Reflections on "connections" and 'discourse'...

 What I value is the naked contact of a mind. (Virginia Wolfe)

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity. (Martin Buber)

Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision; bad assumptions can be just as blinding. (Peter Watts)

As connected as we are with technology, it’s also removed us from having to have human connection, made it more convenient to not be intimate. (Sandra Bullock)

The opposite of addiction is human connection. (Johann Hari)

With the dark experience of years of a pandemic, many people are talking, writing, and even profiting from the business of how and why to concentrate on the business/initiative/enterprise/dynamic of connecting to other human beings. In the middle of a technology saturation of much of our awake time, there is a veneer of connection in and through the devices we all carry around in our hands, purses, pockets, cars and offices. Business, that once required both paper and face-to-face meetings, can now be effectively managed through the mutual use of the Cloud, Google and Apple. Deals can even be negotiated remotely through Zoom, or one of many other platforms.

Twitter, once the most popular ‘opinion-conveyance’ machine, has fallen into disrepute after the musk-make-over.

A quarter century in English classrooms, literally and pedagogically, and as one reported to have emerged from the womb ‘uttering sounds’…I have some experience with some range of both the lubricants of connection and conversation, and also with the ‘grains of sand’ that confound connection and communication. Whether in the process of ‘introducing a Wordsworth poem to a grade twelve class of adolescents, or selling a hind of beef to a resort operator, or writing a radio commercial for the purpose of welcoming potential tire-kickers into a showroom, there are some common ‘elements’ that favour a reasonable reception as well as a list of ‘don’t go there’s’ for anyone seeking to be effective.

Most of these do’s and don’t’s, however, can be and are the subject of business communication classes, textbooks, and likely even online menu’s. As prescriptive, extrinsic, learned, and deepened by repeated conditioning, one adapts to those ‘communication skills’ that foster, and promote ‘reciprocity’ that welcome moment when another ‘gets’ whatever message it is that you have ‘sent’ and responds with a mutually energetic, affective and engaging “message” of their own.

The public square is filled with interviews, news reports, commercial messages on radio and television, as well as on many websites, all of them wrapped in language that has been researched, analysed, dissected and deployed to engender the ‘desired’ impact, another of those ‘things’ for which detailed measurements are recorded, curated, analysed and tweeked. We live in an age in which technology precedes, intercedes, and follows on the heels of our communication, and while the summative impact of that dominance, on the armies of “message merchants” registers the signatures of their professional reputations, on the rest of us, the consciousness of such ‘machine-like’ detection can only be negative at least on our sub-conscious and unconscious.

Conditions of privacy, repeated over and over again, in the process of building something we commonly call trust, have flown ‘south’ like the Canadian geese in their winter migration. Growing up with telephones, which we believed we not ‘monitored’ or recorded, offered some basic privacy for those conversations we regarded as highly important, especially those between people in whose live we had significant interest and who, we believed, had considerable interest in our lives. Saying what we most intimately coming from the deepest wells of our minds and hearts (metaphorically and literally) seemed safe, natural and very confidential. I can recall walking after dinner on many cold winter nights to a phone booth, a few hundred yards from our home, in order to stand there, with the door closed, in order to have a private phone call with the young co-ed in whom I was then very interested in talking with. Never was I bothered by the temperature, willingly sacrificing warmth for privacy. I even kept the purpose of my ‘going out’ secret, declaring, when asked, “I just went for a walk” rather than disclosing the real purpose for my absence.

Never did it cross my mind, during the winter of 195-59, nor has it in the ensuing years since, that whatever was said in those conversations was or would even be disclosed to any other person, including both families and friends. There were, to my mind and perception, no eyes or ears peering into those conversations. It was, in a word, ‘safe’ space.

Three quarters of a century later, however, no adolescent male would even consider standing for an hour in below-zero (F) temperatures for the purpose of taking with a co-ed in whom he might be interested. First, he doesn’t have to; next, why would he, when the pathway to ‘getting in touch’ lies right in the palm of his hand, and also in hers. And third, even while talking, both faces and environments are accessible to both ends of the ‘call’. Whether or not the spectre of ‘disclosure’ in the event that some other person, agency, or business might desire to ‘learn’ about the existence of the call, and potentially even the content of the call, could/would be a factor for both parties to consider. ‘Big brother’, however they decide, looms everywhere.

Technological ‘big brother’ however, is not the only ‘speed bump’ to human connection. There are other personal, internal, ubiquitous and pervasive emotional and psychological ‘speed-bumps’ to authentic connection that lurk in our culture, that we may or may not have taken account of. Especially in adolescence, when our sensibilities are radio-active, in regard to how we are being perceived, defined, reacted to and accepted/rejected by our peers, there is the prospect that our conversations might be recorded, video-recorded, and then repeated, in times and places that are not of our choosing. The issue of trust has taken on dimensions that our generation never       ` even had to consider, let alone confront and cope with.

Not only do we live with invasive technology all of it ‘purporting to bring us closer together in human communication and connection,’ we are also living in a time when the public discourse, in professional theatres, political committee rooms, on the public airwaves and even over the kitchen tables, has taken a 90 degree turn in the direction of ‘political correctness’ and moral appropriateness. A wrong word, uttered from the mouth, for example of a seasoned veteran and professional communicator at the CBC, can and will get her replaced. We have many ‘radio-active’ words, as well as actions today, that would have passed as ‘normal’ seventy-five years ago. While their negative import was not acknowledged, no doubt, many of them hurt people, often without those injuries being acknowledged or repudiated or forgiven.

Schools, for example, have been vacuumed for the potential of teacher-touching-hugging even the younger children, in the mistaken belief that such touching is an invasion of the privacy of those children. Kindness, and words and gestures that express and evoke compassion, have become ‘benchmarks’ for the reputations of teachers and school organizations, in the presumed pretext that kindness will foster academic, social, professional and economic and political success. Kindness, in the public arena, however, will not ever erase hate, contempt, bigotry and brutality in the private sphere. And any deeply-rooted notion that kindness is an antidote for hate is such a superficial and risky proposition as to be again, mis-guided.

In a recent interview with Steven Colbert on CBS, former first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, notes that the pandemic, in shutting things down, also separated us from each other. And that shut-down included her and prompted her to write a book looking for solutions to the rage, frustration and anxiety that accompanies isolation. Meditation, reflection, confronting her own fear and then writing about those processes are her attempt to start a discussion about getting ‘connected’ again.

Unburdened by the demands of active parenting, and the demands of serving as first lady, and also free from the struggle of having to earn a salary, the former first lady has had both the time and the inclination, the discipline and the resources to reflect, write, research and write, and for that many will be grateful. Even the concept of partnering, to which she dedicates a chapter in her book, she acknowledges, is not without its challenges. In response to Colbert’s, “I usually tell those who ask me about the secret to a successful marriage, ‘It’s never a loss to say I’m sorry!’, Mrs. Obama responded, “I think that would be good advice for Barack!” and in an aside over the audience’s laughter, “Do you hear that honey?”

Working those tight spots out, rather than exiting the partnership, (unless your partner is crazy, when you should get out fast), was another of Mrs. Obama’s attempts to go behind the glitter and the dazzling appearances of the limelight. The title of her new book, “The Light we Carry” is subtitled, ‘overcoming in uncertain times’. “When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it,” she writes. Really another ‘how-to’ book from a prominent public figure with a well-intentioned motive, to help us connect, will be read by many and remain out of the reach of millions.

Finding and acknowledging our light, while aspirational and inspirational, is another metaphoric caveat that nevertheless, also makes the issue of ‘connecting’ and the ‘community’ that is a hoped-for ‘working together’ to solve society’s many problems. However, the notion of having authentic conversations by itself, is worthy on its own merits, outside of and detached from any motive of social corrective and community building. And in that light, it attracts mostly transactional attention, in seeking and securing help for a project, including the project of operating a business, a classroom, an ecclesial liturgy, a medical consultation, a legal debate, or even the domestic chores of managing a family. And given that fear is not constrained by circumstance, addressing our own, as part of the process of ‘opening’ to others, we would all do well to take her counsel into active consideration.

However, individuals addressing private fear, to this scribe, seems a long way off from the social conventions that attend to our cultural norms for what we each have been ‘conditioned’ to consider effective, authentic and connecting conversation. There was once a cliché that reined in public conversations away from politics and religion altogether and admired those who conversed about the weather. The dichotomy of ‘consumer-supplier’ as social roles, by definition, can restrict conversation to the needs of the transaction, overlaying a kind of cosmetic set of guidelines, teaching those guidelines, practicing them and embedding them in our interactions.

Conversations that ask probing questions, speculate about new research, offer insights that might address perceived anomalies are rare and often uncomfortable. One recent facebook screen put it this way: “Whenever I noted an issue that I thought needed attention, I invariably became the problem.” While Mrs. Obama acknowledged her fear of change, in her resistance to acceding to her husband’s dream of becoming president, and offers ‘tools’ for overcoming negative emotions in uncertain times, we are all enmeshed in a culture that reinforces superficiality and political correctness in most of our encounters, and the fear of being known by another and thereby being ‘found out’ as being less than adequate/acceptable/easy to get along with/deferential/modest/fitting in….pervades our culture.

Another person who is ‘different’ even in such simple aspects as the correctness of the grammatical constructions they use, inevitably encounters raised eye brows, frowns, and an emotional turn-off. Change, in the form of the unexpected, the different, the new perspective, new nationality, new academic scholarship, change in social, economic or political status are all speed-bumps on the road to healthy and open and authentic encounters. An example, from a encounter, that indicates this observation: On joining a social service club composed of a variety of mostly retired men and women, one retired clergy was admonished, privately, out of auditory range of others, “Don’t bring that priest shit in here!” Doubtless, no one in that member’s quarter-century membership had ever admonished him never to bring his “geographer’s shit” into the club.

Social exclusion, while based on fear, far exceeds the dimension of encountering our personal light and empowerment. And while we as individuals have an opportunity and even an obligation to face our fears and find our inner light, that solitary and quasi-spiritual ‘project’ will smooth some of the domestic, personal and intimate conversations; meanwhile, public discourse will continue to be encumbered by a shared obsession to distance, and to detach and to remain objective, leaving the subjective to the poets, the artists and the therapists.

“Divides” seem inherent in the landscape, while “bridges” require construction over ravines, and tunnels through mountains of granite.