meta

[cellio]

While waiting for a compile, I just sent the following message to a friend -- using ICQ, the "neat new toy" of 5 or 6 years ago:

This livejournal thing I mentioned a couple weeks back turns out to be kind of nifty. (Nifty in the "community" sense, not really the "geek toys" sense. Though it's got a little of that, too.) I've found over the years that there are some usenet groups that I was really only reading for the writings of a few interesting people; the model here is that people write about whatever they like and you find the ones you're interested in following. (And you can jump-start the process by inspecting the sets of people your friends find interesting. So when Ralph pointed me at this the first thing I did was browse all of *his* friends.)

Something like this was probably the subject of somebody's sociology thesis or the like; I wonder what the conclusions were. :-)

Comments

trees, questions, and relationships

[cellio]

MY tree of knowledge was a human construct bearing a coincidental name.

Thanks for the clarification. It's a neat idea. Being able to hear others' questions (and the answers) is very educational. Left to your own devices, you can find answers to many of the questions you know to ask -- but what about those that would influence you if only you thought of them? We also teach the simple child at the seder.

I think some of the members of my congregation are happy that I'm around because I ask lots of questions. Some might be things they hadn't thought of, but many are things *they* mostly asked as kids -- so they got the little-kid answers instead of the more complex answers. But I *didn't* get to ask all those questions as a kid, so when I ask one of them now and other people are around, they hear new answers to old questions. Kind of neat. (Of course, some other members of the congregation probably wish I would just shut up and listen sometimes. :-) )

Relationships: You always have the potential to form close relationships; exposure to more acquaintances doesn't have to harm that. I guess I see it as expanding the pool of candidates for close relationships. For example, one person in a distant location (who I actually knew in person, but not well) became a very close friend over the course of a year or so (and still is) because of an "accidental" correspondence that really took off. This is the person who really helped guide my thinking about religion, from well before the time I worked up the nerve to approach a rabbi. (Who would have imagined that a random question about Hebrew would have had that eventual effect?)

Re: trees, questions, and relationships

[yitz.livejournal.com]

perhaps the internet is different, because every relationship w/ someone else out there is personal.. it's a one-on-one .. or the potential for a one-on-one bears none o the stigma that it might in a real-life environment influenced by the number o people present.

for example.. in a small 6-person party, one is more likely to spend some time talking w/ all others present..even if one has never met them before.. but in a 600 person party, a person needs to summon the courage to talk to a stranger.. on the internet there's no commitment, there's no exposure, so there's no fear ..

exposure to more acquaintances most definitely harms the ability to form close relationships.. one has a finite amount of time, and regular interaction with a larger number of people takes up more of that time, than regular interaction with a smaller body of people.. expanding the pool of candidates is only important if you believe there are precious few worth developing close relationships with... if almost everyone is such a person, then a larger pool is irrelevant.. look at something completely different.. college admissions boards-- they can only take a very superficial view of every applicant when they get tens of thousands of applications.. whereas small colleges with specific desires/direction can establish much more personal contact with the potential candidates--presumably...

a larger group of associations means you also establish rules to rule out a broader range of people you might have otherwise accepted when there were fewer options--- when presented with too many people, those rules could eliminate as much as 99% of the people you meet.. that can cause unhealthy relationship patterns, as it seems to be doing in society.. (altho it isn't solely to blame)..

Re: trees, questions, and relationships

[cellio]

There are more potential partners for close relationships in just my neighborhood than I could ever hope to develop -- but if I stay only within that community, I lose the larger picture that can come from a more diverse group. So maybe the family 4 doors down would be great people to get to know, and I won't because I spent those cycles getting to know someone in Rhode Island instead of Pittsburgh. But maybe the person in RI has more to teach me about the world out there, so it's a benefit. By definition, we can't know about the potential consequences of options we didn't pursue, so it's all just a guessing game.

exposure to more acquaintances most definitely harms the ability to form close relationships.. one has a finite amount of time, and regular interaction with a larger number of people takes up more of that time, than regular interaction with a smaller body of people..

I suppose it depends on the style of interaction. I have groups of friends who I tend to spend time with as a group -- so whether the Sunday-night dinner group has 6 people or 8 doesn't really affect how much time I spend with each of them. If I was spending time with each of those people singly, it *would* matter. The net makes it easy to share thoughts with groups of people, so except in matters such as these individual responses, the size of the group doesn't significantly affect the amount of time you spend participating.

Or maybe I'm just predisposed toward this sort of thing because I'm a competent writer and a lousy conversationalist. :-)