Commune
I have a confession to make.
Back in the dark, early days of the internet, I found myself hoping against hope that it was, in fact, not possible to form a community via electronic means. This was largely due to certain elements of the Academic community who were insisting that not only was internet community possible, it was a moral imperative, because of all the great and wonderful things that community could do.
Well.
Not that I have anything against community, per se, but I was intimately familiar with the nastiness community can lead to. Oppression, exclusion, punishment and corruption are also byproducts of community. Of course, the Academy will argue that those are aberrations of true community, but that borders on a semantic abstraction. And the very aberrations I was worried about were popping up: hate groups were forming; politicians wanted to use the net to raise money and push "issues" (doncha love it: politicians have "issues"); Slate was launched. Nasty stuff.
The other part of it was that I had this feeling, this creeping, sinking feeling, that the people arguing for internet community were doing so because they wanted to control what that community looked like. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
And I wanted my internet wild. I loved all the weirdo crapola that churned up in the wake of a good surf. I didn't want to suddenly find that the whole thing had been reduced to some sort of cockememe Town Hall Meeting. So I formed the opinion that internet community was not possible.
I don't know that I ever told anyone that, and I don't recall basing any serious argumentation on it. In fact, thinking back on it, all the intellectual arguments I have engaged in regarding electronic communication in some way assumed the inevitability of internet community, that the "community" existed by very dint of the internet existing at all. In fact, the best argument I had against the Academics was right in front of me: to argue for the necessity of internet community is to forget that it already exists. What's that you got behind yer back, bub? Nah, the OTHER hand.
Why does this come up? I guess that I have been thinking about the whole blogging thing. Why do we blog? Why do some people blog for a while and then quit? Why do some disavow the practice and then show back up all of a sudden? Why do others have to switch blogging services in order to escape persecution or abuse?
Community. Same reason some people get pissed off at the Church and go off and form their own sect.
Community. Same reason some of us figure if we got a list of all registered sex offenders in the state our kids are safer on the streets we won't let them play on.
Community. Because some times it feels good to make sure that there are people who believe the same thing you do.
Safety in numbers.
But there is something else about it, too. Something uniquely affirming about the ability to reach out to other people and have them respond as if they know you, people you never met, hundreds or thousands of miles away, and confide problems or offer condolences or give advice or discuss matters material or theoretical. Maybe it's not possible, really, to have that honest-to-there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I transcendence that my sources tell me is the spark of real community. Maybe. But I still think it's real. I think that we can come to know others electronically almost as much as we are ever likely to know them face to face.
I think so. I could be wrong.
Back in the dark, early days of the internet, I found myself hoping against hope that it was, in fact, not possible to form a community via electronic means. This was largely due to certain elements of the Academic community who were insisting that not only was internet community possible, it was a moral imperative, because of all the great and wonderful things that community could do.
Well.
Not that I have anything against community, per se, but I was intimately familiar with the nastiness community can lead to. Oppression, exclusion, punishment and corruption are also byproducts of community. Of course, the Academy will argue that those are aberrations of true community, but that borders on a semantic abstraction. And the very aberrations I was worried about were popping up: hate groups were forming; politicians wanted to use the net to raise money and push "issues" (doncha love it: politicians have "issues"); Slate was launched. Nasty stuff.
The other part of it was that I had this feeling, this creeping, sinking feeling, that the people arguing for internet community were doing so because they wanted to control what that community looked like. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
And I wanted my internet wild. I loved all the weirdo crapola that churned up in the wake of a good surf. I didn't want to suddenly find that the whole thing had been reduced to some sort of cockememe Town Hall Meeting. So I formed the opinion that internet community was not possible.
I don't know that I ever told anyone that, and I don't recall basing any serious argumentation on it. In fact, thinking back on it, all the intellectual arguments I have engaged in regarding electronic communication in some way assumed the inevitability of internet community, that the "community" existed by very dint of the internet existing at all. In fact, the best argument I had against the Academics was right in front of me: to argue for the necessity of internet community is to forget that it already exists. What's that you got behind yer back, bub? Nah, the OTHER hand.
Why does this come up? I guess that I have been thinking about the whole blogging thing. Why do we blog? Why do some people blog for a while and then quit? Why do some disavow the practice and then show back up all of a sudden? Why do others have to switch blogging services in order to escape persecution or abuse?
Community. Same reason some people get pissed off at the Church and go off and form their own sect.
Community. Same reason some of us figure if we got a list of all registered sex offenders in the state our kids are safer on the streets we won't let them play on.
Community. Because some times it feels good to make sure that there are people who believe the same thing you do.
Safety in numbers.
But there is something else about it, too. Something uniquely affirming about the ability to reach out to other people and have them respond as if they know you, people you never met, hundreds or thousands of miles away, and confide problems or offer condolences or give advice or discuss matters material or theoretical. Maybe it's not possible, really, to have that honest-to-there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I transcendence that my sources tell me is the spark of real community. Maybe. But I still think it's real. I think that we can come to know others electronically almost as much as we are ever likely to know them face to face.
I think so. I could be wrong.
posted by Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer at 11:28 AM
6 Comments:
I agree.
'cept for the fake people.
Why do we blog? When you figure it out, give me a shout.
I still think it has something to do with buried (or often overt) narcissism. :)
I agree with you ... Or am I really a 60 year old balding man wearing a beater with a mustard stain on it? ...
You make good points, Jim. You are insightful as always.
I definitely feel a connection with people that I know in the blogging "community".
I think it has allowed me to see the very best that people have to offer, and at the same time allows people the luxory of having the worst day ever, telling everyone to screw off, then hop right back to it the next day.
There are no apologies necessary, because it is your blog. It is a whole new dynamic to friendship.
"I think that we can come to know others electronically almost as much as we are ever likely to know them face to face."
Sometimes better, I think. Anonymity is a powerful drug, allowing us to drop our inhibitions like we drop our pants at the end of the day. I have read more intimate things in the year+ I have been blogging than all the things anyone ever told me face to face.
Maybe that's why we blog. To express things too personal to say in public. To relieve a guilt, to throw a complaint, to cast What The Hell?! into the air without immediate censure. By definition, blogging (reasonably good blogging, anyway) is an intellectual pursuit. Thoughts are posited, questioned, churned and turned and burned, and you learn something in the process, without fear of being an outcast.
Or, we are just egomaniacal ants on the turd of the universe.
Your observations of the negative aspects of this community are well founded, and something I hadn't really thought of. But what human endeavor involving two or more is not a community? With its attendant flaws? My answer is that anything worthwhile requires risk. If the rewards of such an enterprise are greater than the risks, it is a success in some degree.
And, at least for me, blogging is certainly worthwhile.
"Egomaniacal ants on the turd of the universe"
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Post a Comment
<< Home