Communicating

We've been doing it since we were monkeys. First by grunting to each other, then developing languages, writing...and then it kind of stood still for a while. The basics were there though, and people managed and all. But when phones were invented, communicating became a lot easier. Recently, even mobile phones and the Internet were added. Communicating couldn't get any easier, right?

Wrong. It seems to me that although some people become addicted to communicating (*cough* tweeps *cough*), many others somehow don't seem able to handle all these incoming communications, and disregard an X percentage of them, X being.....high ;).

It also seems to me that more and more people do not contact friends by themselves, but wait. And when they are invited to something, they don't reply. So what they seem to be waiting for, I have no idea. But taking initiatives doesn't appear to really bear fruit these days. Thinking of and organising something fun to do with a group of friends takes some time and effort, but it doesn't seem to pay off anymore.

Let me illustrate this with an example: when I invited over 10 people for a fun outing that wasn't that expensive and which I offered well in advance so people would actually be able to come, only three people replied, of which two said they couldn't make it for some reason or other. Now, if people don't want to - or can't - go and give me a reason, I get it. Maybe I should have planned it differently or something. But what I cannot get my head around is 50-80% of people generally not replying at all. And these are not strangers disregarding some newsletter they're not interested in, but friends who are invited to do something fun. I don't even know if they even read the message, but I'm assuming they do, since people may often be lazy, irresponsible and rude, but they are curious. It's human nature. So assuming they read the invitation, they must think it too much of an effort or too hard somehow (may I please sigh?) to reply in one or two sentences explaining why they can't come.

This strikes me as a degradation of human communications and extremely off-putting to organisors. Me being someone who likes and feels the need to organise things (as hardly anyone else seems to), I've been wondering a lot if I should continue to try. On occasion enough people respond to actually do something together, albeit with a smaller group than I had in mind, so it's not as if every attempt is in vain, but when you organise something, you want it to be rewarding, with the ultimate reward naturally being a amazing outing with a group of great people, producing memories to cherish, the culmination of your efforts.

Obviously it does not feel very rewarding to me, hence my dilemma: should I keep trying and probably fail more often than not, or should I give up and hope that maybe someone else gives it a shot (probably also feeling that (s)he will have to do it because no one else will)?

Something else I've been wondering about is: then what is it that these people do?? Since they never appear to have time. Do they have some secret club of friends I don't know about? Or (more likely) do they just spend time with a select few people who are easiest to meet with (living close by, etc.) so it can be done with minimal effort?

This seems to be the key phrase here: minimal effort. It seems that modern communications are making people lazier than ever. Almost daily I am stunned by how passive and inert people have become. Would it be different without modern communications? I don't know. Walking places for a lack of phones or an Internet connection as opposed to chatting on MSN seems quite active to me, but then again, I use modern communications all day long and I do always reply to invitations (even to say no) and make an effort to keep in touch with people. So maybe it's just natural for most people to be lax, and not bound to these modern times, as I've been suggesting, but if that's so, I think it's amazing humans have ever accomplished anything.