I’m a bit of a romantic I suppose.
Better still, I’ve big ideas about humanity, our nature, our natural sprituality, our place on the earth and so on. I believe they apply to and should be relevant to each and every human being everyday of their lives.
Problem is we are separated from that ideal in our daily lives.
Our culture doesnt recognise it. Our economic and political systems are ignorant of it. And as a result, our society as a whole is denied it.
Our collective histories to date have evolved structures and systems that work outside of these grand ideas.
In particular I have a firm believe in the idea (or should I say the reality) of the human community.
Humanity did not ‘begin’ with farming and ‘civilisation’. Before that we were not merely dumb smelly apes or wandering fruit picking savages. The earliest human cultures and societies cannot be described as primitive in any truly scientific way.
Read some books. Watch some nature programmes.
You will see staggering levels of sophistication in the cultures of all living creatures, going right back to the earliest lifeforms.
How can you ignore this when you come to ponder human culture and community. Worse still, how can you disconnect human culture from it altogether. Everything we are came from that.
The human community is another sophisticated natural community. You can argue that our intelligence and our abilities make it even more complex and sophisticated, but thats more a healthy debate than a definate reality.
Unfortunately, today’s high cultures are not built around its ideals. Different structures have evolved to circumscribe the workings of our daily lives.
Take for example, storytelling. Unique to humanity, and centrally important to the inner workings of the human community. It allows us to express, to record, to teach and to create meaning as a collective. I dont mean that in a marxist communist way, but in a communal one.
And yet in our society, the high culture of storytelling has been dominated by certain institutions since forever. One of the key reasons being that the storytelling tools or stages (the theatre, the picture house, the TV) were by their nature less open than the campfire. They could be controlled and used as pulpits, financial institutions, or propoganda machines.
Similarly with other aspects of the human community. They became locked in by higher institutions. The media. The church. The party. The sporting ‘associations’ (to a point). The financial system (whats left of it).
God bless the internet.
In the same way that free market economists believe in the ideal of an absolute free for all that will in time achieve stasis, I believe in opening up the communication between every individual on earth. This system will, if unregulated by certain interested parties, allow for the evolution of a true human community.
Within this system, ideas, ideals, tools, innovations, stories, discoveries, emotions, concerns and so on are shared for the prosperity of the community entire. It will lead to the emergence of a grand tapestry, one that can be seen and recognised as a definate overall culture.
There will be arguements. There will be disagreements, points of contention and distortions of the truth. There will be individuals who wish to use the system for their own good. No doubt there will be times when the situation becomes far from pretty.
But it will not be controlled from above, and that is key.
The great thing now is that with the dawn of the internet, we have the potential of achieving this in a global and wholly transparent way.
Rather than our technology leading us further away from our ‘primitive past’, it is allowing us to evolve a level of global communication that in turn may very well allow us to realise our natural communal nature.
Obviously this relies on people actually using the tools and talking to each other.
It relies on the development of workable, open and democratic platforms, and that is something we are working on over at www.crewger.ie, but that tale is for another day.
It also heavily reliant on those busy little bees working tirelessly to stop those aforementioned ‘interest groups’ from crashing the party.
So do your community a favour. Turn off that TV. Log on. And sound off.
Filed under: Power 2.0 The People | Tagged: human community, humanity, internet, media, social media, storytelling
I’m really glad I read this post. In fact, I really wish I’d written it as you’ve really expressed something that’s been on my mind and has formed the basis for my passion for a while now, but overall you’re spot on in what you say. The seperation, the storytelling, the “pillars of society”, the tools at our disposal – it’s all inspiring and overwhelming and brimming with potential and it needs people who are committed enough to the ideal to step outside themselves and focus on this to play a part.
Would be really interested in hearing more of your thoughts on this. I know they don’t come easily, but you’re definitely onto something here. Congrats and thanks!
Thanks Darragh (love the blog!)
We have content creation now at a rapid rate. What we need to do is connect ordinary people with the content being created around them on a daily basis – this is healthy storytelling.
Storytelling is a human art form allowing the community to communicate ideas. That is its nature. We now have a situation where anyone can control the media of high culture but we are not at a point where the tales are connecting with the people within these cultures in real time. People are too used to being spoon fed the product of traditional media.
But times are changing and the next generation will be well used to the idea that they ‘are’ the story.
The key is developing new platforms that allow for collaboration and interaction at a local level. The tales should reflect the realilty of the culture they come from. Sounds simple, but the workings of the broadcasting industry for the last 100 odd years have not allowed for that. They serve a different purpose, despite the best efforts of public service broadcasting.
Thats what we are working on. Watch this space as they say.