Lonely tunes

Psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle argues;

“We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.”

Online personas do not reflect our true self. They are edited, groomed, reshaped version of our identities.

In real life we have accents, tones, gestures, we say silly or embarrassing things, we get emotional, we can be boring, even irritating at times.

But only by making a real and intimate conversation with someone we may discover what we are seeking about ourselves or we may be able to help others to solve their issues.

Turkle also makes a distinction between ”being alone” (a necessity for reflection) and ”being lonely” (an undesirable state of mind):

“If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.”

Excessive social networking does not cure loneliness. On the contrary by not letting ourselves to be alone we aggravate our loneliness, and we may gradually loose our ability to connect with ourselves, our desires and wisdom we once were seeking.

www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html