Dehumanization in Today's World

         Dehumanization. Roll the word around in your mind. What sort of pictures does it bring forth from your memory? Perhaps an old textbook photograph of bodies being burned at a Nazi camp such as Auschwitz. Maybe you think of the more modern atrocities being committed in African countries, the most notable being Darfur. But that isn’t all that dehumanization can mean. It can also be used to describe the automation of modern society, the removal of that “human feel” that is slowly being lost as the owners of mom-and-pop restaurants start to pass away, with no one carrying on their traditions.
         If you have seen the movie It’s A Wonderful Life, you probably noticed the teller windows in the bank. If you go to a bank today, you might see a video screen and camera through which you communicate with the teller, or it might be completely automated, no visible people at all. While I’m not saying this doesn’t provide convenience and safety in some cases, it takes away human contact and the chemistry of interacting with other people.
         In the relatively recent past, to find a suitable mate a person would meet someone they have an attraction to at school, ask them to a dance or a movie, and see where the relationship goes from there. The process would usually take a couple weeks and several occasions of seeing each other before deciding to “go steady,” as it was once called.
         Today, people may only see each other once, or even not at all, before letting technology take over for old-fashioned contact. Perhaps a mutual friend introduces two people, and the two only meet in person once before deciding to become an item. It’s far easier to fake who you are in a text message or an email than it is to be someone different while sitting at a dinner table with someone.
         In addition to ceasing human contact, technology has also had adverse affects on our education. Less than half of white teens can read at a level to understand a newspaper, and that number goes down for minorities. Why has the average reading ability dropped over the years? In short, technology. Use of internet and hours of watching television both have an inverse relationship with the average reading score. The more you watch TV, the worse you are at reading.
         Do we really want a bookless society, like that of Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” or a dictatorship straight out of Orwell’s “1984?” What do they have in common? The people were controlled and free thought was non-existent. We are committing ourselves to such a future, because the basis of free thought is knowing the thoughts of others. To form ideas, you must first know other ideas. And without reading, where will these ideas originate? Will you get fresh plans from television or radio? That's highly unlikely, because these two media sources are the most regulated and restricted, far more stringent than constraints placed upon any form of print.
         Some people may consider ideas like these extreme. They may be, but not a bad extreme. Was it extreme when the founders of our country revolted to escape a monarchy? Yes, but it was extremity for the greater good. These were knowledgeable men that revolted. Many of them could read, and many used print, such as The Federalist Papers, to explain their extremism. Any country controlling what its citizens can read must be declared communist. That goes against all ethics that our free nation was based on. Without free thought, there would be no United States of America. Furthermore, without free thought, the spirit of freedom will be lost forever.