RE: The Flight From Conversation by S.Turkle and Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance by M. Wesch

These articles are the most integral texts of our media literacy course so far in that they truly frame technological tools within the context of human communication and needs.   I've assembled key quotes at the beginning of my blog post and I'll be commenting on each of these ten items.

The Flight From Conversation by Sherry Turkle

1.  ...conversation for mere connection... 
2.   ...“alone together.”... 
3.  ...loyal to our own party. ... 
4. ...FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly.  It teaches patience...
5.  ...that we reveal ourselves to one another.... -- communion requires vulnerability
6.  ...Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved... Vanier

 Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance by Michael Wesch
7. ...We are all cut out for learning...

8....Tests often measure little more than how well they can recite what they have been told... 

9....Oftentimes the answer to a good question is irrelevant – the question is an insight in itself. The only answer to the best questions is another good question. And so the best questions send students on rich and meaningful lifelong quests, question after question after question....

10....Meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us...

TURKLE: 

From earlier posts, I've made it clear I want to integrate theological insights with the materials we're encountering in this media literacy course.  Turkle addresses this problem of the substitution of conversation with mere connection.   Another way this can be expressed is communion having been replaced by proximity.   It happens with us smartphone users but it also happens with our institutions. If you ever find yourself in Middleboro Ma and I'm sure it's true across the nation, you can find a spot where you can literally see various denominations right in a row.  The X spot below is one of those places where communion (having members of churches  be "at one") is substituted with proximity.   Old time Taunton Ma, had it when there were five ethnic Catholic parishes within 1.7 miles of each other.

T

Turkle's phrase "alone together" concisely identifies this human spiritual problem at it's core.  We've gone a step beyond co-existence to by-existence as there is no "co" in the mental configuration.   The individualism she describes is a new frontier in human relations that has never before been possible without the advent of such technologies and the prerequisite of wealth, which together philosopher Albert Borgmann would identify as "advanced poverty".  

Turkle takes it a step further by noting that not only is this an inner world of myopia, but such a self-serving one when states that we are now in this state "loyal only to our own party."  If we happen to include anyone else in our cohort, race, gender or any other commality in this group we might be better off in navigating this world.   I've taught an ethics course for at least eight years and I have found this to be the most striking feature of adolescent moral reasoning: unilateral libertarianism.   "My group  (or I personally) can do this act but that out group cannot." My main  fear in encountering this attitude is not that it exists in adolescents but in adults of all ages.      Turkle's decoding of the power of FACE-TO-FACE interaction is so crucial to the essential mutuality and equality that is one of our deepest desires.    

The last two quotes I've chosen from the article are about personal revelation and problem solving when she addresses the continuum of intimacy and loneliness.     Her writing is almost a symmetrical counterpart to the insights about our humanity in the Jean Vanier's Becoming Human.   He begins his book about the nature of loneliness and assesses it in a much more favorable light.  From chapter 1:

Loneliness in one form is, in fact, essential to our humanity. Loneliness can become a source of creative energy, the energy that drives us down new paths to create new things or to seek more truth and justice in the  world...artists, poets, mystics, prophets...Frequently, it is the lonely man or woman who revolts against injustice  and seeks new ways. It is as if a fire is burning within them, a fire fuelled by loneliness. Loneliness is the  fundamental force that urges mystics to a deeper union with God.

This is in such a sharp contrast to the idea that loneliness is a mere problem to either be solved or avoided.    In the same vein, Turkle recognizes how we reveal ourselves in our uniqueness, our idiosyncrasies and even unintentionally.   All of this can be translated to meet Vanier's other insight that in order for us to have true communion, we must be vulnerable.   

WESCH:

 The first quote I chose "we are all cut out for learning" is something I've tried to bring to my students for us to wrestle with.      I've shown them articles about a young woman with Downs Syndrome achieving an associates degree with honors and the Batman feature of This American Life (program 544)  that showcases a blind man who can navigate the world by echolocation.  And so we see all of this vibrancy of life and willingness to face a challenge but in the classroom I still get the "will this be on the test" question as every other teacher does.  

I try as Wesch has to deal with the questions as much as I can and have used excerpts from the book "The Death of Why"  by Andrea Batista Schlesinger.    Of course asking deep questions is natural to a theology class but it is not something students necessarily feel empowered to do or ever get the opportunity to do.     I think we have ratchet up the diagnosis on this front: getting answers (easy or hard, simple or complex, clear or nuanced) are symptoms of an addictive disorder about being right or correct all the time.   Teachers in the humanities (including theology) are those most likely to suffer from this disease.  

But as for recover from either rightness or meaninglessness Wesch is right in that we have to identify and/or construct  a grand personal narrative to our course materials so that students can own them.  I've tried to do this in the last two years with my honors course on the Church.   The very first day I introduce students to the three styles of doing theology as formulated by Gerry O'Collins, SJ: walking (praxis/faith in action), kneeling (prayer) and sitting (study).   As the conversation unfolds, I try to make the concepts become relevant to the student's lives but after reading Wesch it is clear to me that students must articulate that already have an unfolding narrative, of action, and of prayer, and of study in their own lives and they need to name those narratives in whatever primordial or developed form they are in and to hear the stories of others with co-lateral stories.   Then, on a more deeper level of trust can we move forward as a group of disciples (learners).