Non-verbal Communication

Many people who know me well are aware that I do not interpret non-verbal communication in many circumstances, and sometimes don't recognize it at all unless I am specifically looking for it. sarahmichigan linked to this essay on a scientific study of flirting. It's fascinating. The description of distance, posture and eye contact has wide application to human interactions far beyond "flirting." For instance, it describes unconscious signaling of discomfort, dislike and rejection. It also describes different social settings with different rules. I've drawn your attention to that before, although not on the topic of flirting.

The internet is teaching us that there are some people who rely too much on non-verbal communication. It's important to recognize when one is poor at simply meaning what they say and saying what they mean, and interpreting others at face value. To me, the word "over-sensitive" has connotations of measuring instrumentation that consistently registers false positives. This is a mild form of paranoia, an affliction which processes coincidental noise and obsessively refuses to give up processing it until it invents a pattern of meaning behind it. This can always be found by a clever enough paranoid. It can be sinister conspiricy, or divine miracles and intelligent design. In the same way, there is only so much information that can be conveyed through non-verbal communication-- good enough to be used as a rough guide-- and the rest is an illusion of love or hostility, assembled from noise. It's best to wait until someone's feeling and intent is spelled out verbally before making important decisions.

My Website Gets 2 Kinds of E-mail

My website tends to get a lot of e-mail from Christians hoping to convert me. I'm in correspondence with another one of them now. The fellow I'm talking to currently is actually reading my site page by page. That's nice of him to do.

I often don't tell you about the e-mail exchanges because many of them are quite boring. My correspondence with a Chicago radio pastor last year was more interesting than most.

I will speak right now to those who consider it useless to "evangelize" atheism. Two things. First, when extremists try to take over our country, put religion in science classes, and ban lifestyles they don't like, your "tolerant" answers are lame and ineffective, OK? Second, and perhaps more importantly, my website also gets another kind of mail-- thank you letters. For every group of Christians who you will point out who get a great deal of enrichment from their devotional life and should not leave it, there is always at least one or two who don't fit in with Christianity, feel like they aren't getting what they need, and face enormous pressure to stay. I would know; I've been there.
( Read more... )