Sunday 9 September 2012

What’s so good about reality?


There’s nothing “real” about language. You can’t eat it or wear it; you can’t pick it up and use it to keep off the rain.  There are no stories to be found out there in the “real” world. You can’t hunt poems in the forest or look at essays in the zoo.

Beyond the vibration of vocal chords, language, the most human of humanity's capacities, has no “reality” to it at all. Animals exist in the real world; humans, to the extent that we are more than animals, live in a reasoned world of language where the building blocks are metaphors and the mortar is narrative. Beauty, values and moral judgements are all human abstractions based in the real world but not to be found there. In an existential moment, Shakespeare made this same point: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

I make these observations because I have been thinking about the issues raised by a number of my colleagues as they address the popular perception of a dichotomy between the “real” world and the digital world. So the argument goes: too much time on computers is taking people away from what is real. Computers, the latest manifestation of an evolving information technology which we might trace back through TV to telephone, novel through newspaper and all the way back to fire-side stories and cave paintings, are placed in opposition to a real world of face-to-face interactions.

My argument is that there is nothing inherently more real about a face-to-face chat than there is about a twitter feed. Both exist in the abstracted world of language where meaning must be negotiated and reason evolved. What these two communication forms share is inherently more significant than what separates them.

I value conversations - in whatever form – for their capacity to expand my humanity and to build a just and reasoned world. There is plenty on Twitter that is inane and pointless but I have had my share of face-to-face conversations of this kind, too. What is important is not the form of the conversation but its content.

It's important to add that I value reality. Some of the most precious moments of my life have been whilst sitting quietly on a mountain or in a semi-meditative state sailing in rough weather. But I also value my humanity and, for me, being truly human is bound to my sense of myself in language as I make meaning from the world and build a reasoned response to the complexities of my cultural environment.

As Jürgen Habermas’ theory of “Communicative Action” suggests, becoming a reasonable person happens in all kinds of ways in all kinds of interactions; digital interactions like this one that I am having with you being no more or less valid than any other.

4 comments:

  1. Brilliant. I guess your brain is back. Not anymore a sack of fermenting potatoes. Love.

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  2. Interesting Ian! I've often justified my fascination with emerging digital communications as being educational in hope that I might know what my son is talking about when we're older. But in actual fact it is just fascinating, and useful. Most businesses now use social media for marketing. I also use it to feed selected news to my desktop (without the need to get in my car to buy a paper). Yes it can be a distraction - I'm distracted now, but an electronic conversation with you has value I think. I certainly know people that allow the virtual world to take over their lives, to the point that the physical world around them is crumbling. (Or perhaps the digital reality that they exist in a coping mechanism). And I know people who refuse to acknowledge social media because they don't believe that it has any value. Perhaps there is middle ground where digital communications and social media, if used sensibly, can enhance (but not rule) our lives.

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  3. Yup. It's all real.
    And I totally agree with this.

    "My argument is that there is nothing inherently more real about a face-to-face chat than there is about a twitter feed. Both exist in the abstracted world of language where meaning must be negotiated and reason evolved. What these two communication forms share is inherently more significant than what separates them."

    I had a conversation with a friend recently who had never met anyone who used Twitter. He asked me what it was for, why I would share an abandoned snap of the school cafeteria with strangers I call friends and if being on the net took away time from the "real" world. It was an interesting conversation to say the least ... but in the end he thanked me for being willing to talk about it. I am not sure he will go on Twitter soon but he told me twice that he was interested in setting up his own blog. I guess, it's a process. Our understanding of these spaces, it's complexities and nuances, begin somewhere and given a chance and time, matures. evolves, moves. Just like language...

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  4. For someone who claims to be new to "all of this" the world of Twitter, blogs, and online communities you seem to have the conceptual stuff down pretty quickly.

    I will say this till I am blue in the face, There is no either or, this or that, black or white...we are finding systems that work for us as individuals, as communities as classrooms and more.

    It is a fun and exciting time, of we are open to the possibilities of what language and community allow us to become.

    I think it is great that you are so curious and willing to try it all out. I am sure you students appreciate it as well.

    I wrote a similar post, many of them really, but this one in particular on the same topic:

    http://www.jabizraisdana.com/blog/2012/02/be-more-interesting/

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Comments welcome. Sharing ideas is what it is all about. If you have written posts along similar lines, please add a link as well.