composition with reading

In addition, under the condition of America’s fast paced life, people need to add more meal time with family and need to much more focus on rituals in the civil society. Significant social and political costs have resulted from fast food and convenience food instead of sitting down for leisurely meals. However, in order to keep the civil society flourishing, more meal time with family and rituals in daily life are something need to be remember. Flamming make the statement about America’s fast-paced culture, where people are tethered to cell phones and e-mail 24/7” Modern new technology helps people deal with lots of problem in an easy way and thus bring people with fast and convenient life. Because of the fast-paced culture, people are getting forgot to the meaning of meeting a person face-to-face. Not to say the meaning of setting and eating as a family. People tend to order food or drinks online or by cell phones in order to save time. Also, the rise of fast food and the decline of leisurely meals mean fewer opportunities for everyday civility in speech and practice. However, eating fast food or delivery food alone makes people lose chance of sharing food and talking stories with their friends and family. Because of those lost, people are gradually forget the happiness of sharing which is a virtue they should own in a civil world. Also, since people order the food they like and eat the delivery food alone, they don’t have time to showing respect for the different tastes. Showing respect to others and for different tastes can be regard as a very important manner on table. Table manner is an necessary element in the civil society. So spending more time with friends and family on meal is crucial to flourish the civil society. Like Flamming, Turkle expresses her idea about the changes because of the new technology: “Rather, it is about how we are changed as technology offers substitues for connecting with each other face-to-face”(272) As new technology becomes more and more advanced, cell phones and other electronic devices are becoming substitutes for connecting people together. They text to their people or family by cell phone and don’t make an arrangement for face-to-face meeting. Even on birthday or anniversaries, people tend to send a quick message to their friends on their birthday as a greeting and believe they can maintain their friendship in this way of communication. However, cell phone, as the part of the the screen culture really undermines people’s friendship. Having a birthday and anniversary celebration together is always an essential ritual in civil rights. People need to Also, talking turns talking and listening to others are really essential civic virtues in the civil society. And meeting people face-to-face can be regard as a good way to cultivating feeling between friends and family. So spending more time talking with friends and family on everyday life is crucial to flourish the civil society.

Finally, people need to spend more time on talking to people face-to-face rather than chatting online and share thought during the mealtime. With the development of new technology, the screen culture especially the cell phones and computer take most spare time of people. However, face-to-face communication can deep the relationships make the encounter more friendly, trusting and more sociable. Turkle argues that “We build a following on Facebook or MySpace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends”(275) Screen culture provide a huge platform for people to make new friends online. Facebook and Myspace are great examples of it. People would like to random chat with friends online in their spare time rather can arrange conversation with close family and friends. They also follow someone’s pages even they don’t know them and begin to chat with them. However, people usually feel tired and still have a sense of lonely after they addict to the computer-mediated communication. Face-to-face conversation allow for deeper relationships than cyberspaces anonymity and fluidity. So, speeding more time talk to people in the real world allow the civil society become flourishing. Flamming also expresses her idea on civil rules in her essay: “civil rules and table manners create conditions for conversations, the respectful, mutual sharing of thoughts for a whole host of reasons: political, economic, social, cultural, religious, familial, and interpersonal”(122). New technology makes the mealtimes now different from when people were growing. On the table, people prefer to put their attention on their cell phones and check the social media such as the Instagrams and the Snapchat. However, setting and having meal together is a good time for people to share their thoughts. They can talk about their days like when people as young and share some opinions on economic or political topic. By sharing thoughts, they may find same opinions with others and people can learn from others while eating with them. Even they will find sour mate during the conversation. Consequently, people need to talk to people face-to-face rather than focus on their cell phones or laptops especially on the dinner table in order to keep the civic virtue and flourish the civil society.

In conclusion, new technology diminishes the civil society by “screen culture”, screen culture lessens face to face conversation in the real world, which undermines the notion of civil society. People need to speed more time with their friends and family such as more adding more meal times and much more focusing on the table rituals as well as engaging family activities in order to flourish the civil society.