To suggest that it is impossible for a given individual is different from suggesting that it is difficult which is different still from suggesting that it is suggested.
I have personally benefitted massively from deconstructing the walls that my parents and peers suggested I build as a child. It was work to do, and is work yet to be done, but I value it.
I am no longer angry in traffic when "the jackass can't see I'm late" or whatever other silliness. I no longer dread the stench and noise of public transportation. Both are natural. Just the way humans are. Being perturbed by it is a choice that I've decided I could do without.
Minus some socio-behavioral-mental deviation from the norm, and even then considering advances that can be made with therapy...I just don't see it. Why should I be bothered by people on the train when I know that it is possible to just...not?
At some point of my life, I realized I can’t assume or rely on the idea that other people will enjoy living their lives like I do. So, what I find admirable and something to thrive might not be the thing they’re looking for.
I'm not particularly bothered by those things either, but I'm a large man and people don't tend to mess with me much. I can afford to be casual about it (within reason). Not everyone has that luxury.
But it is, like so many of these things, a skill. You have to practice it.
I think that putting earbuds in and checking out of the world around you is a really awful thing to do as your default in life. As a "sometimes" thing it's fine, even healthy. There's a lot of talk of public transit in this thread. If people do it during riding transit, and not really at other times, I'm fine with that. But so many people have their earbuds in before they leave their front door, every day, every week, and they don't come back out.
And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
> And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe the rest of the world is unhealthy and this is a way to reclaim some personal healthiness.
-- Evelyn Waugh
Paraplegics don't have the use of their limbs. Acting as if "sensory issues" are in the same category is grossly insensitive.
Stating that using this kind of technology is "unhealthy" both for a person and society is a pretty bold claim that I think is pretty ridiculous.
Most of the dozens and dozens of people I see in daily life sealed away in their earbud pockets do not appear in any way to need to do that. I am certainly not seeing the full picture of every single person's life, but I do not think that every last one of them is incapable of meaningfully engaging with the world.
You're assuming all this is "really really unhealthy" but what is the justification for that opinion?
And when I go to the park and have a run, of the 100 people I might see there and on the way, we're closer to 50/100 than 5 or 99. So I think we have a problem.
The flaw in the whole argument is that somehow people are having less "meaningful" conversations because they headphones on. I'm sorry but you're not going to have a meaningful conversation (or any at all) with the 100 people who are also actively running at the park whether or not they had headphones on. I still don't see it as a problem if 100% of the people running had headphones on; they are there to run! It's like saying there's a problem because 50 out of 100 people at the park having running shoes on. If you've pre-decided that running shoes are a problem then that's a big concern otherwise it's just nothing.
For me, if I didn't have headphones on I wouldn't be going for a walk/run at all. That one thing has drastically changed how I approach exercise in general and I would do less without them. That said, I do occasionally enjoy a nice walk/run without any headphones but as the exception rather than the rule.