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The new norm?

That a look at these two Presidential debates, the first one was in 1960 between JFK and Nixon, whilst the second one happened recently in the year 2020. See the vibes surrounding the two debates. Without a shadow of a doubt, there is much professionalism and decency in the former whereas in the latter we only see crass behaviour and lack of common decency.



In our formative years, we were taught that to listen and to let another to speak are common decencies. Only the immature and ill-mannered interferes one's conversation we were told. We also trained to fight facts with facts, to argue it out like gentlemen in decorum, without being personal or hitting below the belt.

Somewhere along the way, while we were napping, a lot of things changed.

The '90s brought in the internet culture and work ethics of the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Workers were expected to dress down to work. Work time needs to be flexible, they said. Jobs is famously known to walk around bare feet and is said to stretch out his naked feet on the office tables whilst discussing work matters with his contemporaries. Seniority went out of the window when open office concept came to being.

Smartphones did not make people smarter. It only built them a personalised echo chamber for them to wallow around in the sweetness of their pixelated self. The 'self-generation' that did not give two hoots about the feelings of the about the other morphed. Under the cloak of anonymity, they would swashbuckler their thoughts with the sorcery of keyboards which are not their views actually but mere parroting of the hidden hands of the cabal.

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