Dialogue-Part One-Barcodes
Dialogue
Part One-Barcodes
One of my favorite pastimes is
shopping-especially for books. I go into a bookstore, browse around, looking at
the spines of the books on the shelves. If I find a title that intrigues me, I
read the back cover of the book to see if it’s something I’m interested in. If
I’m interested, I then look at the price.
When in a grocery store, home improvement
store, big box store, there is one thing that all the products in that store
have in common: they have a barcode. It has happened, upon occasion, to find
an item that has a barcode but no price marked on it. In some stores, there are
several scanners throughout the store to scan the barcode of the item. Upon
scanning the item, you find out its price, the weight or ounces of the item,
the SKU number or identifying numerical code for that item, and more.
By simply scanning the barcode of the
item, you can find every piece of information about that item, everything you
need to know to make a purchasing decision regarding that item.
But, that is for a thing, a tangible item in a
grocery store. What about people? How do we know everything there is to know
about someone?
To look at a person, you don’t know anything about them. You
might have guesses, beliefs, biases, and perhaps prejudices, judged solely by
looking at the person; yet, nothing about that person is known for certain.
A
person’s religion, sexual orientation, political views, stance on abortion
rights, whether they’re an early riser, or a night owl, prefer dogs or cats,
all of these things are not always known on sight.
There’s an old adage that comes to mind:
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It is
easy to make assumptions and judgments on someone just by looking at them. That is when prejudices, biases, and
stereotypes come into play.
We make assumptions about one another
solely based on sight. We make up stories within our own minds to rationalize how
another person looks. We create stories, pre-conceived notions, to explain
their behavior. But how often are we actually right in our assumptions?
I am reminded of scenes from movies with
dystopian futures where cyborgs and robots are in a battle against humanity. In
almost every one of those movies, a robot comes across a human, and scans it to
determine if it’s a threat.
For example, here’s a clip from the movie
“Iron Man 2.” In this scene, a fleet of cyborgs has gone rogue. One of the
machines scans a being, which happens to be a child wearing an Iron Man mask;
because the cyborg is not human, it presumes the child to be Iron Man
himself, and therefore a threat.
A perfect example: me. Here is a picture
of me.
What can you come to know about me from
looking at me?
Am I fluent in Spanish? What about my
singing voice? Do I own cats or dogs? What are my political leanings? What is
my religion? Do I like horror movies? Do I like sports? Do I like opera? Do I
like movies? Do I like music? Do I like literature? Who’s my favorite singer?
What’s my favorite kind of pizza? What is my sexual orientation?
If a cyborg scanned me, here’s what
information would come up:
We cannot assume we know anything about
anyone else. It is through dialogue with one another that we come to know one
another. We come to know our similarities, things we hold in common, and how we
differ. We cannot assume, or presume to know what is in each other’s hearts
without interacting with one another.
I have made the mistake in the past of
assuming that, if a person looks like me, they have the same morals and values
as I do, and that they think the same things I believe. This has been proven to
be anything but true.
It would be wonderful if humanity had
barcodes, to tell one another this vital information about ourselves. Like in
this photo I found recently:
In this photo, the barcode is scanning
the person’s gender, romantic, and sexual orientation flags, and making a
determination about them. The caption reads: “Beep Beep: You’re Gay!”
Unless we are given imprinted technology, until we are given barcodes and scanners, we cannot begin to know anything about one another, nor
can we come to know anything about one another, without engaging in dialogue
with one another.
Next I will discuss the crucial part of
dialogue, the charge.
© Esperanza Habla All Rights Reserved
Comments
Post a Comment