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Title: Why We Don't Talk To Each Other Anymore : The De-Voicing of Society by John Locke ISBN: 0684855747 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.25

Rating: 5
Summary: from the bottom-up
Comment: Having read the other reviews, it is evident that the main argument against reading this book is that it reduces today's complex problems into an interpersonal issue that is "too simplistic".

I don't deny that our problems as people and as societies are complex, but I do not think that such complexities are enough to dismiss the interpersonal elements that form our social foundations, even if they seem relatively insignificant. I find that akin to telling a person that "they don't matter", that any one person is incapable of forming change.

This is a book. Any copy of the book is designed for one reader at a time. So it is supposed to hit the reader as a person, in a grass-roots sense. I found that it was a good explanation when I observed my own behaviors and manner of thinking. I'm a young adult; and I would much rather help myself, my family, and my community from the bottom-up than the top-down.

I think this book greatly reinforced that attitude.

Rating: 3
Summary: A Face To Face
Comment: Myopic verbosity abounds. All this book is saying is let us start somewhere. Is it not better to do something, or shall we just arrogantly complain and spout off with no suggestion of solution? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the vastly growing problem. Thusly, a plethora of global businesses e.g. (Delta, AMD, JPX, Ford et al) noted from Fortune Magazine, have recognized the importance of old fashioned face to face meetings in a continuum of raising precious competitive sales volume. Read this book for yourself. Make your own decisions. Important for business managers.

Rating: 1
Summary: Dangerously Miasmic View Of Contemporary Problems!
Comment: After reading this book I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. I felt like laughing because this book is a silly, superficial, and self-important tome aimed at simplistic answers to very complicated cultural issues. Like a lot of other silly books like "Bobos In Paradise", "Stiffed", and a veritable armload of other self-help books, this is a pedestrian attempt by someone who seems singularly unaware of the magnitude or meaning of the phenomena he so entertainingly describes. On the other hand, I felt like crying because he encourages simple answers to naïve people, who then breathlessly announce to the world we all just need to talk to each other to make things better. Oh, if things were only that simple!

While I have no problem with what he said, and must admit he writes both well and entertainingly, he seems to view everything around him exclusively in terms of interpersonal dynamics, which is not surprising given his background as a psycho-linguist. But to advance a thesis arguing that all we need to do to begin to effectively set aside the tortured and complicated evils of the 20th century is to "just talk to each other, really talk" is patent nonsense, and he should certainly know better. It makes little differnce whether we talk face to face or over electronic devices, most of what we say is of such little consequence and has so little to do with anything that matters that the particular technology employed is close to irrelevant. The fact that he apparently doesn't understand this, or at least does not specifically acknowledge the primary role of the virtual revolution of social and cultural changes associated with the rise of technology and technological innovation in the manifest woes that confront us, has the unfortunate consequence of misinforming and confusing people looking for simplistic answers to devilishly complex cultural realities. Sad as it is to say, we can't just kiss this booboo and make it go away. To suggest we can is just plain wrong.

Thus, getting back to basics, as another reviewer claims we need to do, is a ridiculously reductionistic oversimplification of what we need to do to rescue ourselves from the mischief of ourselves. It reminds me of Rodney King's plaintive plea asking "can't we just all get along?" Or, as Pogo once said, the enemy is us. Yet it is precisely because we are children born into and raised as natives in this schizophrenic material culture that we are singularly unable to see beyond the confines of our own quite specifically organized way of looking at, interpreting, and interacting with reality that we are now so painfully dissociated and alienated from each other. Everything within our contemporary cultural environment serves to guide us away from each other and to regard each other with suspicion, distrust, and growing hostility. In such a late stage of profound social dissolution, to suggest we can just "talk our way out of it' by being real with each other is to deny what the culture, and we as members of it, have become. It is also a dangerous delusion to suppose it is as easy as all that. Dancing down the yellow brick road just won't work. This is a silly and wrong-headed book. Avoid it.

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