It’s easy to forget how much we give up when we send words in place of ourselves. The inability to make eye contact begins to starve communication of its hold on us.
A recent New York Times report describes managers at “fast casual” restaurants assigning staffers to greet new customers with a reassuring and direct “welcome.” Apparently businesses found too many first-timers leaving if no one in charge acknowledged them. It’s a specific application of the more general principle of a direct gaze as the near-certain requirement of interpersonal engagement. Child development specialists remind us that an infant’s search for its parent’s eyes is not only a joy, but an early sign of a child’s readiness to become a social being. Only weeks after birth infants begin to seek out the eyes of their parents. It’s nature’s way of cementing the bond that assures that the many needs of a relatively helpless newborn will be met.
It’s also a given in the business and academic worlds that connecting effectively with another person means returning their eye contact. This can vary from culture to culture. But it’s own norm. Even experts offering advice for choosing a new pet from the pound note that a good bet is usually an animal that gazes on our face. And it’s clearly true that our pets are veterans at the game of shamelessly using those looks of expectation to get us on our feet to provide some useful service.
It seems that the poets were right. We look into the eyes of others as if they were “windows of the soul.”
Try a simple experiment to test the essential nature of direct eye contact. Talk to a friend or relative face to face, but look at one of their ears rather than their eyes. The poor victim will often move to try to adjust to your off-kilter stare. They want to be at the center glidepath of your eyes to find signals of your engagement. Looking away suggests you want to break off the exchange. It seems that the poets were right. We look into the eyes of others as if they were “windows of the soul.”
Of course what is going on is more than reciprocal staring. We have an entire lexicon of signals that are modulated through the eyes and the facial muscles that surround them. Ask an actor to perform the emotions of surprise, concern, fear, or joy. Most of the work of suggesting these inner states is going to happen within the pupils of the eye and the muscles of the eye-lids brows immediately above them. Often these are the only tools a film or television actor has, since they are usually shot in tight closeups. Witness the last half hour of Damien Chazelle’s much-praised La La Land (2016). The final scenes of the former couple are predicated on our noticing eyes that lock as if they still had a shared future.
What is obvious here still needs to be said. The more we shift to mediated forms of personal communication—texting, phoning, e-mail and their equivalents—the more we explicitly violate this fundamental norm of communication. Like most, I delete some unread e-mails with the gusto of a chef cleaning up the debris on a cutting table. It’s easy to forget how much we give up when we send words in place of ourselves. Indifference to the channels we use and an unwillingness to make eye contact with our circle can starve communication of its hold on us.
There are compelling arguments for the need to keep college affordable and accessible. But at what cost?
In an informal reception on my campus, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff wondered why universities would go to the trouble of creating ideal environments for students and teachers to jointly “conspire together,” only to be so indifferent about giving these advantages up for the disembodied world of a computer screen. It was a good observation, and a reminder of how precious the idea of a physically connected academic community actually is. I sometimes wonder if sages a few decades from now will puzzle over why many academics privileged to be a part of thriving bricks-and-mortar campuses were so willing to allow the interpersonal richness of their classrooms to be eclipsed by instruction reduced to the frozen gaze of a monitor.
I regularly remind my students of the durable verity honored by leaders who run many of the world’s great businesses and institutions. As a former head of Sony Pictures noted, success usually comes to those passionate enough to want to be “in the same room” and “breathing the same air” with clients and associates. No CEO expects to successfully lead a powerful organization using Skype. The fact that there are so many people who know they must foster personal relationships surely accounts for why our airports and airliners are packed.
There are indeed compelling arguments about the need to keep college affordable and accessible. But at what cost? We are already seeing students who have grown too comfortable alone in front of a small screen. For many, screen time now rivals sleep time. “Screen addiction” in South Korea that it is now recognized as a full blown mental health problem.
To be sure, online courses are cheaper to run, and may contain some compelling but necessarily “canned” presentations. Often an online “hybrid” course is only nominally “interactive.” Feedback to the student is usually limited, unilateral with the online teacher rather than multi-lateral as happens when people actually meet in the same space.
I know that the training I’ve taken online has been completely forgettable: little different than the maw of electronic content that washes over all of us daily.
The cost problem is also aggravated as well by unnecessary status-striving. Too many families make decisions about higher education as if they were choosing an expensive car. The choice may be more aspirational than practical. Money spent for tuition to an “elite” private college certainly yields an ersatz kind of social prestige. But the renown of many private institutions regretfully lies more in their corporatized athletic programs than their devotion to undergrads.
A lot is at stake for new a first-year student. Will their first classes more closely resemble an airport waiting room prior to an overbooked flight? Will the person in charge be able to learn their names? Answer their questions? Are the best faculty teaching freshman? Are individual class sections intimate enough that it is actually awkward for a student to not participate? There is real genus in the liberal arts college model of “small” classes and dedicated professional teachers. It continues to make possible what communication theorist John Peters sees as the baseline for the richest chances at connection with others: meeting in the same space where we are close enough to touch each other.
