Today is 11/11/11, a date that comes around every 100 years. When digits line up that way like little soldiers we snap to attention. All those ones seem auspicious, somehow. Did the Mayans have something to say about this (or is that next year’s numbers game)? Surely this marks an occasion to launch some new venture or reflect on our lives. Or hold a sale.
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Social Media Week* unfurled at a dozen cities around the globe last week. I was fortunate to attend several events in Los Angeles and enjoyed the irony of finding pleasure and purpose in interacting with people in the flesh (real live human beings!) rather than via Tweets, blog comments, and Facebook messaging.
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What good is an anniversary if we don’t reflect on what the experience memorializes and signifies?
A historical turning point, 9/11 exists in both past and present. It was a singular event and is a still-unfolding one. We don’t know all its consequences or how they’ll play out, but some lessons are apparent — most urgently the need for compassion and understanding in a world sputtering on ignorance, fear, greed, hatred, and pride. The second is the need for vigilance in protection of all that is worthy and good — which includes not just life and property but the values that give existence meaning beyond mere survival.
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Hyper communication is not necessarily effective communication. Sure, we increasingly have access to almost any person or piece of information at any time. But too often we just talk or Tweet past each other, sticking to scripts without really listening. If nothing else, the modern age is a boon for irony.
The ongoing strife in Washington brings this to mind, naturally. But this is an everyday problem, for just about all the frustrations you and I are likely to have are related to communications, and technology has done little to free us from the drudgery of ourselves.
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Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck devoted his life to observable phenomena and logic, but he had a dim view of their power to change minds. “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light,” he said, “but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
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