Community vs Communication

September 14, 2011 Leave a Comment

Through more than two decades of travels about the series of tubes that comprise the online world, I’ve often found myself pondering the nature of community, as that word is applied to groups that form and function in virtual spaces.

I’ve watched the word “community”  being ever-more widely and casually used over the years to describe clusters of physically remote individuals interacting collectively online, via an ever-evolving spectrum of technological applications, from ARPANET to the World Wide Web, from bulletin boards to LISTSERVs, from mailing lists to MMORPGs, from blogs to tweets, and from Cyber-Yugoslavia to Six Degrees to Friendster to Orkut to Xanga to Myspace to LinkedIn to Facebook to Google+ to whatever the next killer social app may be.

But are the groups that form in such virtual locations truly communities in any meaningful human sense? When evaluating traditional definitions of the word “community,” several key themes emerge:

  • An organized group of individuals;
  • Resident in a specific locality;
  • Interdependent and interacting within a particular environment;
  • Defined by social, religious, occupational, ethnic or other discrete considerations;
  • Sharing common interests;
  • Of common cultural or historical heritage;
  • Sharing governance, laws and values;
  • Perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some way from the larger society in which it exists.

If you’re willing to accept that a “specific locality” or “a particular environment” may be defined by virtual boundaries, rather than physical or geographical ones, then it’s generally pretty easy to conclude that, yes, online groups can, in fact, meet the most basic parameters for declaring that they are communities. But other elements embedded within those defining traits raise more difficult questions and considerations, including (but not limited to):

  • What, exactly, is an individual in a world where identity is mutable? Is a lurker who never comments a member of a community? Is a sockpuppet a member of a community? Are anonymous posters members of a community? If a person plays in an online role-playing game as three different characters, is he one or three members of the community?
  • How are culture and historical heritage defined in a world where a six-month old post or product is considered ancient? Do technical platforms (e.g. WordPress vs. Blogger) define culture? Does history outside of the online community count toward defining said community?
  • What constitutes shared governance online? Who elects or appoints those who govern, however loosely, and does it matter whether they are paid or not for their service to the group? What are their powers? Are those powers fairly and equitably enforced, and what are the ramifications and consequences when they are not? Is a virtual dictatorship a community?
  • How important is “distinctiveness” to community, when online groups are often defined by what they are not as much as by what they are? Are online groups merely the ultimate manifestation of Peter Gabriel’s prescient 1980 track, “Not One of Us,” wherein he asked “How can we be in, if there is no outside”?  And can you truly build a community of peers within an Orwellian world where “All bloggers are equal, but some bloggers are more equal than others”?

At root, the fundamental fallacy or flaw with online communities is the fact that virtual gatherings cannot (yet) replicate physical gatherings, as their impacts are limited to but two senses: sight and sound. While these two senses are clearly those most closely associated with “higher” intellectual function, learning and spirituality, the physical act of gathering or meeting in the flesh is much richer, as it combines those cerebral perceptive elements with the deeper, more primal, brain stem responses that we have to taste, touch and smell stimuli.

Exchanging a message online removes any ability to experience the physical reality of actually touching another person, be it through a hand-shake, a kiss, a squeeze of the arm or a pat on the back. There is no ability to taste and feel the texture of the food we discuss in a chat room, or the feel of crystal against the teeth as the first sip of wine passes our lips. The nuances of facial expression and inflection are lost in e-mails, often leading to confusion or alarm where none was required or intended. The physical act of community building is a visceral one that appeals to, and requires, all of our senses, not just those that can be compressed into two-dimensions on our computer screens.

Two-dimensional communities are, ultimately, destined to disappoint for precisely that reason. While it’s become cliché to compare the dawn of the Internet era to the dawn of the printing press era, it’s important to note that the earlier cataclysmic shift in the way that information was preserved and presented (from spoken word to widely-available printed material) did not result in the elimination of the physical gathering, upon which all of our innate senses of community have been defined and built. I have come to believe that community requires physical connection. It is deeper than an e-mail, more resonant than a blog post, more important than your hit counts or number of followers.

At bottom line, for me, “communication” occurs online, but “community” must be rooted in the soil or the flesh. So I consider myself a member of the University at Albany community, or the community of Latham, New York, or the community of Naval Academy Alumni, or the Capital Region music community, among others. And I look forward to soon becoming an active, engaged member of many new communities in and around Des Moines, Iowa, where we will be moving in November.

My current and future communities involve geographic boundaries, shared interests, common heritage, supportive beliefs. And while the members of my communities may choose to communicate with each other online (since there’s no escaping the fact that we spend a lot of time in front of computers, every day, whether we like it or not), the communities themselves are not defined by what happens in virtual space.

And that makes all the difference in the world, I think.

Filed under Communications, Media, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , ,

On Success, And Who Defines It

July 25, 2011 Leave a Comment

When I was a kid, one of the boys in our pack decided that he didn’t like his gender-neutral first name anymore, and would prefer to be addressed by a more masculine nickname. A neighborhood kid meeting was called, we were all informed of his decision, and directed to address him only as “Rock” from that point forward.

Unfortunately, The Boy Who Would Be Rock forgot one of the most important Laws of the Playground: “Thou Shalt Not Pick Thine Own Nickname.” Within weeks, his requested appellation had devolved into “Wormy Rocky,” which stuck, and which every kid in the neighborhood and the school called through the years that followed, and which probably still haunts him whenever and wherever his old friends gather, over three decades later.

I’m reminded of this story every time I hear representatives of the burgeoning “life coaching” industry touting “success” as a product that they can sell to the individuals who hire them — because the belief that a person can ever unilaterally declare himself or herself to be a “success” is just as misguided as a person believing that they can unilaterally choose their own nickname, especially when such a declaration requires adopting tortured definitions of the word “success” itself.

You may work hard, on your own or with hired assistance, to reach a point where you can declare yourself happy, or content, or self-actualized, or fulfilled, or comfortable, or pleased with yourself, or proud, or any number of other terms that address your inner emotional states, and those are fine and grand achievements, in and of themselves. Well done, you!

These positive inner emotional states are not, however, synonymous with “success,” which is a label that gains resonance primarily when it is applied to you by others, based on the cultural norms of the society or group in which you live. And as my unfortunate friend Wormy Rocky learned, the harder you try to pin a label on yourself, the more likely it becomes that the other members of your society or group are going to start calling you something derogatory instead, especially if your self-claimed label doesn’t correspond with their own empirical observations.

Success peddlers often market their snake oil by formulating a logically-fallacious world wherein the absence of a thing called “success” is equal to the presence of a thing called “failure.” They then define “failure” as a product of the choices made and habits embraced by their would-be clients, essentially declaring such failures to ultimately be the clients’ own faults. With their assistance, they claim, such choices and habits can be corrected, flipping the life toggle from the “failure” to the “success” setting, to be followed by continued (paid) consultation, lest their new successes lapse back into their pre-intervention failure ways.

This seems grossly opportunistic to me, and the approach seems designed to prey upon the insecurities of the more emotionally vulnerable members of our society.

At best, hiring a life coach or any other consultant to deliver “success” to an individual is tantamount to paying someone to play the role of a friend or a cheerleader, which may be an effective gambit for some, and perhaps even worth the money for people who place a high value on emotional contentment and self-satisfaction, and need such reinforcement to achieve it. No hurt, no foul there, really, if it is a satisfying transaction between consenting adults who understand the rules of the game they are playing with each other.

As prospective clients grow more emotionally or financially vulnerable, however, there is a real risk of deep damage being done to them when under-trained life coaches inject themselves into spaces that are better filled by counselors, financial advisers, mental health professionals, clergy or other properly trained and credentialed service practitioners.

Unfortunately, it seems that much of the “success” marketing in the modern self-help industry is, indeed, targeted toward such people, whose belief in their own perceived failures may be as much a function of mental illness or addiction or the crushing effects of a dire economy as it is a function of how their peers actually view them. Exploiting such people by selling them pablum and bromides seems professionally deplorable to me.

For people (or organizations) that are truly seeking to achieve tangible success in the eyes of their own cultures and communities, any hired help that they engage must be prepared to offer measurable, deliverable, meaningful goods and services, rather than simply touting some nebulous, all-encompassing, self-proclaimed definition of “success” as an end commodity itself.

When you step back and analyze such ill-defined marketing claims, the very concept of life coaching or success training as some sort of holistic, all-encompassing discipline is, ultimately, absurd, as jacks (or coaches) of all trades are almost always masters of none.

If you need help with job transition, then you should engage a proven employment counselor or human resources organization, not a life coach. If you need assistance managing your finances, work with a qualified financial adviser, not a life coach. If you need emotional counseling, work with a therapist. If you need help with organizing your living and working spaces, call a closet consultant. If you need time management skills, find a professional organization or continuing education center that offers such courses. If you need to improve your physical fitness, hire a trainer, or join Weight Watchers.

If you can afford a life coach, then you can afford these services, and if you can not afford a life coach, then many of these services may still be available at no cost from credentialed, licensed nonprofit providers in your community. And working with professionals who are trained to deal in and produce tangible, measurable outcomes in their specific areas of expertise is likely to reap you more long-term benefit than working with a personal consultant whose primary motivation may simply be to continue a paying relationship by doing whatever it takes to make you feel good about yourself.

Feeling good about yourself does not necessarily make you a success, though, any more than being perceived as a success will necessarily make you feel good.

Equally important, not being perceived as a success does not necessarily make you a failure. The world is not digital, and there’s a whole lot of gray space between the poles defined by those labels.

At bottom line, we don’t become successes by hiring cheerleaders to plumb our inner spaces with us, then declaring “I am a success” to a skeptical world around us, which may see strong evidence to the contrary in the very decision to hire a life coach in the first place. Anyone could achieve that form or success, and when everyone is a success, then no one is a success, really. How dull.

We truly become successes, rather, by looking to the world around us, understanding its expectations, and figuring out ways in which we can productively use our own unique talents and skills to meet those expectations. Not everyone can do that, so when a culture recognizes those who do, such recognition has merit, meaning and resonance.

And it’s always better to hear “you are a success” from someone who isn’t being paid to tell you that, right?

Filed under Education, Philosophy, Training Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Freedom and Liberty, Rights and Privileges

February 22, 2011 Leave a Comment

As a longtime public servant of sorts, I’ve found it personally and ethically important to steer well clear of partisan politics when declaiming from the public soapbox that my blog offers. When I have written on political matters, I’ve sought to straddle a middle ground, by encouraging civil discourse between those of differing views, or asking that both the left and the right be able to justify their “research”, or imploring people to not use intentionally provocative words like “socialist” or “Nazi” or “teabagger” in such tense civic times as these.

Such central positions tend to come naturally to me, I think, because I’m a native Southerner, well and happily raised in an Evangelical Christian, Marine Corps household, a proud military veteran myself, and with a household income that puts me in one of the most-heavily taxed brackets (all of these traits commonly viewed as defining “tags” of the contemporary conservative), but yet I’ve also spent most of the past quarter-century north of the Mason-Dixon line, much of it working for nonprofit organizations associated with either the social services or arts or educational sectors, all viewed as bastions of extreme liberalism. I move easily in both worlds. And I respect those who work for common good, locally, at a State level, or nationally, from either side of the political spectrum, if that work is done in good faith, without bias or prejudice.

Unfortunately, as you move further from the center in either direction, it seems increasingly rare to find work being done for the common good without such bias or prejudice. I, frankly, find it appalling to ponder how many citizens of this Nation want to see our President and other elected officials fail miserably. And I found that sort of sentiment equally appalling during the last administration as well. As a political centrist, I yearn for nothing less than the greatest successes from the men and women who are duly elected under the rule of law to lead us, whether I agree with them politically or not.

I love the concept of the loyal opposition, but I fear it’s dying out in our Nation, which is terrifying to me. In the same way that strident left-wingers licked their chops and rubbed their hands with ill-concealed glee as President Bush struggled with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, so today do strident right-wingers relish the struggles of President Obama in dealing with the despoiling of the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon accident.

How tragic and shameful this is, when political operatives seek to gain advantage from the suffering of their fellow citizens! How poorly media charlatans and hucksters like Michael Moore, Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, Janeane Garofalo and Rush Limbaugh serve the public good with their cheap shots from the fringes, while never actually doing anything themselves to improve anything except their own bank balances. While I don’t much care for Al Franken, either, he earns my respect for having put his money where his mouth was by running for office, and actually seeking to work within the system to effect the changes he believes in. Good for him.

One of the things that bothers me the most in today’s political discourse is the never-ending series of claims from both extremes of the political spectrum that our “freedoms” and “liberties” are methodically and intentionally being taken from us. For what it’s worth, I don’t use those words as plural nouns myself, but prefer to think of specific rights and privileges (plural) that engender the more ephemeral concepts of Liberty (singular) and Freedom (singular). Pluralizing and de-capitalizing “freedoms” and “liberties” creates what I consider to be a false sense that they are just long laundry lists of specific items, so that any time any item is removed from the list, Liberty (singular) and Freedom (singular) are compromised. I think that’s a self-referential and dangerous postulate, and I am sick and tired of the glib “we are all frogs in a pot, slowly boiling to death” analogy that defenders of this viewpoint trot out ad nauseum when this topic comes up. I’m not that stupid. Please don’t say that to me again. Or the Kool-Aid thing. Thank you.

I’m also a political scientist by training, so I tend to take long, macro views, and when I look at the rights and privileges available today to every citizen of the Nation, compared to the rights and privileges available at the time of the Constitution’s adoption, I see a long, steady enhancement and expansion of Constitutional protections granted either by amendment or by legislation or by rulings from the Supreme Court. At the opposite end of the spectrum, if I take the shortest and most narrow political view, meaning how I live my own life, I also have no sense that the rights and privileges I experience as a citizen have been diminished in any meaningful way during my lifetime.

I’ve asked here and in other online venues for people to tell me, personally, what “freedoms” and “liberties” have been denied to them by either the Bush or Obama or other recent administrations, and the answers tend to come in one of two forms: (a) scary things that could, hypothetically, happen, but haven’t actually happened to the people writing about them, or (b) piddly-to-churlish things like “I have to wear a seat belt when I drive,” or “I have to take my shoes off at the airport” or “I can’t smoke in my office anymore.” Me? I don’t mind ceding such rights and privileges to the greater good and safety of my fellow citizens.

And I think that’s the fundamental rub I have with all of the “freedoms” and “liberties” talk: much of it comes across as selfish whining from people who just want to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, regardless of how it might or might not impact their fellow citizens. And that doesn’t feel, to me, like living under the rule of law, or being party to a social contract, or anything else beyond a petulant, foot-stomping, childish, “me me ME” view of the world around us. And that, in turn, makes me feel like we have become a Nation of Whiners, unwilling to work selflessly for the common good, concerned only about ourselves, and routinely electing politicians who are pathologically terrified of asking us to sacrifice. Few of us want to be inconvenienced. Few of us want to be told “no.” Few of us want to work hard to improve our Nation, if doing so involves something more than gathering occasionally to wave signs and shout platitudes at each other.

I think one of the worst examples of this in recent years was the Bush administration’s recommendation after September 11th that we should all continue shopping and going about business as usual, because if we didn’t, then the terrorists would have won. The attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center were the most grievous assaults on our Nation since Pearl Harbor. After the original day of infamy, the Nation joined together to ration, sacrifice, enlist, enroll, volunteer, home-garden, black-out and otherwise do what needed to be done to win the war against fascism in Asia and Europe. But after September 11th? Nothing. Just keep shopping, running up debt, and trying to flip your house for fun and profit. Fast forward ten years, with the economy in shambles in large part due to the debt crisis and housing bubble having popped, and consider how well that socioeconomic strategy worked out for us all.

As a former military officer, I grieve not only for those lost on September 11th, but also for those whose fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters have spent much of the past decade fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while we continue shopping and whining. My admiration for those people and their families is boundless. We are all so fortunate to benefit from their sacrifice, and it does them no justice for us to stay at home and carp about seat belts, regulations against salt in food, soda taxes, and shoe screening while they fight, and suffer, and die to defend our freedom to throw ugly words and ill-formed sentiments and half-facts at each other.

I am proud to live in a Nation that continues to provide me and my fellow citizens with a rich tapestry of rights and privileges. And I am proud of those who fight to defend us, and of those who work to support and nourish the rule of law, the common good, and the social contract that binds us as a Nation. And I am most proud of the Freedom and Liberty that I possess, for which, sometimes, I must sacrifice “freedoms” and “liberties.”

Filed under Government, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Rulebound Rebellion: An Ethnography of American Hardcore Music

December 10, 2010 Leave a Comment

In the Fall of 2009, I took a class at Rockefeller College on Ethnography, which the Penn Anthropology Department defines as: “(1) the fundamental research method of cultural anthropology, and (2) the written text produced to report ethnographic research results.” Penn’s site further notes that: “Ethnography as method seeks to answer central anthropological questions concerning the ways of life of living human beings. Ethnographic questions generally concern the link between culture and behavior and/or how cultural processes develop over time. The data base for ethnographies is usually extensive description of the details of social life or cultural phenomena in a small number of cases. In order to answer their research questions and gather research material, ethnographers (sometimes called fieldworkers) often live among the people they are studying, or at least spend a considerable amount of time with them. While there, ethnographers engage in “participant observation”, which means that they participate as much as possible in local daily life (everything from important ceremonies and rituals to ordinary things like meal preparation and consumption) while also carefully observing everything they can about it.”

The end product of this class, which was one of the three best courses I’ve ever taken in graduate school, was to produce an ethnographic report of some culture, after completing extensive field research within it. I chose to study American Hardcore Music, around which I’ve spent far more time than I should probably admit since its earliest, formative days in Washington, DC, nearly three decades ago. I conducted some new interviews, went to a bunch of shows, dug up years worth of old reviews, interviews and notes, and parsed it all using the ethnographer’s tools to find the common threads between and meanings of the rituals that hardcore culture embraces. I’m pleased that I ended up with a very different understanding of the culture than I had assumed would be the case when I started the analysis. I think that other than my Masters Paper this is probably the best academic product I’ve produced in my on-again, off-again post-graduate career. The names of the interviewees cited in the paper have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike. So without further ado, I present . . .

RULEBOUND REBELLION: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF HARDCORE

Filed under Education, Music, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Veterans Day

November 11, 2010 Leave a Comment

On July 7, 1982, I raised my right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, as had and have done all members of the United States military forces before and after me. By virtue of the relatively peaceful times in which I served, I never had to test my commitment to that oath in the face of live fire or combat, but many of the men and women who took that oath with me that day remain on active duty and are in Iraq or Afghanistan today.

My appreciation for them and for Veterans Day, when we honor them and all the soldiers, sailors, marines and aviators before them for their enduring service, is deepened by the fact that I am the scion of soldiers who actually did have to test their mettle in combat, and (fortunately) returned from “over there” to tell tales to their children and grandchildren.

I keep my late father’s miniature ribbons in a box on my desk; his full-scale medals are in a shadow box that my sister made. As I look at them, from left to right, I see that he earned: The Legion of Merit, The Bronze Star (with combat V), The Meritorious Service Medal (three awards), The Navy Commendation Medal (with Silver Star), The Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal (two awards), The National Defense Service Medal, The Vietnam Service Medal (with four stars), The Humanitarian Service Medal, The Vietnam Cross of Gallantry (two awards, with Silver Star and Palm and Frame), and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. Not included in the miniatures are the Presidential Unit Commendation (one star), the Combat Action Ribbon (one star) and the Lebanese Order of the Cedar, of which my father is one of only a very, very small number of American recipients, for his work with Ambassador Philip Habib and his service as Executive Officer of the 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit in Beirut in 1982-83.

These medal were all earned in onerous situations, far away from family, but we were fortunate in that my father actually came home to receive them. I have a photo in my office of a four-year old me and my mother admiring my father’s Bronze Star on the day it was awarded. I saw him pin on many of the other medal over the years. In 2002, he was buried wearing an identical set of miniature ribbons in a cemetery reserved for those who had sworn the oath that he and I both swore, professing our willingness to sacrifice our lives for the Nation and its people.

My father’s father was also a warrior, who set off to serve in World War II shortly after my father was born. He spent nearly four years in North Africa and Italy, surviving some of the most storied and hard-fought campaigns in a truly brutal war. He returned with an utterly astonishing photo album, including pictures of the bombing of Algiers, the siege of Naples, and his camp, in which his North Carolina-based unit attempted to evoke their home by naming the aisle between their tents “Rue De Albemarle.”

My mother’s father and great uncle also served in World War II, and I have records of many of my forebears serving in the Civil War (foremost among them: Colonel Charles J. Colcock) and the Revolutionary War (where my direct ancestor Colonel Ann Hawkes Hay served the American cause before we even formally existed as a Nation). I believe in the importance of service to Nation on an intellectual basis, but I also think I feel it on a gut basis, as a part of my genetic make-up, a cultural, residual memory passed down as instinct from the warriors who served the Nation before me.

So I applaud and admire them on Veterans Day, as I applaud and admire all those who served with them, and all those who serve today. It is with awe and humility that I ponder the sacrifices they made and make so that I can sit here and type this missive to you today. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Filed under Military, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

An Open Letter to the New York State Legislature, Providing a Policy Recommendation Regarding the Legalization of Medical Marijuana in New York State

September 15, 2010 Leave a Comment

A ragged composite of inconsistent state laws were cobbled together in the early 20th Century in order to criminalize marijuana for any medical purposes on a national basis. Perhaps it will be a similar patchwork quilt of state laws allowing medical marijuana that will ultimately lead to the overturning of that nearly-century old ban. If that is to be the case, I believe that New York should join with California and the other 11 states with current medical marijuana provisions to demonstrate that such programs can be administered effectively, efficiently and safely, in accordance with the wills of their people. I wrote this article in 2007 to back that conclusion, providing cites and references for additional research and consideration. While some of the specific legislative details are dated at this point, the summary of the history of marijuana laws in the United States is still sound and solid, as is the conclusion calling for New York State to change its laws on this important topic.

A Policy Recommendation Regarding the Legalization of Medical Marijuana in New York State

 

Filed under Government, Healtcare, Philosophy Tagged with , , , ,

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