Saturday, August 3, 2013

on charting our own course

occasionally I tune in to talks given by people who work in sustainable development. the sensitive acuity of these sorts of people inspires me. and yet they don't "show up" on the horizons of the broader public. how can they compete with flashy celebrities and gruesome news stories?


perhaps their concerns are too specific to capture public attention--too mired in hyper-local projects at some times, and bureaucratic quibbling at others. but it strikes me that youngsters are growing up in a time when it's easy to believe that the whole world is accessible. yet, lives worth paying attention to are still suspended behind some veil.

TED has helped to bring more exposure to the synthesized ideas of those whose careers are wrapped up in how to improve or change the world. I take in their glorious unfurlings with starry but glazed-over eyes. TED talks' live audiences are people who already have plenty of momentum. fellow speakers, wealthy investors, innovators and their ilk. but I bet a lot of the people who give some TED videos millions of views are a lot like me--dazzled but disoriented, and maybe even a bit alienated. how can we help? is this problem all figured out? should I be a mere fanperson of these ideas--should I take my care and concern elsewhere?

how to make ideas actionable will be a question that surrounds anything worth acting on. and it's not my intention to take down TED. in terms of its effects in the world, my calculations yield a net good.

but there are a lot of people doing really critical work who will never have the opportunity, or even possess what it takes, to give a TED talk. they don't have twitters or instagrams and they don't blog often enough to keep the eyes of others. they don't write for The Atlantic or the Huffington Post, so their thoughts aren't available to be quickly shared--they can't go viral. in short, they're not available for consumption.
maybe it can't be any different. it seems to be a common truth that those who are the most practically useful are often the least able to communicate their utility beyond a narrow range of people or institutions. for these sorts to avail themselves to the wilds of the Web would require they steal time and mental energy from more salient tasks.
but who then are we to pattern our lives after? I am concerned about this for young people. (I include myself among the young). we are going to be cheated if we take our cues from the trajectories that immediately surround us--not necessarily physically, but in terms of what we are exposed to. these commonly seem to be of a wealthy, Western sliver of the spectrum that is actually available.

the internet can be a great tool for those living in a place where their peers do not understand or value them. growing up homeschooled in the rural south my hours were spent doing things like watching TV, learning to make art, engaged in all manner of activities outside and, most critically, spending hours on the web corresponding with others about politics, music, art, and the particularities of caring for my animal menagerie. it let me find kindred spirits and encounter new, challenging ideas far beyond what Vance County could offer me even if I had been in school.

that being said, I get the feeling that the internet can create the illusion of the whole world being accessible to us. there is an expectation that anything worth noting, or knowing, from anywhere in the world will show up on our radar if it's important. but by that logic some of the most interesting or critical things will be assumed to not exist because they don't get much attention in news and socail media. and so there are whole realities, robust and impactful, that go about their business despite most citizens of the planet being quite oblivious to their existences. it's not their loss, but ours.

I'm not sure there is a way to get the obscured facets of life to show up in due degree without becoming an utter loudmouth--the sort who presents their views in so extreme a fashion as to color the water of public opinion or awareness, but does so at the expense of their message's quality or nuance. this doesn't seem like a realistic remedy.

so maybe the larger problem here is that of the human tendency to align our lives along well-trodden courses. how can each of us tune in to our unconscious intelligences--those subtle indicators of desire, of need, of potential--while simultaneously resigning ourselves to the paths of least resistance?

formerly, I believed that cool lives and lifestyles weren't getting enough attention, and that if only people were made more aware of the full range of options than we'd see people charting their most individually appropriate courses. now I believe that to still be true--exposure is valuable--but I just don't think that the internet can be changed. it won't solve the exposure problem for us.

for now, I'm on to two potential qualities of this discussion that can change our abilities to find distinct courses of action for ourselves (and, presumably, for the planet and its people). one is that the internet isn't the be-all, end-all of human experience. much of living lays outside of it. and while we assume it to be a fairly descriptive and representative expression of life I'm pretty sure that it often plays an  unhealthily prescriptive role, especially for the young.

and my second point is an equally obvious but equally new (to me) insight. rather than solely seek our calling out in the world, we should also ask ourselves some more questions. questions like, what do I hope to accomplish in the world (so far as I can tell this far into life)? and, what is my definition of success? and, what troubles me about the way things are?

until we spend some time introspecting in this way, gaining interior knowledge, our impressions of how lives can play out in the external world won't be as valuable and may even be inappropriate for us. we will only encounter and taste the lowest hanging fruit. but looking within is a skill requiring attentiveness and a degree of separation from the flashy narratives the dominate the web, and which would happily dominate our minds and set our courses for us.

despite all that we perceive as available to us, I don't think we're as independent a people as we'd like. only when we encounter and develop our inner selves can we begin to live in such a way that breaks the patterns reiterated around us. and we may be too exceptional, complex, or just too busy to make any appreciable impact on the web. but, so long as we're not compromising the replicability of our own good work, and so long as young people are ready to eschew tired templates of life in favor living a bit more to the point, I think society can move forwards more than it is moving backwards.