You don’t have to look very far on the Net today to find articles, tutorials, videos, audio files and what have you on how to “read” the body language of the people around you. (I like to think that the content on our own site is as comprehensive a selection on the topic as you’ll find, all in the same place.)

The most perfunctory online search will yield literally millions of items written or presented by people with varying degrees of expertise or non-expertise, approaching the subject from various angles and with many different objectives. But notwithstanding all the variety, it seems there’s a common denominator underlying more than 90% of all this material.

It’s simply this: in almost all cases, the underlying goal is to enable you, the consumer of the content, to use your newly acquired knowledge of body language or non-verbal communication to influence another person or other people in some way or other.

You could be a salesperson keen to learn what your prospects are really thinking and how they are genuinely feeling, to be in a better position to convince them to purchase your product.  Or, for whatever reason,  you want to control a certain individual or group of people, to persuade them to submit to your will in some way.

So what do you do?  Well, the solution is simple, you think to yourself. You just rush to find some instruction in body language.

If that’s all we do with what we’ve learned on the subject,  that’s awfully sad. Really.

Let’s say that every morning at 8 a.m. you catch a bus to work from the same stop. Invariably, a neighbor from the other end of the street waits at the same stop.  You don’t know him well and probably don’t have very much in common with him, but the two of you always greet each other and politely inquire after each other’s welfare.

One morning, you say “Good morning, how are you today?” and he responds with his customary  “Oh, fine, very well  thank you.”   But a quick look at  his  facial expression and body posture makes you suspect that he’s far from “fine” or  “very well.” ( I mean, after the two and a half articles you read on the Web yesterday, you’re an expert on body language, aren’t you?)

Perhaps the guy is afflicted  with a  rather severe dose of ‘flu,  or even something  far worse,  but nonetheless, he’s on his way to the office out of fear of losing a client, losing his job, or to attend to something urgent…  Or perhaps, he’s not actually ill physically (not yet),  but although he’s  traveling to work now, he’s due to be  retrenched within a few days from the company he has served  loyally and faithfully  for 20 years.  At this point,  he’s almost paralyzed  with anxiety  over how he’s going to feed his family.

It’s not hard to imagine how a few well-chosen words of comfort, even if nothing else,  could make all the difference to this poor man’s day.

Whether  your “subject” is a fellow commuter on the bus or train,  a stranger standing in line with you at the post office or bank, the cashier at the supermarket checkout, that nice old lady or even grumpy old man who lives next door…your skill in interpreting physical cues can indeed make a tremendous difference  in someone’s life.

And the interesting thing is, if you’re sincerely interested in others,  you can develop your sensitivity  to the point where sometimes you won’t even need the physical, overt signs. Your instinct and gut feeling will be enough to tell you when someone needs your help.

Now, that’s a level well worth working towards.

They tell a story about a small boy whose father is a high-powered executive. One morning he calls up the fancy corporate headquarters and asks to speak to his father.

“Sorry,” apologizes the gatekeeper, “your Daddy’s busy at a very important meeting right now, try later.” The kid does try later, in fact several times “later”, but on each occasion he gets a similar response.

But being, after all, the son of a highly successful executive, he’s not one to give up on a challenge so easily. Eventually, he manages to reach his father on his car phone, as he’s speeding along, already fifteen minutes late, to an urgent rendezvous with a business associate. As he drives, Dad is making all kinds of intricate calculations in his head in preparation for the meeting ahead.

“Oh, it’s you, Ricky,” exclaims an irritated and impatient father. “Don’t you know I’m busy? I’ll be home later….”

“Dad, I won’t keep you. Can I just ask a quick question? How much do you earn?”

“Oh, I don’t know…perhaps $120 an hour..”

“Thanks, Dad.” Click!

As a worn and weary executive walks in the door around 9 that evening, Ricky thrusts a little plastic bag into his hand. The bag contains a bunch of assorted notes and coins totaling about $30.

“This is the money I’ve been saving up, Dad. Can I buy 15 minutes of your time?”

In an earlier post, I discussed an interesting social paradox: as the economies of developed countries grow stronger, the income of the average citizen grows as well. But for the most part, people aren’t any happier than they were before. Why?

I elaborated on one economics professor’s very plausible theory, which is supported by some telling experiments by social psychologists. The real problem is that people are in the habit of comparing their lot with others. If I have a million but you have two million, I have to be feeling miserable. My million is almost worthless to me.

That’s a fine explanation as far as adults are concerned, but what about our children? Why are so many children in affluent countries so darn miserable?

Sue Palmer, a British consultant on early childhood education and author of the best selling “Toxic Childhood”,  cited in a feature in the Daily Mail last year a UNICEF report on “childhood well-being”  that found  that out of 21 nations across the developed world, British children are the unhappiest.

And of course, although the British may technically be winners of this contest that no one  would want to  win,  we have  no reason to believe  that  most other civilized  nations are very  far behind.

Palmer tries  to understand why this should be so.  “Our homes are crammed with labour-saving devices and electronic entertainment that previous generations couldn’t even dream of.  Surely our children should be growing happier every year?” she asks.

She  quotes a  damning survey by the National Consumer Council, which  revealed that children who watch too much television and spend hours on the internet are “greedy and unhappy…These children argue more with their families, have a lower opinion of their parents, and lower self-esteem than other children.”

That explains a little of course, but why are these kids sitting all day in front of the electronic media  in the  first  instance?

Palmer gets to the heart of the matter:  “After researching the state of modern childhood for over five years, I’m convinced that, as our country has grown richer and more “advanced”, we’ve lost sight of certain fundamental truths about child-rearing.

“We’ve come to believe that 21st century children are different from children in the past - that they can get by with less parental time and attention, skip stages in their development and cope with pressures and emotional burdens children shouldn’t have to cope with.

“The brutal truth is that they can’t. Life may have changed enormously over the past few decades, but the human brain evolves much more slowly - in fact, it hasn’t changed since Cro-Magnon times.

“All babies are born as little Stone Age babies, and it’s up to their parents - supported by their wider community - to help them towards maturity, gradually equipping them with the inner strength, skills and knowledge they need to live in a complex technological culture…”

Significantly, Palmer also stresses the  natural obligation of parents to help their children  get a  early start in the mastery of communication skills,  so crucial for successful  emotional and social development.

“As parents sing and talk to their babies, they awaken the language instinct wired deep in the human brain and provide the data through which children will learn to speak their mother tongue.

“But if adults don’t spend time with their children, communication skills won’t develop as they should - and, in a busy modern world, many parents aren’t available to play their part in this process.

“Many children now spend the majority of their day in institutional care.

“At home, babies often sit in front of an electronic babysitter and, as they grow older, there is that problem of older children having TVs in their rooms, which means that even when the family is in the same building, its members are splintered off from each other.

The more than ironic bottom line: in a world where there are more ways to communicate than ever before, parents communicate less and less with their own children!

We will be talking more about  some implications of these heartrending  facts and various issues arising from them in upcoming posts.