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 LA JOLLA—We live in a hyperculture: the Internet, e-mail, cell phones, and texting are all speeding up our interactions. It’s not only faster, it’s also more complex, leaving behind people like my mother who, when asked to push numbers on the phone in order to continue the interaction, would just hang up. I admit that sometimes I do too.
We tend to lose patience when our expectations are not met instantaneously, and we don’t always tolerate people slower than ourselves. Hyperculture is not only faster, it is also communication-intense and constant. Our society is getting louder and more colorful. Even old black and white movies get colorized. Boom boxes with loud music, rap singing with rapid, incomprehensible words, fast dancing, fast scanning TV programs with the remote, scanning newspapers, and generally always rushing give our days a feeling of hurrying to get to the next activity yet never feeling caught up.
We live in an increasingly narrow circle of friends. We go from our cubicles at work to a commute to our gated communities. Our children come home from school wearing headphones, while we do take-out or get frozen food. There are no more hours in the kitchen with the children all helping with meal preparation and talking about their days. Neighbors don’t just drop in requesting a cup of sugar, it’s just too easy to hop into a car and go to an all night supermarket.
What are the consequences of our hyperculture? Alienation! It’s easier to be rude online, easier to mistreat faceless and voiceless people—and the cost is less civility. Who pays the highest price? The people who are naturally shy.
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Shy people are both born and made. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who has been studying shyness for the past thirty years, has found that shyness is on the increase. On one hand, there seems to be a shyness gene characterized by excessive self-consciousness, low self-esteem, and anticipation of rejection, but, shyness is also induced by our culture and now especially by our hyperculture.
When we lose patience with slowness, the shy who take time to warm up lose out. When we notice only the loudest, the laid back get short shrift. As we become less polite and more impatient, the shy are the first to be excluded and even badly treated.
As our lives increase in complexity our level of anxiety also rises, and we see a polarization of behavior with both an increase in aggression with a loss of manners or withdrawal.
Shy people are often insecure and worry about how they look, what to say, and how to say it to whom and when. They need more time to warm up, to adjust to new or stressful situations. The number one problem for the shy or insecure person is starting a relationship. At a social gathering, they tend to compare themselves to the socially most active person instead of looking for people like themselves. They wait to be approached and believe that anything they say has to be perfect, witty, or profound. They believe others are not only watching them but also judging them.
The first strategy is to remember that “you don’t have to be interesting; you have to be interested.” In other words, instead of wondering what to say, ask questions: “How do you know the host/hostess?” “Did you read the paper today about…?”
The best strategy of all is to focus on the other person as opposed to focusing on oneself. Instead of being painfully aware of one’s own emotional state, try to identify what others may be feeling. And of course, practice. Get yourself into situations where you can start conversations. Become a volunteer, join other shy people in self-help groups.
And remember, you are sane, it is our hyperculture that is insane
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