What is our responsibility to each other when we communicate online?

This is a question that came to mind while listening to Psychic Friends Live on blogtalkradio.com this afternoon. There are many answers to this but I wanted to know what the Tarot saw as our biggest responsibility in this age of instant communication. The cards I pulled were the Queen of Cups, the nine of cups and the six of cups. 

The overall message that I see here is that we have much more of an emotional duty in our communication than what we may realize. Each of us has a personal responsibility to empathize and connect with those we are communicating with. Even though we may never see them in person or interact with them face-to-face, the words we say to them will have no less effect on them. Our online conversations remove some of the filters that we might normally have during in person interactions. Things like facial expression, intonation and inside jokes are often lost or misinterpreted through text only conversations. We need to literally pull our heads out of the “cloud” and get our heads straight. It is amazing how quickly we lose simple social graces and communication skills when we no longer have a face directly in front of us. There is a call for us to look back on how we were taught to communicate. Even as we continually transition into newer and faster forms of communication, we will always have a need for being polite, honest and respectful.

I know that I am not the first to say something about this topic and I know that I will not be the last. Yet, I see this as something that everyone needs to examine in their lives from time to time. We all lose track of our emotions and let our frustrations get the better of us. We lash out and say things that end up having much more detrimental effects than we intended. This will always happen. But, maybe if we all take just a second to re-read our messages before we hit “send” we can reduce the chances of saying something we really didn’t mean.