Two weeks ago, an audio racist rapping rant reappeared online.  It resurfaced from its original recording two years ago, the rationale for its reemergence unknown.

The rappers, two local teenage girls, attacked just about every ethnic group you can think of except for white northern European cultures.  It included references to lynching. 

It was wrong, vile and evil.  Their weak apology did nothing to demonstrate they understood or cared that their song was the type of action that incites violence, divides people and sows the seeds of suspicion, anger, and divisiveness for no solid reason against someone who may not look like you, whether that’s because they might have brown hair or non-pasty-white skin.

It’s almost hard to imagine someone would record the words they did, then post it online.  You have to wonder where the parents were in all this.

Hatred does not occur in a vacuum.  It is taught. 

Two teenage girls don’t suddenly go and say, “Hey, wow, let’s come up with this rap song and put down anybody who doesn’t look like us.”  That comes from someplace else and had to have developed over years.

Through repetition of put-downs and statements that diminish specific ethnic groups, these girls learned that everything they sang about was acceptable.  They repeated the slurs that someone else offered up to them.  They consumed the slant and the slam. 

In their halfhearted attempt to apologize, they indicated that there is racism in society and they were reflecting that.  It’s true, societies have inequities and we pass judgment on others.  We shouldn’t, but most people do, at least from time to time. But that is not an excuse for horrific behavior that publicly denounces millions of people you don’t know, have never met, and will never experience.

Teaching good lessons starts at home – that all humans are different, but bound together by the desire to do what is best for our families and create opportunities that allow the next generation to improve and develop their abilities.  We all want food, shelter and clothing.  After that, we want to do productive things in our lives.  What is so hard about people understanding those simple desires we all share?  Why can’t we come together instead of splitting apart and looking for new ways to attack someone we don’t really know?

Why do we get this frothing anger, not just from these two girls, but from others who have indoctrinated them to think, speak and act this way? The people who taught these girls the language they used -- whether through abdication by not telling them something they said was wrong or by forcefully encouraging abhorrent statements – need to go back for remedial human training, too.

The cheap excuse is always, “Other people say it, so what does it matter if I do?” 

The most important and easiest way to answer that is, “How would you like it if someone started slandering you the exact same way you just slandered someone else?”  Feels horrible, doesn’t it?   We can all slander another group or individual.  That’s the easy way out.

The harder way is to work at understanding people raised on a different street, who went to a neighboring school, who attended a different place of worship, who have eyes that are never going to match our own.   We should all get to know more people like that.  It makes life interesting.

Getting to know people from a different flock brings us together.  It builds shared experiences.  It gives us hope.  We need more of that, every day, on every street, in every school, between every nation. 

In the business and personal worlds we inhabit in April 2015, it’s easy to presume that the electronic connection with people will prove fruitful.  Because we spend so much time using devices to get in touch with others (or not), it seems that’s the best way to go.  But it’s a misconception.

The electronic connection is faulty.  It’s the human connection that works.

Recently, I started a conversation with another business person.  We wrote over LinkedIn.  The transmissions flew back and forth.  Typically a day or two passed before a response.  We attempted to set up a time, date and location for coffee.

“What’s a good day for you?,” I wrote.

“Next Thursday and Friday are out, but otherwise I’m good,” he wrote back.

“Ooops, sorry, I missed something on my calendar.  Both those days are actually closed. How about the following week?,” I said two days later in the transmission.

“Darn, I’m traveling that whole week to Vegas.  What about the week after?,” he responded.

That dialogue (and some other bits and pieces) took place over close to two weeks, and eventually resulted in us setting up a face-to-face meeting, but who knows if we’ll even keep that?  Something could come up and then we’ll have another series of electronic communications that could (or could not) result in a resolution.     Not getting a productive answer has happened before.  It will happen again.

Starting that conversation when you are face-to-face is so much better.  You can ask all the questions you want, get direct answers, do a follow-up, and blam, you settle everything.  “See you then.”  You can now grab a beer.

You may not know the other individual when you attempt to start a business (or personal) relationship electronically.  You’re just writing words down.  You don’t get the full flavor of the individual.

You miss the gestures, eye contact, head nods, smiles and frowns.  You don’t get the nuance of full body language responses to what you say.

Meeting face-to-face, you analyze the personality of your new acquaintance.  When the person shows up on time (or not) helps you determine his or her responsibility.  Does s/he demonstrate s/he cares about and respects your time?  All it takes is that one meeting when you get together and you make that determination.  Electronic communication allows both parties to survive their recalcitrance.

Getting together also helps you find out how the other person accepts or gives feedback.  That’s an important quality to assess in a business or personal relationship.  That doesn’t come across on email or texting.

Over the past four months, I’ve developed business in multiple face-to-face settings.  Working electronically, I’ve sent out proposals, materials and responded to inquiries, with next to nothing when it comes to response.  I’ve gone to Web sites, emailed people, texted them, used various e-business functions to try and get in touch, but for the most part those transmissions have fallen into deep space where anonymous messages go to die.

Part of the problem is the sheer magnitude of electronic options when it comes to places where you can seek freelance business.  How do you start?  Which sites are meaningful and which ones are four-day-old garbage?  There’s no way to know.  So, it’s “ready, fire, aim.”  Unless you know someone (hmmm, back to that face-to-face thing again) who can give you advice on which sites are nominally functional, you’re going after business with no bullets in the chamber.

Seeking business or building a lasting business relationship is best started on a face-to-face basis.  Do it.  The electronic connection is faulty.

Does it ever seem like you spend too much of your life inputting data?   It does to me.

When you could be sleeping, eating, writing emails, daydreaming, working out, saying your prayers or walking the dog, inputting data into a machine seems like a waste of time.  But we have to do it. 

Because there are so many things today that require downloading information, it feels like there’s a never-ending series of questions being asked of us.  We give away credit card information.  We feed the machine with our address and give away our phone numbers so companies can mail us products.  We spend time selecting times, dates and seats so we can fly somewhere to get away from it all.

All the clicking and writing and repeating of these actions to plan a vacation, order tickets, or go to a business conference add up to wasted time.  The electronic universe pulls us in again and again.  We have no choice.  If you don’t add the info to the forms, you don’t get what you want.

This was driven home most recently when I tried to call a friend and realized I didn’t have her number or email address in my smart phone.  In this day and age, how could that happen?  Easy.  Unless you remembered when you first met the person to input the data in your phone, you probably never got around to updating it.  This caused a scramble.

You’d think you’d have that contact information easily accessible in 2015.  You certainly know where to look, or who to ask:  Go to LinkedIn; text a friend; email a note to a mutual acquaintance.  You won’t always find this works.

In my case, the individual I wanted to contact did not include contact information on her LinkedIn profile.  Okay, so I texted someone I knew would have her number.  No response.  I dug into email, and sent a note to another person, asking for the information.  As often happens with email, that transmission was ignored.

All the up-to-date methods to stay in touch with another human being, and they all failed to yield connectivity or the necessary information.  No traction.

At some point, I guess I was able to get in touch with my friend.  I don’t remember.

The takeaway is how often we must input data so it’s available for future use.   You shouldn’t wait.  If you meet someone new, chances are you will forgot about the connection the next day.  If you are at a conference, when your return to your room at night, pull out all those names and put them into your phone. If you don’t do it then, there’s a 90% chance it will never happen.  That’s a statistical truth.

To capture the data, you have to internalize it.  And we don’t keep it in our heads or on paper any more.  It’s all electronic.  So we spend far too much productive time tapping away on tiny keys, squinting, going back to make sure we didn’t incorrectly type something in, then looking back on all this as wasted time, even though it isn’t.

It’s actually productive because you eventually scroll through your smart phone to find someone’s data, and it’s actually there.  You had the prescience to add it in a timely fashion to your transportable device.  That’s progress.

Someday we’re probably going to tap foreheads and data will transfer from the other person’s implanted device to yours, and when you need to access it, you will just need to think the name for it to appear magically in front of your eyeballs. Until then, if you can’t find your friend’s information electronically, go back to your old hand written address book.  You might be surprised, it’s probably still relevant. 

Last week I was at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, and after introductions to a woman who runs a local business, we exchanged business cards.  She held mine at a distance, slowly moving it farther away, until finally she could read it.

For those of you over the age of 45, you know why she did this – you need to create that extra space to be able to read small print or put on your reading glasses.  Her action made me think of My Shrinking Life.

My Shrinking Life (MSL) is not a bad thing or a good thing.  It’s just a thing that happens.

For those of us lucky enough to live past age 45 or so, we start to experience MSL in different ways.  There are activities that you give up, adjustments to make, decisions to let go.  You can’t do what you used to be able to do.  Through maturity, you chose to back off.  If you don’t let the logical side of your brain take over and make reasoned decisions, you can head down the path of a major injury or taking on an endeavor you have no business participating in.

If you’ve ever watched the TV show “Survivor,” you know that they no longer have older people on.  That, of course, is so they can market younger faces and bodies that appear more attractive on screen, but it also (my assumption) results from the first few seasons when they had older participants and they couldn’t compete on certain challenges.  That’s the way it goes – you can’t run as fast, jump as high or lift a bunch of heavy logs to build a cabin.

One of the first signs of MSL is not being able to read written words up close.  Years ago, when I wore contacts to improve my distance vision, the eye doctor said I was in good shape and probably wouldn’t need reading glasses until I was 45, when most people started to experience difficulties around age 40.  That still didn’t prepare me for the change.

With a headache one night in my early 40s, I rummaged through the bedside drawer for a small container of Nuprin (the precursor to Motrin that was advertised by tennis great Jimmy Connors with the phrase, “Just Nupe it”).  I tried to read how many capsules to take, and couldn’t.  I pulled it closer and things got fuzzier.  I thought something was seriously wrong with me.   Then, for some odd reason, I extended my arm, and WHOA, the print became clear.  “How odd,” I thought, gulping a couple down.

Other incidents confirmed the decline in eyesight.  It didn’t bother me.  I was what it was.  It’s part of MSL.

MSL affects people in many ways.  It gets harder to use an iPad or a smart phone, for example.  At some point, MSL will mean you need to put the glasses on to read your laptop or desktop computer even with their bigger screens and if you increase the font size.

We all adjust in some way, shape or form because we have to.  There is no choice.  You can squint, use reading glasses, put objects under bright lights, hold them at arms’ length distance.  All those techniques keep you functioning in a society that seems to expect the smallest possible evolution of a product is the way to go.  People with minuscule fingers and the ability to manipulate tiny screens have a leg up.

My Shrinking Life opens the way to new relationships.  We share the experience with others, sometimes commiserating.  But more often it’s with a smile that this is who we are.  Adjust and live.