far away.

I was recently with my friend Josh and we were reminiscing about a class on the history of war from back in the day. The gist is this: war used to consist of hand to hand combat. You felt the rock crunch skull, you witnessed the pain, you looked in the eyes of the life you were taking, and you felt the full responsibility of death.

As technology advanced, the combat become further and further away… bows and arrows, guns, eventually leading to an era where a jet at 30,000 feet drops bombs on targets the pilot will never see, or a drone operated in Las Vegas drops a payload on a target in Afghanistan.

This has repercussions.

In a similar vein, and just as important, if you wanted to critique someone you used to have to do it to their face. If we had a problem, we had to utter actual words from our mouth, watch them impact a fellow human and see the pain in their eyes. We then had to listen to their response and come up with one of our own.

Criticism was conversation.

As technology advanced, the criticism and conversations became further and further away… eventually leading to dropping hot topic, defensive, critique bombs on someone we have never met, will never meet, and from the comfort of our own desk.

Most of us don’t have as much control over war as we do our conversations. Resist the further away stuff. Move in a little closer… it’ll do wonders for the humanity in all of us as well as the power of our opinions.