Jonathan Foer How Not To Be Alone Analysis

Act of Kindness
One day I was going to school as usual. The first bus stop is a few minutes walking away from my home, I can always have a seat on the bus. It was crowed on the bus in the peak hour, a woman was caring a bag of heavy luggage stand near me. She looks very tired, and kept yawning. Therefore, I tried to relinquish my seat to her. She was angry, and blushed. “I am not that old!” she roared at me, because she thought I assumed she was an elder. I don’t know why she would think in that way at all. Offering the seat to strange is one of act of kindness we brought up to believe. How come it changes to an act to humiliate others? Even though I tried to explain that I just want her have a rest, she didn’t accept it. She moved to far away
A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Foer saw a girl crying in public when his was sitting on the opposite her. Although he secretly was caring about her pain, he chose to ignore her. He was playing his phone to distract his own thoughts for the act of kind. Technologies made it possible for people to keep in touch from distance, but in fact, the world gets further from our hearts. Moreover, technology can save our time, but the side effect is hiding our emotions. Our emotion is one of our life experience. The more hiding our emotions, the less we experience our lives. I think Mr. Foer choose to stay in a careless situation for a stranger is good decision. Nowadays people are more likely to keep their private space to protect themselves. If Mr. Foer ask the girl whether she need help, she may feel better and stop crying in public. Or, she would be angry because someone bothering her to release her emotion. If the former, the effect can be an act of kindness. But if the latter, it can be an awful
The author Edward T. Hall discusses about Social Distance in the book named “The Hidden Dimension”. We like to keep our distance from others and there are very specific social rules about how close we can go to others in particular situations. This social distance is also known as body space and comfort zone and the use of this space is called proxemics. We stand over 12 feet with the stranger to stay safe in the Public Zone. When we are closer between 4 - 12 feet, it is easier to communicate with each other. This is our Social Zone. If we keep less than 4 feet with others, we are intruding others’ Personal Zone. We are distant to stay safe in the real lives. The more we want to stay in Pubilc Zone to stay safety, the less we have chance to be closer. In the old society, there was a simple social circle to people without phone. They mostly keep in touch by face to face, Social Distance theory is more persuasive. However, technology makes us to stay in a new virtual world without distant in modern live. We can communication with intrude in any Zone, but that doesn’t mean our Public Zone is getting smaller. Instead, our Personal Zone is getting bigger, because the virtual world is unlimited. We can receive message by words or pictures, but we losing real life experience. Because we have less opportunity to communicate face to face, we become focused more on virtual connections. Virtual world can lead to