Search Results for: The New Social Etiquette

Someone asked me on Facebook the other day why I didn’t bring Red with me when I went into a convenience store to have coffee with my friend Ali? She said she was just curious. I am often asked that question when I post a photo of me without a dog in it.

I told her the truth. The answer is no. I don’t want Red to be with me everywhere I go, and neither do many other people.

This morning, I  saw a new report about a woman who tried to take an “Emotional Needs Peacock” on board an airline and was refused permission. She was one of more than 250,000 people who attempted or did bring “Emotional Needs” dogs, or snakes or lizards, or birds or rabbits or ferrets or rats on board airlines last year.

For once, I had good thoughts about an airline. This inspired me to write about the ethics and etiquette of exploiting dogs or other animals in that way, and completely disregarding the needs and well-being of humans in the process. We are rapidly losing all of our boundaries when it comes to dogs.

They will suffer for it, not us.

I have had three therapy dogs – Lenore, Izzy, Red, (Gus in training) in my life.

They were not  Emotional Needs or Emotional Therapy dogs. They were just therapy dogs. Lenore dropped out (I fired her) because of undue interest in the food of hospice patients. Izzy and Red were stellar.

Red is the best.

It took me several years to train these two dogs, and both passed a rigorous temperament exam from a vet and a rigorous dog therapy certification organization in Vermont. Red wears his ID, number and badge wherever he goes.

I am no Therapy Dog snob. Having a therapy dog does not make me superior, or even equal, to other people.

I don’t need a vest or handkerchief of flashing light or bumper sticker announcing there is a therapy dog on board and requesting caution  (it’s apparently okay to crash into a car with regular dogs on board.)

Red, to be clear, is not my Emotional Needs dog, he is a dog trained carefully to meet the emotional needs of others. That was the idea.

If I couldn’t ride on an airplane without a peacock or rabbit or snake, I think the answer for me would be to get more help than a peacock or rabbit might offer me.

I meet a lot of people all the time who ask me if they can do therapy work with their dogs, but they rarely, if ever, do the training or pass the certification test, which examines the dogs in all sorts of chaotic and even aggressive simulated circumstances. I know many people who simply walk their dogs into hospitals and elderly care facilities  and are astonished when the dogs gets spooked, jumps on people, knocks them over, or runs off out of control.

Many people have told me they know their dogs will make great therapy dogs because they have been abused. I never respond. What I am thinking is that a dog who is chronically abused is very likely to make a bad therapy dog through no fault of their own. They have frightened or injured in ways we can’t really know, and thus we can’t protect them from surprises.

It is a great thing to bring a dog to comfort people, it is a foolish thing to think any dog can do this work because you love him. The most  terrifying words in the dog universe – they are often heard – are “Sorry! He’s never done that before!”

What is Red trained to do? He will not approach any person without a hand signal from me. He is trained to refuse any offer of food, as food can distract a therapy dog from people, and ruin them. He is trained to never jump on anyone, the elderly or people in hospice care are easily knocked over, their skin tears easily, they be frightened badly by the sudden movements of animals, even run and fall.

He is trained to look away from people who look away from him. He is trained to sit quietly for hours if necessary.

He will not bark at or response to cats or fight with other dogs. He is not startled by sudden and unfamiliar movements o by sirens, fireworks or other loud and sharp noises.

I am proud of Red, I trained him well.

But he didn’t need to learn to be gentle and intuitive, that is his nature, the foundation of his work. I could built on his nature, not create it.

People who haul Peacocks onto planes because they can’t bear to fly without them are doing great harm to the therapy  dogs who are so carefully trained and who do so much great work, because if the airlines ban animals, then so will hospitals and hospice facilities and assisted care organization.  They are turning therapy work into another TV and Internet joke, a ridicule channel.

Their lawyers would love to get dogs out of most institutions, they are potential liabilities, especially if they are not trained or certified or vaccinated. Everywhere we go, we present a rabies and health certificate from the vet..

Do I bring Red everywhere I go? No, I don’t.

I don’t take him on vacation, I consider my vacations partly a vacation from dogs. I can sleep late, walk where I want, and don’t have to carry those plastic bags around.

Why would I bring Red into a convenience store? Some people are afraid of dogs, some find them unhealthy near food. Some just don’t want to eat near them. I’m happy to have some time away from Red. I don’t need for Red to everywhere with me, he’s quite happy in his crate or lying by the wood stove.

At the dentist’s office, they always ask for Red, and I bring him where he is invited, never to where he isn’t. I never presume people want to be close to my dogs or touch them if they don’t ask. Some people are terrified of dogs, many gave been bitten or traumatized by them.

Am I so needy that I can’t go into a convenience store and have a cup of coffee by myself? Or take a walk by myself? Or go shopping by myself? The Emotional Needs epidemic is not good for dogs or people. And nothing is free. If you want a dog to connect to people in a positive and nourishing way, it takes work, not a warm and sticky impulse.

Taking a ferret or rat onto a place to meet the emotional needs of the passenger gives therapy work with dogs a bad lame, and will inevitably lead to restrictions and bureaucratic obstacles. A hospital executive told me a few months ago that every hospital or health care administrator hates dealing with animals  (even if they love them) because of possible infections or other behavioral problems. Most would be  relieved to keep them out.

Lawyers hate any kind of lawsuit risk, and I have met two people in hospice facilities who were bitten by dogs who had “never done that before,” and were neither trained or certified before. The facilities were both sued. The dogs owners said they knew they could be therapy dogs because they were so nice.

The Emotional Needs Animal could use offer administrators the very excuse they’ve been needing.

There are professional social workers, psychologists and therapists who can help people overcome fears like aviophobia, the fear of flying.  A good therapist will probably have more treatment ideas than a peacock, and a visit to a counselor will not frighten, disturb or anger humans entitled to their privacy and security.

When I go to a friend’s house for dinner, I do not need a dog there to worry about, walk or coo over. I like being able to talk with people without distraction. And yes, I do love people more than dogs, I’ll be happy to admit it.

I love my dogs and enjoy my time with them, I also believe in boundaries. It seems hundreds of thousands of people are losing their boundaries when it comes to animals and traveling and therapy work with animals. I did not bring any dog to New Mexico, and had a blast.

This therapy work is precious and important work, and Red and I worked hard to learn it,  it gives me worms to see it trivialized and exploited in so thoughtless a way. I always want to stand in the shoes of other people. A lot of people, perhaps even a majority of people, do not wish to encounter dogs everywhere they go.

I am one of them. Dogs were never meant to be our personal therapists.  That is something people want, not dogs.

No, Red does not need to go everywhere I go. We need to keep some space between us.

Last Saturday, I had a long list of chores to do, and Maria and I had to meet a friend at a local cafe. We had a lot of trash to dispose of, and we were busy for much of the day, and I didn’t get to the blog until later at night.

I went to put up a photograph around 8 p.m., and I was surprised to see a Facebook message from a name I did not know or recognize: “it’s unusual,” Dana wrote,”that you have not posted anything today. I’m just checking in to see if everything is okay. Perhaps you are just taking a much-needed break.”

I winced at this message. Did I  really have to explain to a total stranger that I was busy that morning, was it really anyone else’s business? My mother did that to me all the time when I failed to call her often enough. Is everything all right? You must be sick or in trouble, or you would have called me? I didn’t like it then either.

I saw a second message from Maria, who was traveling  to upstate New York on her vacation. “My boyfriend and I are going to Sartoga for a long weekend starting 8/24,” she wrote, “I was wondering if we could come by and meet your family.” A third person messaged Maria that same day, a reader said she was also heading to the area for her family vacation and planned to stop by and meet us and the animals. She said she hoped the visit would not be too disruptive.

Another message was from a woman who was unhappy that I was using a new lens with a softer focus. “I don’t like the softer focus,” she said, “I much prefer the lenses you were using.” She was one of a number of people who didn’t like the new lens. And who told me about it as I struggled to figure out how I could make it work.

Although the third message was more presumptuous, all three messages were polite and at a glance. They were from nice people who all said they liked my work and Maria’s work and just wanted to meet us or know if I was all right. It is hard to argue there is anything wrong with that, people often find me too sensitive or unreasonable.

That night, I wrote about the impact of unwanted advice and messages from strangers that presumed to be intimate with  me, or to approach me as close friends and family might. I wrote about creative people and the process of creativity, and their vulnerability.

William Benson messaged me right away: “When you post on social media, you are essentially “running it up the flagpole” to see who salutes. Not everyone will. It doesn’t change the fact that you were the one who “put it out there” where it will be judged–like it or not. If you don’t want controversy, don’t put it out there. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. And so what?”

I would say Mr. Benson’s message is the view of many millions of people on social media, who now have access to almost everyone in the world and thus presume the right to offer unsolicited advice or commentary or to let me know they are dropping by or to ask me why I haven’t posted on my blog for a few hours, as if that are things they have a right to say or ask or know.

I’m supposed to just suck it up, according to Mr. Benson. He believes that if a creative person posts a photograph on his blog, or a painting or a poem, then he is “asking for it,” and courting trouble,  just like a woman who wears a beautiful dress to a college party. Since I “put it out there,” I am automatically inviting controversy, and if I don’t want that, then it goes without saying I should just shut up and find some other work.

I do not compare myself to them, but I’ve read a lot of memoirs of great writers – John Updike, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Flannery O’Connor, Joan Didion – and none of them ever described the kind of hazing ritual Mr. Benson tells me is inevitable in our time and that comes with being creative. They all wrote eloquently of the need for creative people to have a sense of distance and space in their heads, where else would their creativity come from? Surely not by exchanging notes on Facebook Messenger.

On social media, it is widely accepted that if one chooses to live an open or examined life, then one forgoes any right to privacy or even civility. Any stranger is thus granted the right to say anything he or she pleases, the writer or artist  accepts a world without boundaries, manners, courtesy or privacy, or just goes away, a whine-ass deserving of anything he gets.

In Mr. Benson’s new world, and the world of many others, people like me no longer have the right to put our work “out there” without expecting it to be attacked, and the people “out there” have every right to make suggestions, expect intimacies, or offer criticisms.  What, after all, do I expect? And so what?

This is a very new way to look at the loss of respect and dignity and privacy, that’s what,  and I found it was troubling me through the weekend, as it often has, and yet I didn’t quite have a name for it.

Until today.

The idea of personal space is commonly discussed among therapists and counselors and social workers. It is usually used to define a physical boundary between one person or another. In the presidential debates, it appeared to some that Donald Trump frequently entered the personal space of Hillary Clinton in order to make her uncomfortable, which she later said was just what happened. Many victims of sexual assault or other kinds of intimidation refer to the sense of being invaded by people who get too close to them, and enter their intimate space.

This violation is what I feel so often, and write about.

Social media has obliterated any notion of a personal space, Millions of people violate the space of other people every day by presuming closeness, getting too close, acting in boorish, hostile, rude and inappropriate dialogues that would be considered unacceptable face-to-face or in someone’s home.

There is a stalker who has been invading my space for years in an especially hostile and harassing kind of way, rather than prosecute or assault her, which a lawyer urged me to do,  I learned not to care about her or think about her, and she lost her sting and went away. I suppose that is the challenge  here. But that is the bittersweet challenge for the victims of harassment or violations of space, or of assault. In order to survive, they must learn not to feel, they must deaden themselves rather than feel alive.

My blog and social media pages are my home online, and I believe no one has the right to say things to me or violate my personal space and dignity there any more than they would sitting on my porch or my living room. No one would ever walk up to me in my house, and say, “hey, I hated the photo you put up today. I don’t like it, I prefer you used a different lens.” No stranger would ever walk up to me on the street and say, “hey, I tried to call you yesterday but  you weren’t home. Where were you?”

That would be the last contact we would have, yet online people are  furious at me for objecting to be treated in this way. In the new ethics, everyone is a movie star, everyone is fair game. But this week, I learned a lot about myself.

This morning, I got a message from A via e-mail, she wrote: “Dear Jon, Unsolicited opinions are violations of personal space for those whose sensitivities are highly attuned and perhaps conditioned by events. As a writer and a person living “the examined life,” how could it be otherwise for you? It seems to me that with your public blog, you are doing calisthenics, and I am in awe of your stamina and commitment.”

I do have a lot of stamina and commitment. And my work and photography requires that my sensibilities are very attuned, and often conditioned by events.

But I know so many younger and more fragile people – including many women (more than men), and many creatives and wannabe creatives – who don’t have a lot of stamina. I have met and spoken with hundreds of people, including many talented students,  who are afraid to publish blogs, share their images or poems or stories online in any public way because of these kinds of violations and the “you’re asking for it argument:”  If you put yourself out there,  you are asking for it and deserve it.

The loss of the work and thinking and energy of these people is incalculable and in many ways, a cultural tragedy, especially on the medium that was supposed to make ideas and information free. It ought not require stamina and commitment to speak freely and openly or creatively on a blog or anywhere on the Internet. Or anywhere else.

A put her finger on it. It bothers me every time my personal space is invaded.

When people forcing advice and opinions on me that I do not seek or want. When people feel they have the right to know what I am doing for a few hours if I don’t blog. Or presume to demand of me the rituals of family. Who enter my personal space without thought or consideration.

They threaten creativity by offering criticisms and comments that would, in any personal context, be considered rude and inappropriate.

Facebook promotes the idea that we are all friends. But friends don’t force unwanted advice on other friends. They don’t invade the personal space of other people by presuming intimacies. They don’t assume they can come and meet our families because they are passing through, as if we have no work or privacy to consider. They bother me because they feel like violations of my space.

I have made many true friendships that stem from my work online. They take time, consideration and respect. Facebook doesn’t get to anoint them with an emoticon.  Knowing someone on Facebook Messenger doesn’t entitle people to send messages tha say, “hi, how are you doing this morning?”

Facebook Messenger maybe the most disturbing and invasive assault on personal space since humans learned to speak and be greedy.

I must  admit that in my early life, I suffered greatly and terrifyingly from people who invaded my personal space and then more.  I realize that I get disturbed when I feel my personal space is violated, I recognize this as a trauma reflex, and this happens so often that i only rarely mention it or write about it.

This observation about personal space has awakened me a bit, and helped me to understand myself in a deeper and fuller way, I see the ways in which I have been damaged and still bleed, and I understand why these wounds are re-opened a thousand times a week. It does take stamina, doesn’t it.

And I certainly never think of quitting. Or shutting up.

Quite the contrary, I hope this discussion helps other people to affirm themselves and learn to be strong. Because respect for personal space is not a widely-held ethos on social media or the messaging systems of the Internet. If we are to keep this sacred space, we must demand it and fight for it ourselves, facing off against the vast hordes of people who think we are asking for trouble if we speak openly and honestly about our lives.

That is something worth fighting against.

So I’m especially grateful for A, who understands this idea and respects it and put a name on it that I never thought of. It helps me to understand myself better and hopefully, to grow. It does require calisthenics I suppose, this is a new way for me to see it.

Thanks for sharing this trip with me.

I think a new idea that is not dangerous or troubling to somebody is not worth of being called an idea at all.

For the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with my new daguerreotype Lens, my Achromat 2.9/64 from Lomography.

It is an updated version of the first optical lens used to take photographs in the 1830’s, and has been widely praised by photographers for its soft focus, otherworldly quality and dreamy effect. It is also a very difficult lens for people like me to use, as it offers none of the conveniences and miraculous tools of the digital camera.

it will take me weeks, even months to figure out how to use it well. I couldn’t begin to tell you if the new photos are good or not, how could I know?

The achromat lens is a dream come true for me, it allows me to experience of taking pictures in the very way the world’s first photographers did, only with color and much improved glass. At the time this lens was created, most people had no idea what their grandparents looked like. One day we could freeze time and space forever.

The original photographers sought to create images that were timeless, ethereal, cinematographic. The phone and digital revolution has opened photography up to everyone, which is wonderful, but that sense of dream and magic has been lost. Once in awhile, I would love to create it, the idea is very exciting to me, more perhaps than I can say.

There is no auto focus or image stabilizer or electronics of any kind on the lens, I have to take a picture pretty much the same way the first photographers did, the way the Civil War photographers did. Having a digital camera is a lot like having an Apple computer, you do nice work but you never really know how it works. The Apple tech support people do all the thinking for  you.

The soft focus forces the viewer to pause, and it was interesting that so many of the messages I got from people who didn’t really like the lens didn’t want to pause. “These photos are too much like what I see without my glasses,” wrote one blog reader, “I just rush past them and get to the digital photos.”

It should no longer surprise me, really, that so many people would choose to offer me their opinions of this new exercise in creativity, I got an awful lot of messages from people this weekend saying they didn’t care for the soft focus or the dreamy backgrounds, it was just not something they wanted or needed. They are used to very clear images, and want to keep seeing them.

Fair enough.

Creativity of course, is not just the challenge of the creator, but also of the viewer and reader. Many people do not like change, and do not like to be challenged in their busy lives. Their Iphone will not ever annoy them in this way. This new lens is hard for me, but is also difficult in some ways, for you. It asks a bit more of us than the digital image, which is all about clarity.

I got a lot of messages complaining about the soft focus, but they were not nasty or enraged.  I only lost my temper at one woman who sent me a message saying “I do not prefer the out of focus photographs.” I did write back and asked her if I requested her opinion, and did she want a refund. (The photographs are free to anyone.) Still, I’ve come a long way.

I suspect she did not like my attempt at irony, but I remembered I was evolving and moving beyond petty pique and accepting the new rules of online/social media etiquette, which is that there are no rules or inhibition or etiquette, whatever pops up in your head leaves your fingers and flies out into the ether.

I used to get angrier at this new American instinct to offer unsolicited advice and opinions, I am learning to cope with it, my grandmother taught me it was rude to offer unwanted opinions, she pinched my cheeks hard when I did it, but that was long before social media, when unsolicited advice is seen by many people  not as rudeness, but as a Constitutional right. If you dare to put it out there, you are asking for it.

I can hardly imagine someone walking up to me on the street or sitting  in my living room saying, “hey, I see you got a new lens, I don’t like the pictures at all.” In my town, that would still be considered bad manners. Online, it is simply part of the “friendship.” I would personally never say those things to a stranger, and certainly not to a “friend,” unless I was asked. It seems rude to me, even when there is no intent to be rude.

I have often expressed my gratitude that Henry David Thoreau did not have to sit on the edge of his pond and read messages from Facebook and e-mails on his writing, his musing and survival decisions. I still belong to the Church Of Mind Your Own Business, but we can’t seem to keep a pastor or a congregation.

There is truth in this idea that I am asking for it of course, as any author, artist or creator knows. I have been putting it out there for more than 30 years, and I love the challenge of trying something new, even when people don’t like it, even when it is not good. How can you grow if you aren’t willing to fail, and publically?

Putting it out there takes courage, it is the mind’s equivalent of jumping off the cliff. Fear of criticism has killed more books and creative careers than any dictator or fascist.

Getting a new lens, especially one as tricky as this one, is a leap of faith. I will absolutely keep going until the lens is mastered and I know what it can or can’t do. I am not close. And I will share the results with you, good and bad. To do anything else would be pure cowardice.

Many people take the creative process for granted, they simply are reflecting what they want or don’t want or like or don’t want. Sylvia Plath says the worse enemy to creativity is self-doubt. And she did not have to check her texts and e-mails and Facebook message as soon as her poems were published. A good friend told me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I like Kurt Vonnegut’s idea about creativity: “we have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” And the way down is long and hard and often terrifying, the way up is fleeting and fragile. Creativity takes courage.

I am so far quite happy with the new lens, it is not something I would use every day, but it adds to the rich mix of possibilities for the photographs I take. The digital camera is very literal, precise and clear, very good for the day-to-day portrayal of life. My Petzval art lens and my new achromat (on trial for a couple of weeks) has been a great boon to all of my photographer, because it helps me to understand the lens and the camera and the light so much better than when I just relied on a computer to make my decisions.

But I owe you all more than just doing the same thing every day. You deserve better than that, and so do I.

An achromat photo is pure, it reveals everything about me and my sense of composition, good and bad. What is at stake for me is the idea that I can capture images in a new and different and useful way. Also whether or not I can really understand how glass in a lens works and learn more than how to push a shutter button. That is the path to great photography, I am just not nearly there yet. To get there, I will have to fail again and again and jump off that cliff.

I never really tailor my writing or photography to what people think.  I am not running for political office, I don’t take polls about my work and follow them.

That is not creativity, is simply turns the creative into a kind of cultural slave, an artistic politician running for office.  We see how many of our politicians are becoming slaves to money and public opinion. To allow what people think to shape what I wrte or what photos I take would be the death of me.

Creativity does work both ways. It challenges the people on either end to see the world in a different way. You ask something of me, but I ask something you as well – to think and see the world in different ways. That’s my job.

The viewer always has the advantage, he or she can just go away or look away.

The creative can’t go anywhere, she is hanging out there, her very soul and intellectual organs exposed. Every time Maria makes a new quilt, she puts her very being out there for people to see, I much admire her courage as well as her skill.

My own feeling about the new lens (and many people do like it) is very positive. I’m excited about the possibilities I saw at the county fair, especially with the color and soft backgrounds.It evokes the old daguerrotypes and early pictures.

I have not yet learned to use this lens, I don’t know what it can or can’t do. The very heart of my idea of creativity is to be open, to show my failures as well as my successes.

That is in part because I don’t ever knowingly look outside of myself to make creative decisions, I look inward, I am my audience and my muse and my critic. I am faithful only to myself, the person I must respect is me.

My feelings about unwanted advice are well know, but that is my problem, not yours. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else any more, like privacy, we have given up on it.   Nobody needs to apologize to me or feel badly about what they say.  This is the world we live in.

You should say what it is on your minds, and if it bothers me I will let you know. As for myself, when someone who is creative tries something new and difficult or challenge, I try very hard to encourage them, an urge them to keep at it until the glorious truth is revealed. And it always is.

Nobody knows how creative adventures and plunges will turn out, surely not the person doing the creating. I hate to think of how many beautiful words and images have been stillborn or aborted or perished by unwanted and unsolicited advice.

I will not be one of them.