Communication is ... All there is?!?

This blog takes on a certain timeliness for me... Can today's events in Staten Island be used to help launch a conversation on race and structual bias, and also opportunity, or will it be noted and then fade away? There is a chance to move a conversation forward- in a way I haven't seen for many years- about an issue based in reality that has been around for a long time. And the conversation itself can do great good...

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It took a first experience in another state of consciousness for me to understand the late German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's phrase "connectivity."

It hasn't been nearly as fun though it has taken longer to finally get his seminal point that in our social world, everything is communication. Luhmann refused to investigate "real" actions or goings on; he said you could only really analyze what is being said.

As an MA student and passionate 20-something, that seemed an academic cop-out. How could one deny that things happened. There was love, war, learning.

But as an adult, I can now say that I totally get it. And it's both infuriating and morivating: it makes me want to act-- or rather speak.

As I look at the perception of conflicts over time, I'm totally struck by the power of the frame. Ukraine is in the news? Well then it is happening for the vast majority of people in our western world. Out of the conversation? Then the problem has actually disappeared. It may rear its head again, but for the moment, it is not there in our consciousness.

Communication shapes perception and perception creates reality. Really.

That's not academic at all. And it's not predestined either. Would it be possible to keep Ukraine in the news? Yes-- write a great piece about Putin's childhood fantasties of Russia's breadbasket region, highlight one young woman who captures the imagination, report on a new element on the scene... The key- have it picked up, repeated, debated, shared 1 million times and then reported on again.

But, you argue- if something really "big" happens, it will make the news and be in the public discourse- so events create communications create perceptions- it's the other way around. 

Someone decided what "big" was- and someone believed him. Isn't there a muppet movie song to that effect? Kermit explaining the "existence" of God?

Ask anyone on the "happening to" side of the news and they will inevitably disagree with what was covered and how. The reality of the protagonists is not by necessity the "reality" we get. In fact we can get a reality that is quite different from those on the ground.

Is there a relation? Usually there is. But what context to offer, what frame, makes all the difference in how we understand those links to a real concrete reality. Are they fascists or saviors, murderers or brave defenders? In each there is a grain of some more solid "reality" or truth, so it can seem to jive with experience, to explain reality, but the choice of How that reality is explained, how meaning is assigned, is very contingent on who is communicating and how well, hence what communications are catching on.

Ukraine is a searing example, as I believe  for the folks there, life remains very hard indeed, whether we watch from here or not.

Even more infuriating for me is the realities that we create with our political discourse here in this country and in the Middle East.

It is a vicious cycle of communications strengthening the worst possible narratives, having some impact conversely on the reality on the ground, that in turn strengthens those same negative communications. It's overwhelming, it can be very convincing, and of course it too is in part true, and becomes more and more so every day.

I'm grateful for being able to finally see this clearly. And very very frustrated by the general direction of these communications. And impressed with people who stand behind their alternative realities, and wishing they would fight more for their communications.

Heat

It's amazing how quickly 'having gratitude' turns into 'taking for granted.' I'm really interested in the basic question of how to hold onto that gratitude, and the corresponding joy and perspective that comes with it.

Heat is a good case study for me. Over the last week plus, our building has been doing major pipe work and we have had no heat. It's been a cool spring, and we've been kind of cold inside- wearing sweaters and socks, drinking lots of tea, and on a chilly rainy recent day, going to bed early to get under the warm covers. 

When I lived in Berlin in 1995, I had to heat my apartment using a coal oven. That meant schlepping huge buckets of coal up from a tiny cellar, trying to place the individual bricks in a fire-friendly formation, lighting the whole contraption, and praying... that it would actually catch fire in the oven, burn through, and subsequently warm the tiles, which would in turn radiate heat into the room. 

I think it's pretty obvious that I wasn't much good at this, and my apartment, which was my first independent one and which I absolutely adored, had the added disadvantage in winter of being on the ground floor. That meant no one heated below me either, and my floors were ice cold as a result. 

Berlin has long, dark and wet winters, and my apartment was always cold and damp. A dear friend visited and wore a full sweat suit, scarf, hat, two feather blankets, and towels on top of her to bed every night and was bitterly cold nonetheless.

My boyfriend, now husband, knew how to do the coal burning thing well, but had a bathroom that didn't have an oven or a heating unit of any sort. He was on the top floor if his building and the cold air came from every side and the roof. Going to his bathroom on a cold winter night took an unbelievable amount of courage, and I often literally ran there in preparation when I finally capitulated.

And of course, those youthful, and very memorable adventures, were nothing compared to the stories of so many people who have to endure cold in much worse conditions and over much longer stretches of time.

Elderly people are among the most vulnerable. In my current building in recent weeks, those who are home bound have had a very hard time.

And that doesn't hold a candle in turn to stories that I've become acquainted with at JDC-- of elderly people, Jews, in Ukranian villages who face an almost Siberian winter without running water and have to trudge to outside pumps, of leaky roofs and cold, damaged cement walls and outhouses. Not just for a few weeks, but for every winter of their lives...

It's miserable to be cold.. unless you are young I guess, and the situation is temporary. And then it's a good opportunity to be reminded of how wonderful and cozy it is to be warm again.