Virginia Shea's First Commandment - Remember the Human

The first and, in my opinion, the most important commandment of Virginia Shea is to always remember the human. In other words, this commandment implies that although you use an electronic gadget for communication, this does not mean that you are communicating with a robot on the other side of the screen. Every person has feelings and when you do not communicate with someone directly, that is, you do not have eye contact and you do not see the facial expressions of a person, at such moments it can be problematic to understand a person and therefore you can easily offend someone. Even if you did not carry anything bad, all the same, your words can be pulled out of context, because each person perceives information in his or her own way. Therefore, I believe that when writing, you always need to understand the person and put yourself in his place. If somebody wrote to me, then, for instance, I would not want to receive messages at a later time, when I am resting or sleeping. Or I would not like to be rushed to answer, because some responses take time to think. Also, as an example, I would not like to receive tactless messages that violate personal boundaries. All these things can cause discomfort to the interlocutor and can be perceived as very rude. And there are many such examples.

 

I have a different experience of correspondence and I can say that it was both successful and unsuccessful. For all the time of correspondence, I had only one situation that confused me and put me in a not very comfortable position. I communicated in English, which is not my native language, with a person whom I have never met and who lives in another country. Our correspondence was quite formal and I treated my interlocutor with the utmost respect, just as he treated me. I used exclusively formal English for correspondence, however, my interlocutor reacted quite sharply to one of my messages, since he perceived the words from my message as an insult. In no case did I want to offend anyone and could not even imagine that there could be such a reaction to my words and two unremarkable words would be perceived as an insult. I explained to my interlocutor that I did not want to offend him in any way and we resolved this situation. However, this is a clear example of how people might perceive your message. If it was a live conversation, I do not think my interlocutor would have reacted in the same way. We do not know who is sitting on the other side of the screen and even if we are as tolerant as possible, we can still seem “rude” to our interlocutor. But we are just people and each person can perceive information in his or her own way. Here you need to understand this and find an approach to each other.

All in all, online correspondence is “communication with closed eyes” and during such communication, various problems and incidents can always arise. But we need to learn to put ourselves in the place of the interlocutor, to understand him because we communicate with the same people as we do, who have their own feelings and their own perceptions.

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