a lead connected to the VCR, there really was no other option. Now living standards mean majority have not only several TVs, but devices which mean you can watch something else even while in the same room.

Which brings me to when The Hallowed Crown – Shakespeare’s Henry IV part one and two, and Henry V three were being dramatised by the BBC. In the household there was a difference of opinion what to watch, and it was the last day on iPlayer to watch part one. I explained this, and said I would watch on the iPad having really looked forward to the series yet too busy looking after my disabled brother to watch when live. This led to accusations of my being rude. Neither of us could be in different rooms; “physical disengagement” as suggested in the blog above. I was looking after my brother who was sleeping off a seizure so needed to be next door, and she wanted to watch the TV programme live in the comfort of the lounge.

It does come down to perspective and the situation. If you are at a meeting or at a party that is where your concentration should be, not hypnotised to the screen of your smart phone. Respect for the host and courtesy to those attending would be good manners. Multitasking is not just in the digital age; people read a newspaper while having the radio on; and I remember as a kid being ignored while parents were immersed in print media. What multi media does is allow even more multi tasking. New tablets/smart phones boast the ability to see different apps live – so you can see Facebook status updates while watching a youtube video, and getting a newsfeed from CNN. All from the same screen. As such you see this in the younger generation more.

Yet notifications mean you don’t have to keep watching. You can be told when something that you really want to keep an eye on happens. You could even give someone a heads up. “I’m trying to get something on eBay which will be a great Christmas present. I’m watching the bids so please excuse me if I attend to my phone when it goes off.” Context could be all the difference between an irate friend and one that now understands what is happening.

While writing this blog I received a notification from Twitter regarding my cousin’s theatre company @HotCoalsTheatre. “The first production will be #Trapped, a devised piece exploring being trapped by [your] own body.”

The key is not to be trapped by your multimedia multitasking equipment. They are great communication devices. Just don’t use them at the expense of the person right in front of you. Or enjoying what is happening beyond your finger tips. We do not get to live this life again.

UPDATE: seems topical. After posting Time just tweeted on Multitasking and being distracted in the digital age.

Follow On Blog: I share therefore I am [TED talk on consequences of being constantly connected]

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

The only offense is not a legal one with blasphemy

No one can try to use my blog as an example of blasphemy for the Christian religion, and have me sent to prison. Not that anyone would, given the Religious Hatred Act already protecting the right to express a negative view and disagreement about religion.

Last Thursday by 148 to 87 the House of Lords abolished the offense of blasphemy.

So will I be trying to write ever more polemic attacks on Christ and his followers, hounding them and subjecting them to ridicule and laughing at them?

Well that is not my style. Manners as far as I can make out is one example of morality, the ability to be civil to one another. There is nothing wrong with being satirical.

For example the last prosecution for blasphemy in the UK was in 1922. The point was that a mistranslation in the original Hebrew  suggested that the messiah would enter Jerusalem riding simultaneously two donkeys. One of the gospel writers actually writes that Jesus did ride two donkeys at the same time when entering the city – perhaps as a way to make the prophecy appear to have come true. A member of the National Secular Society made the point by drawing Jesus as a circus clown to be able to perform the trick. The months of hard labour he did deteriorated his health and he died soon after.

The question is do we legislate for manners, or do we consider that there is a protocol to social interaction which we would consider normal and ones that we would consider uncouth, bad taste. Perhaps even immoral. However we would not consider them illegal unless there was a greater public good. Dropping litter is bad manners but there is a public cost to society; there is a legal sanction prohibiting it with fines to counter such behaviour.

However the blasphemy law was an example of a public cost to society sanctioned on the statue books. For one, it was not well used. It favoured the Church of England over all other denominations and faiths. Potentially it was a matter of sensibility – and the law should not be about that.

However, if someone was to write a blog full of obscene vulgar language insulting people of the Christian faith in that fashion I would consider that bad manners. Also I would point them to Christopher Hitchens – for it is not about shocking and outraging people but demonstrating the theist argument.

When Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that the Christian God was:

 a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully

This is not bad manners. It is a view that is backed up by some pretty damning evidence called the bible. If you want to question the rendering then make the argument. You think the reason flawed, go ahead. But to make the cry of blasphemy – one petition on the 10 Downing Street website actually called for a law that retrospectively could have Dawkins put in prison for his book (not many signatures) – is to call for the point of contention not to be discussed, not to be aired.

Such a thing is not part of a pluralistic democracy at ease with itself. If you are offended by such discussion, well so be it. That is your right – but I am not constrained to cave in to such emotions that you have chosen to have on the subject. A fundamental principle is the right to disagree and the freedom to do so without penalty on matters of thought. To not be able to express them is nonsense – and the law is better for getting rid of blasphemy.

Unless we would rather allow people to legitimately complain with legal sanction people that name teddy bears with a name that corresponds to most people’s and someone called a Prophet.

Or a society that debates all matters of thought and finds strength and common purpose from doing so in the battle for ideas.