Its quite an interesting world we live in. Witness the fact that my wife and I finally got a “nanny” that comes over on occasion and plays referee to our two bundles of joy. Its not like either of them really need what could be called a babysitter; but I’m sure parents understand that the desire is to find a person with good values, that will share thoughts, and also just kinda “be there”. Our daughter realy likes that being there part and she had rebelled against what she called a second mom coming in. That lasted until she met the Nanny we had selected from a agency my wife had found. Voila! The two went up to my daughter’s room immediately and started hitting it off. Truth be told, my daughter is a social butterfly and loves to meet, and then talk, to others. Anything is conversation fodder for her. Sharks, Zoo Animals, Horses, cartoons and movies. My daughter will just strike up a conversation on topics and she has the other part down too. The listening part. Listening is what an anthropologist friend told me once was “the silent part of the conversation”. You know… Them anthropologists are smart cookies for the most part. I’ve always felt that my 15 or so years doing that one thing enriched my listening abilities. Doing anthropology means listening. One listens to either live conversations or dead ones. The live conversations consist of stories, tales, jokes, songs, bullshit known and unknown, and a myriud of non-verbal queues. Proxemics are so much a part of conversation. How close is too close? Is there a difference in space allowance when you first meet someone? Where do people sit having intellectual versus social conversations?
The dead conversations are harder to track and the language is fragmentary. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers often left their conversations on cave walls in the form of their life blogs. They recorded their thoughts but their tapestry was different. And fragmentary. Prehistoric archeological sites are fragmentary spatially and temporally. Things are just missing that would make it easier. But if the conversation were easier then archeology would be easier too. Archeology is that search for the missing values and the interpretation of the missing from the found. Its a delicate act of defining relationships and inter-relationships.
Both conversations took my time years ago and there was value in both. I found that doing anthropology lasted me a day and more. I lived it, loved it, dreamt it, wrote it. Now, I’m more of an armchair type which reflects backwards on those days often. What is it about that different lifestyle that makes it worthy of memory I wonder? People sometimes ask what it was like to dig up dinosaurs. I always have to gently remind them of what the real intersection and conversation was.
Now I find myself a communicator but work is so different. Doing technology renders the drawing differently. I could find a thousand things to value in the new conversations; but truth be told all these technologists don’t add up to a single anthropologist or archeologist I met. I wish that honesty was more of a trait with some of these guys. It seems that any possible sin, no matter how vilified is actually believed in if one can say “its the cost of doing business”. Then all can be validated and certified. The techno-leaders of this brave new culture really should not be leaders. They all separate out too low on the food chain.
And that is frustrating in technology these days. Very frustrating.