Blogging and Luddites

Blog-browsing... trawling through the daily-happenings that people post onto their little web-spaces (like this one), but offering nothing in return (not even a comment), is consumerism at it's very worst.

My friend Lucie said this, or something very similar, when I saw her a couple of weeks ago... and it's been bugging me ever since. I probably ought to add that she didn't say it in quite the definitive statement way that I've just said it. I only did that to get your attention. (but you've read this far, so it worked!)

However, I think I agree with her (which at the very least, means I need to get cracking with some commenting) - I think that it's very easy to feed on one another's lives. It's very easy to flick through blogs, reading bits and pieces, but offer nothing in return - there's no offering of gift.

It's probably not an intentional thing. Somehow, we've been fooled into thinking that accumulating information about people, even our friends (via blogs, or via the media in the case of 'celebrities') will actually bring us closer to them. But information doesn't equal relationship.

We're fooled because we are so like the consumerist culture that we've grown up in - we can't see the proverbial wood for the trees... we've absorbed it's values, and somehow made them acceptable. We wear them like Emperor's New Clothes, and maybe it takes someone like Lucie to say, "something's not quite right here?".

I really don't like consumerism, and I don't like it the most in myself (that's where I see it the most too, unfortunately). I'd far rather be a giver than a consumer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Do you know what a Luddite is?" asks Kurt Vonnegut, in his wonderful, unintentional memoir, 'A Man Without A Country'. "A person who hates newfangled contraptions... I have been called a Luddite. I welcome it."

"Ned Ludd was a textile worker in England," Vonnegut explains, "at around the start of the nineteenth century who busted up a lot of new contraptions - mechanical looms that were going to put him out of work, that were going to make it impossible for him with his particular skills to feed, clothe, and shelter his family. In 1813 the British Government executed by hanging seventeen men for 'machine breaking', as it was called, a capital crime."

Vonnegut uses the remainder of the chapter telling of his day spent posting his hand-written manuscript to his typist. Refusing to email it, he staples the scribbled pages together and wanders down the street to the newsagent, talking to familiar faces along the way, to buy an envelope. After this he queues in the Post Office, talking with fellow-queuers and observing others.

People. Gifts of presence and intimacy and facial expression and touch are being offered back and forth all the time... as the tale ends, I feel like I know them, but the reality is I don't. But he does.

"Then I go outside and there is a mailbox. And I feed the pages into a giant blue bullfrog. And it says 'ribbit!' And I go home. And I have had one hell of a good time.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

Comments

[linda]

I understand what you and Lucy are saying and perhaps we make less effort to go and see people.... but I know for me I live a very busy life doing what I do and I don't want to lose connections with movements, friends I have been involved with on a more intensive basis in the past. Also being very far away from my home country these connections are even more vital. For example via a random press release email from the Salvation Army in NZ meant I re-established connection with an old classmate from journalism school who I lost touch with about 12 years ago. So praise God for technology!

[linda]

Also many of us don't own our own homes, aren't married, our job situations are precarious, we've had to move from our normal communities or countries in order to find employment - which tends to make our generation (20s-30s) very rootless and again these kind of technologies thrive in this kind of society. Phew you've given us lots of food for thought Toggers.

[Lucie]

Hmm! I was (and still am) challenged by the feeling of consuming someone elses life without saying 'hello'...I have also got over my judgement of the superficiality of facebook however.

This happened because I thought, or realised, that there is potential inherent in every new technology, form, system, whatever - for alienation OR reconciliation. What you sow into it, is what you reap out of it. If we approach people in their web-lives with love and generosity we will express God's kingdom, if we turn up to 'get' we'll drive wedges between things.

Having said that, there is also space for us to critique these forms in terms of how they are 'likely' to encourage us to behave. There has to be...Maybe it's more that consumerism is the logic that threatens to infect all our relationships, and we just have to be aware of that as we seek to do the complete opposite - live generously.

PS - have you ever sat at a table, 3 of you...all at your laptops eating breakfast in silence?

[Vicki]

I think its easy to read people's blogs and then think, somehow, that we know how they are and what is going on for them - that we are 'keeping in touch'. It can almost be tempting to use reading them as a replacement for calling someone or popping in for coffee... So I feel challenged to adapt my blogging behaviour, and going forward, to offer encouragement or a prayer etc as I read. Thanx Phil

[Alicia]

I am the quiet one (who believes me here?!) who reads for example, Phil's blogs yet this is the first time I have ever replied or commented! Thing is, I read this blog and others to find out what I can pray into. I rarely contact that person unless God has a specific word for them that I should give, otherwise I guess I am slightly lazy. "offering nothing in return, not even a comment" I think Prayer is A LOT more than nothing! *goes back to being quiet again*

[James]

Obviously I've fallen in to your cunning trap of commenting on a post which "asks" for more comments. I wanted to point out though that politicians take one letter to be the equivalent of ten - i.e. the others never got round to writing - so it's not uncommon.

In terms of the consumerism; there's been no comment on the spreading of your lives across the internet in the first place! Yes I enjoy reading what people are up to- particularly in the world of 24-7 and comment from time to time, but sometimes I feel like this desire for comments is a little like people just wanting confirmation that their lives are worth something! ;-)

(please note tone of sarcasm through comment)

[Tim the Enchanter]

Just lurking here Phil!

[brian H]

Who cares about comments,I enjoy getting my ideas out there and sharing my stuff. As the product I feel that people aren't consuming me, they are observing a small aspect of my life. If you don't like people browsing on your blog and not leaving comments then don't blog. Or make it a private blog. Or get rid of your stat counter so you just don't know. I think we have to get down to the question of "why blog?" If's it's for comments then personally I feel you need to take a break. Anyway great post I like it the sort of post that makes you want to comment, and then you feel loved.

[linda]

All good comments here - I tend to agree with you Brian - I think on my blog type 'vox' that people who don't use 'vox' can't comment anyway. But I'm cool with that

[glyn]

the problem is my friend, your luddites are soooo bloomin huge they just CANT be ignored, and normally I dont write in response to what i see because I just feel so insecure...my luddites are tiny! So under developed...Almost non exisistent...wot are luddites?

[Mike]

Yep. Get up and go do something

[nelly]

Thanks for the challenge to resist consumerism in all aspects of our lives, Phil.

Information may not equal relationship but it sure can buttress relationships nicely. I've never met you face to face (since I'm on the wrong continent at the mo') but your blog scribbling gives me a context for sharing a future coffee or beer in real-time. Same goes for Brian H and other 24-7ers. I'm really grateful for blogdom for these sort of intro-connections.

[Dan]

well, you just guilted me out of my daily trawl through my RSS readers list of all my acquaintances blogs. I am a consumer, I confess. I think I like learning from other peoples experiences & living vicariously through them. I suppose I fool myself into thinking I can (& do) communicate more directly with the people I am close to (IM & telephone) & that that makes it alright. lame reasoning. I mostly am looking for good book, film & music reviews from people who's opinion I respect - people like you phil!

[linda]

I really don't have all this other techie stuff - just the net at work - no ipod - don't even have a mobile phone right now.

[carlos]

I think offering something in return is at it's best optional, and doesn't make us fall into the consumerism pit of doom...
"commenting" is just an expression of our virtual personality, which is an extension of ur "real" self.
If this statement were true (e-consummerism), then reading books, forums, magazines would also fall into the same category, since after all... we are consuming ideas, fabricating scenarios in our minds through the experience of understanding words.
Body presence is overrated. I believe it's important but I also believe that friendship trascends the barrier or touch. The love or attachment that u can feel for someone is not in function of a geographic position in a casual/informal level. And it is at this level where we can afford most of our friendships to be.
"People. Gifts of presence and intimacy and facial expression..." this is all culture, creating new knowledge through experience to produce pleasure. Virtual expression is also culture, new knowledge... different knowledge... so imo whats happening is that we're putting the good&bad label through a biased cultural criteria... pls don't feel guilty for enjoying virtual experiences.

[kbartha]

Vonnegut sounds a bit like Wendell Berry. And his luddite as man without a country quote sounds a bit kierkegaardian... kierkegaard called himself a king without a country and an author without any claims.

Consumerism is one thing. It's voyeurism that's the real culprit. We get caught staring at each other and could care less if we ever become interdependent.

The fresh glimpse we find through each others blogs are like windows into each other... that's what C.S. Lewis called great literature in his literary criticism... windows. He wrote about how we all want to become greater than ourselves and great literature carries us into those new spaces... movies are the same i suppose.

I like the look through your window.

[KarenP]

blogs... the new gossip collumns of the entertainment world. Now we all get to be diva superstars.... ha ha (can I confess that I kinda like it??? haha)... when Asia, Germany, Brazil, Greece peek in.....fabulous...!

[Kermit Johnson]

Now that you have read all of this, you might be inspired to join me in Blog Inaction Day.

http://www.realestatetwincities.net/may-15th-2008-is-blog-inaction-day/

I challenge you to do it. Invite your friends.