Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

Making Sense of It All by Seeking Normalcy on Smaller Islands

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A continuous churn of disinformation now turns conventional notions of civic engagement upside down, making it wise to protect our understanding of the world as it is with more immediate connections that sustain us.

Give this thought experiment a try.

When we step back from our constant media chatter, we are better able to consider what really matters in our lives. The Trump show is an endless B-movie serial with a fool promoting rage-fueled ideas to bait the enemies he craves. There are evidently some among us who love this manufactured chaos. But most Americans dislike what he has done to deconstruct our national norms and institutions.

Perhaps one useful way to respond is to think of spaces that allow us to sustain our identity and personal sense of well-being. These virtual or actual islands we can recognize would include people who share the psycho-social spaces where we see ourselves. Geography may provide clear boundaries. In other cases the most significant description of this domain is the “noosphere,”—where people think in terms of the time-tested canons of rationality and durable understanding of what constitutes moral action. While many others can be interesting and pleasant, they may not provide evidence of the same essential views about how the world works empirically or morally. There is surely room for some plurality here, but in a country as vast as ours, there really is no alternative but to construct islands of sanity that we want for ourselves and to project to others.

I’m not talking about clinical definitions of sanity, but about the general view argued a hundred different ways by recognized philosophers and thinkers who were anchored in the real world, and who taught us how to evaluate truth claims as well as ways to evaluate qualities of personal character: figures as diverse as Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and even Benjamin Franklin.  Denying a tested and proven statement like “current polio vaccines work well” is a failure of these established standards, as is the threat to jail an otherwise blameless woman seeking an early abortion. Ditto for any encounter with an individual whose core choices seem alien to what a life of compassion should require. In many cases an “I believe” statement is an illogical option for a tested truth claim that requires us to yield to what is “known.”

We know many individuals who are effective in dealing with their friends, families, and career objectives. We also probably have an extended collection of “media friends” that provide their own forms of normalcy to our daily lives. True, the “para-social” nature created by one-way media cannot achieve the kind of rich interactions we have with others face to face. But most of us have pieced together an existence that has significant anchors in our town, neighborhood or particular media. All play a role in clarifying important shared values that build rather than destroy our sense of well-being. Even so, there are still too many others among us engaged in forms of magical thinking that make them unreliable communicators.

A norms-busting Donald Trump has forced us to look to other sources for clarity. His failures are always followed by some new conspiracy theory that only the witless can find plausible. The continuous churn of this disinformation turns conventional notions of civic engagement upside down, making it clear that we would be wise to protect our sensibilities about the world as it is with more grounded connections that can sustain us. Civic spaces need leaders with integrity. But with those in power at the federal level grievously lost in the weeds of fantasy, we may want to celebrate the long history of the nation in the coming days, but exclude what our current leaders have done to the republic.

Who gets to be on your island of sanity? Of course the population will be indefinite but still personally knowlable. The traditional value of a strong city or neighborhood should never be overlooked. I’d single out the black residents of Natchez, Mississippi, as seen in Suzannah Herberts’ 2025 documentary, who more clearly understand their regional history. As well, I would count the thinkers and searchers who flood the little New York town of Chautauqua every summer, or the 17th Century Quaker colonies that once dotted the landscapes of New York and New Jersey. And we can add the recognition of many others—through direct or indirect contact–who provide the character and rational judgment necessary to earn our trust.

Americans Blinded by Their Myopia

What does this necessary winnowing look like? Individual determinations will obviously vary. An example I find striking is Eliza Griswold’s description of some young American evangelicals described in a recent issue of The New Yorker. The piece quickly sets off alarms suggesting that these magical thinkers may be lost to the demands and possibilities of living in world governed by a cultivated ignorance. One 16-year-old “unschooler” working in her parents’ pet store near the corner of Gun Club Road and Military Trail in South Florida grew more alien to me as I read on. Especially in this state, how easy it is to shut down one’s own mental growth with ersatz educational standards, and then double down on the words of a Christian fundamentalist “prophet” like the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk. Not surprisingly, customers in the store get unsolicited  faith-based advice on how to care for their exotic animals. Sadly, this person’s consciousness of a universe of vast possibilities will probably remain truncated.

None of this is a plea for classist exclusivity, but simply for evidence of another’s efforts to deal with the broader requirements of authentic knowledge and generous empathy.

It will always be an overstatement to see Florida as a place that harbors visions of normalcy that look more dystopian. And, to be fair, examples like this can apply to some in my community. All deserve a basic level of respect, but may not produce a feeling of kindredness that should be evident when we recognize ourselves in the words and behaviors of others.

Our islands are probably stronger if they are physical places, such as a neighborhood or city. But natural heterogeneity in large populations may mean that they will have to be constructed through media sources that have produced what Joshua Meyrowitz describes as “media friends.”  These individuals may reliably turn up on YouTube, Substack, Facebook, or scores of other affinity sites.

In the end, we give meaning and purpose to our lives by sheltering from the larger and chaotic culture, finding kinship outside of what the now- dominant political order can provide.

The Value of Recognizing The Another

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In American life most of the work of affirming or denying recognition is done with the eyes, where noticing another is the initial act. 

Every specialized profession passes on habits to its practitioners that tend to become second nature. A geologist may see a rock type before she notices the entire hillside. A doctor might notice a person’s affect immediately, before fully hearing a patient’s complaint. As a communication specialist I can’t help but notch up an early impression of someone by whether I was somehow acknowledged, even as a stranger.  My own gauge says it won’t and perhaps should not happen on the sidewalk of a busy city, but it should happen in the setting of my neighborhood. To be sure, it has become a professional obsession that is a little beyond reason. But it falls within an honorable tradition building on ideas about of our common humanity as described by Robert Putnam or Irving Goffman.  Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a wonderful and classic study of everyday interaction patterns.

Think of the sticky social dynamics upon first boarding an elevator. A question that comes to mind is whether other persons will acknowledge their fellow vertical travelers with at least a slight nod. My experience is that most simply look at their phones, careful not to make eye-contact.

For good or ill it has become a default cue about the other person’s social acuity. People at a reception desk for a public establishment are supposed to be approachable and offer a greeting. But even reception areas are slowly yielding to sign-in kiosks.  In health care the real action these days is at computer and nursing stations rather than at the bedside.

In one of the first pieces offered on this site in 2014 I offered a simulation of an internal dialogue someone might have if they have taken a route that will bring next to their boss:

The Important Person has just turned the corner at the far end of the hall. She’s with an associate, walking in my direction. In another few seconds we will pass each other in the middle of a long narrow hall. Will the Important Person notice me? Will her glances to her associate give way to a glance in my direction? Will there be a simple exchange, or just a simple nod of the head? In the Important Person’s world do I even register as someone worth knowing?

Even as we are now deeply into digital means to communicate at a distance, we still have to sort out the meanings of cues that now come through our devices.

Why hasn’t she replied to my text? Why was I not on the list of recipients for the group e-mail? Why has this particular member of this online meeting turned their video off?

In this world, popular usage has settled on the idea of “ghosting” as the ultimate name for non-acknowledgement. More commonly, almost any stroll down a sidewalk will confirm that more fellow pedestrians are not prepared or interested in a simple ritual of acknowledgement. A person on their phone is there but not there: somehow in a liminal place that preferences the approximation of another person over their actual presence. Using a phrase that is now common, we are “alone together,” often linked not through place, but through a frail digital nexus. Older “digital immigrants” like myself find this odd and a little sad, clinging to the idea that humans should spend as much time in the unmediated social world that our brains were adapted to accommodate. In the grand scheme of things, communication at a distance is still a relatively “new” phenomenon.

With digital media it is much trickier to weave gestures of acknowledgment in a conversation. We more often use our turn to talk to bring the subject back to ourselves. And therein lies the sabotage of what should be a natural human response. Again, the smartphone, which is constantly represented as the height of human connection, is actually a tool of isolation, taking a person out of the environment and placing them in a middle region that offers no real sense of place.

In American life most of the work of affirming or denying recognition is done with the eyes, where looking in the direction of another is a signature act. The establishment of this horizonal plane of mutual eye contact is essential. In the flesh, saying something to another simply doesn’t work very well if we can’t catch that person’s gaze. Obviously, this is not always possible. Indeed, busy cities are the perfect cover for not engaging. But reduce the traffic to the simple case of one passing another and it is or should be harder to withhold all cues of recognition. But it happens, and frequently the instrument of evasion against recognition is a phone, which can provide a reason for not even using the eyes to signal acknowledgement.

If you are in an environment that might be broadly considered a community, for example, an office, a college campus, a faith community, a school, the averted gaze in another’s presence can be off-putting. Among those we know we expect an offer of acknowledgement through eye contact. But, again, communities must now also contend with competition for attention from many sources, one of which is what I call “screen thrall:” the increasingly ubiquitous habit of members looking away from approaching others in favor of a low-quality fragment of a digitized other person. It’s endemic in most settings, even when individuals are known to each other. My impression is that, for some people, the preference for a mediated connection has turned into an automatic response: we will look at a camera lens more easily than another person. It’s another case where we sometimes seem to prefer an electronic facsimile over the one in front of us, with a result that can be its own small wound of rejection.