Social Media as Socially Inhibitting?

I recently watched yet again an appeal to switch off our smartphones and other distracting devices to allow ourselves to be more connected to the people around us. The idea was: Let go of virtual communities and embrace real social contacts. Somewhat ironically, it was posted via Facebook. In general, I am all for this sort of thinking. If I had to write a categorical rule for behavior, I would probably want social media (albeit their positive effects) to be excluded from intersubjective relationships rather than included. In fact, I might be one of the last westerners of my generation who does not even have a smartphone. But there are two counter-arguments that should be considered. I think something can be said in favor of electronic distraction as a protection from unwanted social contacts. And, more generally speaking, I fear that condemning the devices we use in anti-social behavior is rather talking about the symptoms and not the reasons that cause us to act in this way.

If you really think about the problems of disconnection, excessive individualization, self-centeredness, isolation etc. it is obvious that they have a much longer history than that of social media and the increasing use of arguably socially separating electronic appliances (cf. e. g. Dahlern, 2013 100-111; in the online version: 83-93).

“Struc­tu­ral modernization was accompanied by cultural modernization which is characterized by secularization and in­dividualization of religious and moral values, the rationalization of society, fast information diffusion, and the origination of a consumer culture” (Ester/Halman/Moor, 1993 3).

Industrialization and modernization could be seen as factors that have supported social disintegration and have led, for example, to the dissolution of family ties. For anthropologists it seems to be a commonplace to assert that contemporary children in the West typically learn language in dyadic structures (i.e. in one-on-one situations, usually with the mother), at least in middle- and upper-class homes, and that they also spend a lot of time alone (cf. e. g. Small, 2001 94). Other research shows that our culture of scarcity and, intertwined with it, shame, comparison and disengagement are major sources for anti-social behavior, fear and suffering in our societies (cf. Brown, 2012 24-30).

It is simply illegitimate to single out one current form of behavior such as the use of social media and electronic devices to explain pervasive social and cultural changes of this size. Moreover, it seems very doubtful that the simple advice to stop this behavior is even helpful, because it does not address the real issues.

Besides, I personally feel that it is possible, and not too difficult, to listen to (moderately loud) music over your headphones and/or to text someone via your mobile phone and still pay attention to your surroundings at the same time. I actually find it a lot harder to concentrate on anything else when I’m reading a book, which I sometimes do in public. I am much more cut off from social contact when I am engaged in a gripping novel than when I am writing a text message or listening to a song. In addition to this, I sometimes feel that it is relaxing not to have to listen to everything people around you are saying and to give yourself a break from chitchat with strangers. So the second argument could be summed up in a question: Should I be available for every communicative contact just for its own sake? I would argue that the answer has to be no, as this is an overbearing demand.

Sources

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly. New York: Gotham, 2012.

Dahlern, Nina von. The EthicalFoundations of Postmodernity – Communicative Reality and Relative Individuals. Bremen: EHV, 2013.

Ester, Peter, Loek Halman and Ruud de Moor. “Value Shift in Wes­tern Societies.” The Individualizing Society: Value Change in Europe and North America. Eds. ibid. Tilburg: Til­burg UP, 1993.

Small, Meredith F. Kids – How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children. New York: Anchor 2001.

The Time Being Passing Her Time

It seems almost ironic that it took me such a long time to read Ruth Ozeki's wonderful novel A Tale for the Time Being. I am usally a fast reader, but for numerous reasons I could not manage to finish it, and it really made me smile when one of the narrators faced similar problems trying to finish the diary of the other narrator she is reading in the book. I also came across lots of other passages that bore simiarities to my own life and thinking, which is probably what makes you love a book in the first place.

Ozeki quotes from Marcel Proust's Le temps retrouvé at the beginning of Part II, commenting on this very phenomenon:

"In reality, every reader, while [s]he is reading, is the reader of [her] own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument ... to permit [her] to discern what, without the book, [s]he would perhaps never have seen in [herself]..." (Ozeki, 2013 109).

I think I have always been aware of this fact, yet, it still surprised me how very much I could relate to this story or, rather, relate this story to myself. On top of everything else there is a quote that terribly reminds me of what I wrote about language and ghosts from the past haunting our words last December:

"Where do words come from? They come from the dead. We inherit them. Borrow them. Use them for a time to bring the dead to life. [...] The ancient Greeks belived that when you read aloud, it was actually the dead, borrowing your tongue, in order to speak again" (ibid. 345f).

Of course, we are probably both influenced by the metaphors and concepts already existing in our cultures and, thus, in the language making up our worlds... The idea of ghosts borrowing your tongue is as eerily beautiful as the whole novel. Thank you Ruth Ozeki!

Source
Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being. Edinburgh and London: Canongate, 2013.

Language is a Haunted Home

Communicative means are means of creation. We shape the worlds we exist in – we make ourselves at home in them – and at the same time are shaped by them. These processes do and at the same time do not take place in a technical sense. Signs are enacted and decoded, and these signs can be recognized, described and analyzed. Yet, communication is always at least a two-way street. We cannot communicate on our own. The dynamics of making meaning are situated forever in between; they rest temporary. Meaning is caused in between people: in between an audience and a work of art, in between a word, the way it is used and the way it is understood.

As we pour ourselves into the space we live in and are sucked into it by those who inhabit it too, all those innumerable others who have taught us to communicate and who have used and thereby shaped the communicative means available to us before we even existed haunt our worlds as well. We make ourselves at home; but it is always a place that we share with those we love, those we meet and all those ghosts of the past. A past we cannot even remember, a past we nevertheless keep alive by our very being here. We thus exist in a temporary eternity.