There have been games over the years where the participant is given the chance to "phone a friend." We all know the adage is true: "Two heads are better than one." Anytime in my life I have wanted to work on something I struggled with I went in search of a person who knew a lot about it. I talked to them, let them model what they did for me, and asked them to do it with me until I improved. This has been true with cooking, painting, pottery, gardening, and exercising. Writing is my natural strength --- everything else is a work in progress with the support of others who know beyond me and my skills.
At this point if you are in your late forties and beyond, you may consider this introduction to be redundant, a norm for most, and maybe even "that's how things work." But, not so much anymore. It dawned on me the other day on my drive to work after spending the past handful of years working with adults much younger than I am that there has definitely been a shift in this approach. I believe my generation is the last of the “apprenticeship” generations.
Many decades back, even more than a century ago, if a young man was to embark on a career, he would become an apprentice to a craftsman who had mastered the trade. Young ladies would work under the tutelage of older ladies sewing and mending, cooking, and baking. And even in the 1900's a young man who wanted to become a mechanic would work with men who had been mechanics for some time. People who wanted to become a teacher would be mentored by a teacher who had taught for some time. Master gardeners offered workshops and still do if you want to hone in your green thumb skills. It is how things worked.
Not really anymore. It seems there is this thing now called the internet. You can watch a YouTube on how to skin a deer, how to shoe a horse, how to find wild herbs in the forest to eat, or even how to detect the presence of alien encounters. That is correct. You can also hop onto a search engine and find out if that lump on your neck is cyst, a pimple, a swollen node, or the tooth of a twin that was absorbed by your body before birth.
And if you cannot find all you need to find on a YouTube video or a search engine, you can then download one podcast after another listening to people explain how they see things. They can tell you all about how they drank mushroom tea to lose 80 pounds or deciphered that the origin of the common cold was really space dust left on the heels of Bigfoot. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little, but not very much.
You can learn about how it is believed the earth has been sucked into a black hole, or that the Denver International Airport is the Illuminati's headquarters; or that King Charles is a vampire or even how to become a vampire if you are interested in such things. Many people believe based on social media research that we are actually living in a real-life matrix or simulation.
In our current world of information at our fingertips the waves of information are intense and immense. One statement can come from my mouth to a young adult and instantly that phone is grabbed, and the finger begins to scroll. Because if it says it on the internet, it is true? How about learning from those who experienced things before you? How about using common sense to realize that if doctors have gone to years of medical school to study medicine and the treatments for the human body, they may be more inclined to know what they are talking about than a search engine that gives you the top ten reasons you may have a pain beneath your lower right rib cage ranging from a need to burp or cancer?
And how much time do these young people spend researching the research they are grabbing up in mere seconds? They can't believe doctors because they are brainwashed by the pharmaceutical companies. And what algorithms may have brainwashed you to that?
I confess to being quick to look things up when I am working away at my computer. Just thinking about that huge set of encyclopedias we had to drag out back in the day gives me an immediate eye roll. But I hope our world never evolves to the point when we lose sight of how great it is to just "phone a friend."
