Disagreeing with David Weinberger is so much fun that I hate to forgo that delight; really, very few interlocutors provide so generous and engaged a conversation that I’m sometimes tempted to pick a fight with him just for the pleasure of participating in a good intellectual fencing match.
But this morning I just can’t argue with him, because he’s so very right on such an important topic. Michael Swaine construes David’s position in Cluetrain and Small Pieces as a version of the noble lie (I’m relying on David’s characterization of Swaine’s review, since the review is available only for paying customers at Dr. Dobb’s Journal); he suggests that David knows better than to believe that “the fundamental unit of human being is the group”; presumably, Swaine thinks that individuals in their isolation are real-er or truer than the groups that he characterizes as “abstractions.”
David, however, has his staunchest defenders in people such as Trevor and me, who devoted the first two presentations at the Digital Genres conference to making our case(s) against the premise that the isolated, flesh-and-blood individual provides some privileged access to reality.“We have always been digital,” I argued, and our identities are constituted in large part precisely by our relations to others. Likewise Trevor argued that the relational character of blogs (for instance) provide the web of performed identity that makes a locus for us to be ourselves, to perform our identity. We’re way on David’s side on this one.
I’d go further than David in resisting the premise that individuals are real-er than communities; I’m ready, for the time being at least, to argue that an asocial individual isn’t fully human. (I’m withholding hermits from the category of asociality because they may understand themselves to be participating in a spiritual sociality made the more intense and clear by virtue of insulating themselves from the distractions of carnal interaction — but that’s another too-gross oversimplification, and I may backtrack on it sometime.) Swainean individuality only becomes possible by virtue of, in the context of the social settings he dismisses as abstractions.
So, you go, David!
DRMA: Currently listening to "The Bristol Stomp" by the Dovells; "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead; "Baby I'm For Real" by the Originals; "Small Circle of Friends" by Phil Ochs; "Good News" by Sweet Honey in the Rock; "History Never Repeats" by Split Enz; "People Are People" by Depeche Mode.
The belief Swaine (who wrote me a very nice note, btw) puts forward is more like atomism than realism. And it seems so clearly wrong to me, while seeming so obviously right to its holders. The gap is wide. Should we add to the Digital Divide the looming Ontological Divide?
Posted by: dweinberger at June 13, 2003 02:01 PMFor what it's worth, I'm on David's side on this one as well ;) There's no way you'll get me to say that individuals are real-er than collectives, but I still prefer multiplicities ...
Posted by: Anne at June 13, 2003 02:31 PMJust when I thought blogging was becoming a tedious chore, you bring a fascinating question to life. A very big one too!
Somewhere in Also Sprach, Nietzsche offers the notion that historically, the community came first, and only later, individuality arose. This might seem to give precedence and priority to the community, but there is also the suggestion (I'll dig up the passage and blog the fecker when time permits) that there is a forward step - evolutionary if you will - in the articulation of the individual in history. Yeah, a big question.
Posted by: tom m at June 13, 2003 05:05 PMIf Swaine believes the individual "more true" than the group, collective or community, I'd suggest he's indulging in abstractions. The question of 'which comes first' is beyond my abilty or qualification to answer [atomism means squat to me :)], so I'll draw on the age-old African notion of 'ubuntu'. Loosely translated [as it usually is], it means 'I am who I am through other people', a pretty complex concept in itself but infinitely simpler and seemingly 'truer' of people's behaviour than Swaine would have us believe. Perhaps I'm missing his point but Donne's statement, 'No man is an island unto himself', seems self-evident. I've always enjoyed David's writing and outlook and, perhaps, to link his outlook to Donne might make him look a tad 'stuffy'. Another analogy would be Ken Kesey's busload of Merry Pranksters. Its destination being 'Furthur', the Pranksters stressed that one was either 'on' or 'off' the bus, a more attractive analogy of a community driving the individual towards a realisation of themselves as individuals. There might well be convincing counters, but I doubt they'll lead me to believe that, as individuals, we can 'sin in private'.
Re: Swaine vs. Weinberger. The issue may be so cold by now that it's not worth bringing up again, but it was heartening to see my views challenged here by clearly thoughtful people back in June. I still don't see what could possibly be meant, beyond a possibly pregnant metaphor or useful lie, by suggesting that groups are more real than living, breathing human beings. I don't think that it can seriously be challenged that groups are abstractions. How many groups are there on the planet? How many people? One question has a definite answer, the other doesn't. Doesn't that suggest that one question has to do with abstraction and one with reality? I am mystified by what to me seems a deliberately nonsensical claim, particularly given that the people making the claim seem to be doing so out of motives that I would embrace. So if anyone here wants to help me understand this, I'm willing to listen. Within reason: I don't respond well to non-rational arguments.
Posted by: Mike Swaine at July 16, 2003 08:40 PM