Short Form: The ending of distance as a barrier to community has changed the very nature of how we answer a deep human need for robust personal ties to other persons - a need that no society has ever answered well but that contemporary society doesn't at all.
I am at Netroots Nation this week. In a sense you all are, as this is but a toe in the material water for the vast world-spanning netroots movement of which we are all a part. In the past you had to be in a specific geographic place to "be there"; now you can just log on to the Internet and you are there. And likewise, I can post a diary, and I am "there", wherever you are. And we can exchange comments and talk and even see each other while we do so in real time. That's quite a shift. Quite a paradigm shift.
And it is but one among many more that are remarkable.
A more mundane shift, and one that began so long ago it is taken for granted, is that of high speed transportation. Yesterday morning I was in Charlotte. Two hours later I was in Pittsburgh, compliments of a turbofan jet airliner. That's not bad for a roughly 400 mile voyage. A century ago, counting stops, it could easily take 20 hours by train to cover that distance. Two centuries ago, 10 days on horseback would not have been out of the question even in good weather. From 10 days to two hours in two centuries. That's some difference.
Let's pause for a moment to consider these two first changes for they are aspects of the same transformation - the ending of physical distance as a dimension of human activity and with it, the obsolescence of distance as a filter for community.
Conventions in America are interesting phenomena, direct descendants of the trade fairs of centuries past, when merchants (sometimes but not always in the same product line or trade) would gather at specified time and place for a few days and ply their wares, share stories and some knowledge, make contacts and socialize with persons with whom they, due to their profession, had a community of material and personal interest.
There are of course other branches to the family tree. Conventions often have the aspect of pilgrimages, a la the walk to Canturbury from Chaucer's stories. There is a journey undertaken, one that informs and transforms as much as experiences from the destination. This experience of the voyage among persons with similar ideas and objectives, who gather in a place that all hold in esteem, is yet another source of community.
Then there is the heritage of the simple visit with alone, with a loved with, or perhaps family and friends to see new places, to take in the sights, to take a respite from the toils of everyday life. These experiences, too, contribute to community - even solitude does so, if it provides ease and peace to the heart and mind of the voyager.
In some sense, conventions represent in their temporary way the migrations of the past - searches, as it were, for a better life in a new land or, sometimes, just to find any life at all, for many migrations are refugee movements. Conventions can, for some, be a glimpse of that hope, that better society, that higher order of community that, for whatever reason, the individual is not feeling closer to their home. Perhaps it is not too far off to say - when we are here is the only time when some dear precious part of our spirits is truly at home.
I have found refuge from the sense that I must keep my politics muted. In blogging, I can write what I will. Here, I can live what I write, and experience the sense of community that comes from sharing interests, ideals, ideas, goals and work in common toward achieving those goals. We do more than share knowledge and experience. We share culture. We share compassion. We share community.
I have found respite from the toils of a career choice I second guess more than a few times, but it does pay the bills and gives me resources to support a few dreams and the dreams of a few others, starting with MKK and our spirited little boys. Some of those resources go to support activism, others into campaigns and charitable causes. This is more than just money, it is time and imagination and devotion that we share with one another. It is helping turn our shared culture and community into commonwealth. It doesn't always go down as we planned, or to our schedule, and sometimes we wish we had more resources so we are forced to make priority choices and sacrifice our wants for the greater good. But in sharing culture and community, we don't lose sight of the big picture or who the beneficiaries are from such decisions - all of us.
So for four years in a row, I have made this pilgrimage of sorts, to a new city each time, not to a shrine of any specific making or concept, but a pilgrimage to find something missing, like water from a spring that, once taken, lasts til the next year. For each time I have come to Netroots Nation, I have met people on the way who come for the same reason. This past time I was riding on the airport shuttle and learned that the woman sitting next to me was a Firedoglake writer and one who had been instrumental in outing the owners of a restaurant for being Prop 8 supporters, a restaurant that had a rather larger proportion of gay clientele. It was a story I had heard before, but only online. And here riding next to me was the architect of a juicy bit of video karma. That was a very cool ride from the airport.
And this time, I am not just a consumer of experiences. I have been quite busy this summer preparing for not one but two live panel discussions. The first is one that I organized - a tongue-in-cheek live blogging session on secondary effects of the economic recession which features a very interesting cast of thought leaders. It's not going to be your usual we-talk-you-listen panel I can assure you. That's on Friday at 1:30 EST.
I know from being in the audiences that panels can be powerful experiences. I know already, from the preparations, that putting on a presentation is as well. This, rather than the physical voyage here, has been the journey. Time devoted to task, to thought, to consideration of meaning, has been the filter of experience and community, not physical distance. Likewise, the sense of community borne of proximity, and that of alienation borne of vast separation, are meaningless concepts. My panelists have never been in the same place at the same time.
And isn't this the point of the netroots? We have no physical basis for community. Online, we so very often pool our focus and communication toward segments of cyberspace that we find agreeable - because we can. We no longer have that pressure to abide the quirks and contentions of those who live close by that we find obnoxious. We find those who are close to us to be more alien than persons on the far side of the planet with whom we communicate, via blogging, more often and intimately than we do with our own neighbors and colleagues. Sometimes, we realize we are closer in our sense of community with a set of friends that we have never actually seen than with persons with whom with live and work every day.
At least I did, for a time. And it created some serious tensions. After all, to have such a close bonding via the online channels, that takes a lot of time. A lot of shared time, focus and feeling. More time, for sure, than it takes to build such affinities with persons in the flesh, where you have the highest-bandwidth, lowest-lag channel of all in which to transmit information: face to face reality.
From the past until now, we have moved from an era where all community was based on face to face contact in the material world, one where distance in space was a strong filter to community building, to one where face to face contact (while quite valuable) is no longer the primary basis of community. And given the changes undertaken during the Industrial Revolution and now the Information Age, we get ever less of the practical communion of robust personal ties that we need to be complete as persons. And we seek remedies where we can find them.
So, locally it is ever easier to become alienated from your own neighbors, colleagues, friends and families. This runs the risk of our turning into a hollow society where no one feels any connection at all. Many writers have spoken of this sense of alienation from one's fellow humanity; I am hardly the first or the best at this. It is simply a trend that has yet to be slowed, never mind reversed or turned to a positive path.
Globally, it is ever easier to find ever more specific communities of emotion, of interest, of goal and imagination online. This can create intense devotions of time and care in order to support online communities or engage in meaningful contests of perspective that have real life impact. We have seen this with the political activism of the netroots. Yet there is also the risk of falling into a silo shared only with fellow travelers, and becoming alienated, first from every competing opinion, then from every competing fact. This we have witnessed with the perplexing behavior of the right wing from time to time.
Ultimately, we are starving as a society for the practical communion of robust personal ties and we have for all of our history. Perhaps this is the core appetite for human society, and as such something that has always been with us. The civilization of today has its specific texture in this regard; the online pilgrimage for community, or communities. It serves to remedy, in part, something that real life has not for some time. The obsolescence of distance makes this possible. There are risks and trade-offs in meeting such needs, not only with real life but with wider online community. But we are learning how to better use these tools that science and industry have provided us. And we are indeed getting better at it, as our understanding (and online communities) get wiser each day.
Distance can no longer keep us apart. It is no longer the excuse to not know persons or to write them off as irrelevant or inimical. These choices are now our personal responsibility, as they always have been. The responsibility is just more transparent now. And that may well be the biggest paradigm shift of all.