The problem with blogging are a few assumptions that I can’t grab hold of.  For instance, I assume that someone, somewhere, cares what I think enough to find my blog and read it (why?).   More troubling to me is the assumption that these words mean the same thing to everyone who reads them.

Who is responsible for a communication event when it is mediated by the internet?  Is it the sender, or the receiver?  What happens when we both get it wrong?  Then we’re stuck…misunderstanding each other in divers parts of the world without even knowing it.

I’ll take my miscommunications face to face.  At least then we can affirm that there is something worth fighting for…some sense of ‘us.’  Somehow, out here on the world wide web things seem awful lonely.  Crowded, of course.  But aren’t we often loneliest in big crowds?  Or perhaps that’s just me.

How do you and I know that we want to achieve shared meaning?  How do we know that we care what each other think?  And, if we do care, then why chance it to such a feeble format as this?

The fragility of human communication is too precious for a medium devoid of context.  

And yet, I will probably keep blogging.  Hoping, somehow that this low-context and unflattering mode of communication might somehow bring something to the world.  But I won’t hang my hat on it, after all, where’s the hook?

I have an uncle who says that his definition of political is when there are two or more people.   I think that rather than considering politics primarily in the sense of manneuvering to get one’s aims accomplished, it may be worth considering another approach to the idea.   Because, you see, when there are two or more people engaged in the same endeavor (whether that be running a family, a college, or a nation) you will always have a strange combination of aligned and competing visions.

Politics, in a neutral sense, is the process of negotiating these competing visions.  Ideally, this negotiation results in benefit for all.  Naturally, there are many times that this does not happen, as there are often “losers” and “winners.”  And, unfortunately, there are times when the negotiation of competing visions becomes instead the quest to foil the opposition by trickery, meanness, deceit, or exploitation of relationships. However, this need not be the case.

“Playing” politics can be both prudent and ethical, although I hear little talk about this.  I do not mean simply that when a person has a legitimate end that the political means are thus justified.  Rather, the process itself can be a beneficial and well-conducted one.  That is to say, if a person has a certain aim in mind, it behooves that person to find other people, both within and without the organization, who share some interested in any part of that aim.  Moreover, it is legitimate to find ways to make yourself useful to those persons and to thus gain organizational currency with them.  However, for this process to be ethical, it is imperative that these relationships be considered not only for the purpose of accomplishing whatever the aim is, but for the benefit of the people with whom the relationships are developed.  This is, perhaps, the great divergence between the two kinds of political.  In the lesser path, I build relationships so that I can use people.  In the higher path, I build relationships because we, together, have something good to bring the world and each other.

This is not always easy nor, unfortunately, successful.  It requires a great deal of patience, and humility.  Indeed, approaching others because they also have something both to gain and to give means that your own course will often be redirected.  And yet these shifts in bearing will, it is hoped, bring you to the desired goal (and sometimes an improved one!). I have seen this work, and the relationships that develop out of it range from strained to deep and healthy.  So much depends on the willingness to trust and to walk together.

This is, in many ways, part of Tugboating.  We come alongside because we have a mutual aim.  We start to push and slowly, slowly, the bow changes direction.  At first no one notices the change, but a few degrees at a time, our course is moving toward that desired end…

The good thing about conflict, which there is of course plenty of in life, is that it can help you reach defining moments–it provides an opportunity to step outside the normal flow of life and make a determination about whether a certain project or relationship is really worth maintaining.  Usually, it is, and the conflict, when done well, affirms that commitment for everyone involved.  That seems to have been the case in my recent episodes anyway.  Perhaps that’s why it’s so important to still be congenial in the face of conflict.  I can tell you you’re wrong and still be your friend…it’s ok.  Remember: Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Peace.

My thoughts here are prompted by kfred’s comment on my last post, but I’m also thinking more broadly.  The question in this case is whether we can balance the benefits of social media with the risks, such as the degradation of communication mentioned by amyamyjo.

Thus, it seems sensible to use social media somewhat and encourage face to face somewhat and try to find a balanced blend that keeps people plugged into the real world…  Yet this is unsatisfying.  Try standing in the middle of a see-saw.  It doesn’t take very long before that balancing act gets sickeningly old.  Not much longer and it becomes impossible.  Before too long, you simply have to get down from the see-saw and go to the bathroom–what happens then?

I guess my thought is that although sometimes balance is helpful and certainly necessary short-term, it’s not a long term solution.  Neither is it all that desirable. (think about the see-saw–what fun is it to have a level see-saw?!).

Another option lies in the path of pursuing creative tension.  If something seems to need to be balanced, as in this case, old & new communication patterns, perhaps this is a signal of something more important going on.  I’ll write on this another time, but we are experiencing a paradigmatic shift in several areas of life right now–including in the areas of creation of knowledge and communication patterns (as represented most visibly in social media).

Seeking balance ultimately leaves us on the same old teeter totter.  We find ourselves in that uncomfortable moment of realizing that we really want to be playing on the jungle gym and we have to decide whether we’re going to run down the board of the teeter totter and forget about balance so we can move on to the next thing, or whether that balance we’ve fought for is worth maintaining at the risk of losing the chance to play on the jungle gym. (Recess is never long enough)

And so, in my never simple and always convoluted way of explaining anything, my answer to kfred is that we have to be willing to seek a new paradigm.  And it’s not always easy to get our friends to play on the jungle gym with us…  I guess that’s where “tugboating” comes in

Let’s take NetVibes for instance.  I love having everything I need from the web in one portal–it’s awesome.  But just like  multitasking itself is kind of a myth, this idea of having the world at my fingertips doesn’t ring true… In fact, what I have built in my (albeit awesome) netvibes portal is a window on the world–a window from which I can survey the vast wealth of knowledge and select only those parts which are of interest to me–often the ones that confirm my view of the world, my version of reality.

This leads me to the startling realization that the experience of netvibes reality only reinforces the fundamental problem that we have as people–that sense that “I (whether individual or collective) am the center of the world.“  It’s the same thing we do by escaping into our homemade mixes through iPods and iTunes–we create a version of life in which our own desires, interests, and whims are the law of the land…or at least the law of my moment by moment experience…

I’ve noticed that I like ellipses…(there I go again)   It’s just that I’m never quite sure that I’ve finished saying what I meant to say, you know?  It’s kind of like a question mark, saying “hey world, what did I miss?”