Noisy ghosts rattling the cages in the communications revolution

September 11th, 2009

Underpinning our passionate embrace of ‘social communication’ is the central issue of identity. Let me explain, in pre-industrial eras our identities were shaped by external forces, for example I live in an old agricultural village outside of Cambridge. 250 years ago I would have been born in the village, worked in the village, gone to church in the village, met my wife and married her in the village and died in the village. But the coming of the industrial age brutally cleaved us from those external forces that had defined us for millennia, and catapulted us into a world that, in a very short space of time, looked like nothing we had seen before,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18636155@N00/315728765

What we are encountering is a panicky, an almost hysterical attempt to escape from the deadly anonymity of modern life… and the prime cause is not vanity… but the craving of people who feel their personality sinking lower and lower in the whirl of indistinguishable atoms to be lost in a mass civilisation.

This statement is not recent it was it was in fact written in 1926 by a chap called Henry Candy. But, if this was true in 1926, what does 2009 bring us? The most intractable dilemma of our modern world concerns personal identity – and, the crisis of the early 21st Century is a crisis of meaning. No wonder YouTube uploads 1,000,000 videos a day as we begin to create a folk culture for the 21st Century. As we dismantle the edifices of organisations, media, and governance that have wittingly or unwittingly, deconstructed humanity to the point of deconstruction.

Noisy ghosts in the machine called life. Danfresh.jpg

In Religious Fundamentalism and Social Identity, Peter Herriot writes

The central and defining feature of fundamentalism is reactivity against modernism. Modernism is defined as a set of secular values and beliefs derived from modernity (the organisational and technological developments which underpin modern societies). Fundamentalists perceive modernism, and the secular societies which express it, as being hostile to their religion and intent on destroying it; ‘This defence of religion is the sine qua non of fundmentalism. If fundamentalism is to be construed as a modern reaction against modernism, we would expect fundamentalisms to come into existence after the effects of modernism become apparent.

I found this poem on flickr and it got me thinking about the fundamental need for us as a species to connect, and what happens when we become so thin-sliced that we fall into isolation. In the end, we become noisy ghosts in the machine called life, leaving us fearful and afraid as a consequence we turn towards more fundamental views of life as a means to shore up our crumbling sense of ourselves in the world. So on the one hand we have those that are re-programming communication technologies towards what makes us more human, but its an evolution from the industrial society. And, on the other we have people that want the world to stop, so that they feel that they can breathe and feel the sense of themselves in the world.

The crisis of our modern age is the crisis of meaning. Man falls out of nature

this is the place you’ll end up when you lose the chase
where you’re dragged against your will
from a basement on the hill
and all anybody knows is you’re not like them
and they kick you in the head
and send you back to bed
isolation pulled you passed a tunnel to a bright world
where you can make a place to stay
but everybody’s scared of this place
they’re staying away
your little house on memory lane

the mayor’s name is fear
his voice patrols the pier
from a mountain of cliche
that advances everyday
the doctor spoke of cloud
he reigned out loud
“you’ll keep the doors and windows shut
and sware you’ll never show a soul again”
but isolation pushes you ‘til every muscle aches
down the only road it ever takes
but everybody’s scared of this place
they’re staying away
your little house on memory lane
if it’s your decision
to be open about yourself
be careful or else
be careful or else

I’m comfortable apart
it’s all written on my chart
and i take what’s given me
most cooperatively
i do what people say
and lie in bed all day
absolutely horrified
i hope you’re satisfied
isolation pushes past self-hatred, guilt and shame
to a place where suffering is just a game
but everybody’s scared of this place
they’re staying away
you’re little house on memory lane
you’re little house on memory lane