Learner Therapist (69) … Digitally mediated relationships

Torrey Orton

Dec. 26, 2016

Who’s at lunch with who?

I was out to a demonstration lunch a while ago. Two demonstrations were occurring: the successful pretence of a great chef and the aspirational pretences of a bunch of diners. The pretentiousness was exemplified by the number of discrete courses – around 20: enough to occupy the whole of the only page in the menu. A socially and ethically interesting question was: who else was there and were those who were there actually there? Why they and we were there would be to follow the pretence path, but that’s another story.

Rather, it was clear from the number of phones tables and in hands that there were others being summoned, cajoled, invaded by the experiences of some diners. Perhaps the reverse was also true in response and maybe some of the apparently sharing diners were actually partaking of their digital partners’ pretences and not really present in the lunch for those moments (either in their own view or the view of their lunch relationship partners). And some connections with unknown unpresent partners on both ends may have been secondhanding the partnerships of the first instance in simultaneous sharings with unknown others…and so on around the digital twittiverse.

If you think that experience is hard to express and, more so, to comprehend, I’m sure you are not alone. Acquaintances of mine who are masters of the digital disciplines continue to amaze themselves with the unintended disclosures of their notionally private selves which blow around the cloud of endless remembering as a result of a burst of communication neediness from the grip of a heart ache or break, or a glass too many. In the same vein of virtuality, we can wonder which of these dining relationships were authentic, real, present (add your favourite behavioural, emotional, or cognitive criterion of existence here). And what would they be being authentic about?

How can we know what happens at lunch?

These kinds of practical implications of relationships are what concern my therapy patients. In fact these kinds of questions / concerns are what people are usually in therapy for – things to do with who can they be usefully connected to in myriad ways and which of those ways are appropriate on criteria that they embrace and think can be embraced by the others, and consequently may actually be embraced in a real relationship. For example, clarity about relationship types would allow increased fine judgment of what type is actually uppermost in one’s own mind and one’s partner(s) mind(s) in a specific relationship moment, event, history and prospect.

I propose that without a systematic way to classify digital relationships on non-digital criteria, we do not know what we’re talking about in discussing, and especially researching, contemporary digitally mediated relationships. Digital criteria are simple: can a digital wire be tripped in a recording device by an effective sensor signal? For an analogue example of criterion domains, are we talking about personal relationships, commercial relationships, organisational relationships, spiritual relationships …and how would we know when a relationship is one, some, or all of these at any one time (and other things not yet itemised)?

And suppose that whatever the type, there is virtuality in play. Most coarsely, is there any difference between a virtual sexual relationship and a real sexual relationship (of the body contact variety)? At least one thing is for sure, so far: no unwanted progeny can result from the virtual one without a shift of level from digital to analogue! On the comestibles side, the longest virtual lunch still leaves a half-full plate of offerings on one side and a wholly empty stomach at the other end of the digital appreciation.

One approach to classifying relationships and behaviours would be Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance as a tool for grasping realties. It is quite a nice theory of knowledge (which tells us how we can say something is and is such a thing reliably). It is also noticeably not standard issue RCT scientific research reality. Perhaps some research should be on the phenomenology of digital behaviour?

Back to the pretentious lunch…

How could the key physical experiences of the lunch be captured and shared digitally as they are occurring? La Grande Bouffe (1973) did a good job of capturing an imagined experience of dining, as did Tom Jones (1963).  But sharing real experience is notoriously difficult and highly reliant on shared communication skills and relationship depth and intensity in the experience domains of interest. Some experiences cannot be shared with the inexperienced other than by involving them in such experiences, and we are back to relationship depth and intensity. Virtually we may get a feel for the experience, but not the experience. Rather we will be having the experience of a tantalising possibility which may be the experience of an intentional or provocative deprivation, which might then be shared by the virtual attendee with the real one and we’re back to tantalising and provocation. In addition, the range of possible experiences of the virtual kind – email, twitter, text, Instagram, telephone, Skype, … – offer different degrees of deprivation potential, usually out of the awareness of the participants. Bring on the phenomenology!? Give me a ring or a ping if you are interested.

Appreciations (16) – Coincidentally yours?

Appreciations (16) – Coincidentally yours?

Torrey Orton

December 6, 2009

It keeps happening. It's almost predictable in a general way. That is, I can predict the range of time in which it will happen and the type of people it will happen with, but not who about what exactly when and where. Like my farmer friend's rain forecasts.

It may be an emergence to do with the present stage of my life – that my worlds are sufficiently defined and extended to ensure repeat encounters with their various members. I always had a way with chance encounters – running into a boarding school acquaintance in the streets of Paris on my first visit there 38 years ago. I had not seen the guy for ten years, and then wasn't close ever. I think he was on his first visit there, too.

Passed by George Gregan in the same Paris streets almost to the block two years ago…doesn't really count as my world except in its most extenuated version, but whateva. Can't walk through Melbourne without seeing someone from the last 35 years on the pathways. Have similar experiences around the world, almost. I've always been that way. It's always been that way. I expect to meet someone from backwhen anytime I'm back there, or even over somewhere else.

For instance, I had a catchup call from a guy who'd read a letter of mine to The Australian HIGHER EDUCATION a couple weeks back (published Nov. 25^th, 09). He'd come across it reading the section by chance. I had last seen him on a Singapore-Perth flight 18 months ago which neither of us was supposed to be on. Last minute changes / options coming back from Europe. I'd previously seen him three years ago south of Melbourne where he now lives.

So, last Wednesday there I was wondering about how a certain patient client was doing since our work seemed at a dicey spot, and there she was walking up Bourke Street. More common is the arrival of an email – medium of the global village, message of the faintly distant – from London or Lonsdale Street within days of my thinking of their authors, usually for the first time in months.

A similar performance time frame applies to therapy clients who I've not heard from for a while – a day or two's lapse and there they are out of the ether, too. Then there are the texters (medium of the wouldbe close) from here and there, who pop up in the same kind of time frames, though usually shorter, often enough shorter to be remarkable, within an hour or two of my thinking of them. It's almost as if I had power at a distance. Is the next item a proof?

At least one message from one recent incident of near simultaneous being-in-my-mind-is-being-in-the- other's was this: "OK now you're getting spooky on me. I was actually staring at my computer thinking about how I can't forget to do one of the meditation exercises tomorrow morning and then your email appeared". I had offered earlier in the day to send a set of directions for starting meditation practice and finally gotten around to it later that evening just as he was, unknown to me, sitting there. This may be an example of creepy closeness or provocative proximity.

It's true in the latter cases that I have some more immediate, weighted relationship in progress with these people which inclines towards interaction and thinking of each other. We are provided with the means (text) of immediate signalling our wonders to those who are their subject(s)/object(s) without interrupting them as a phone call would. Enacting our queries comes increasingly naturally (though it's taken me a while to get comfortable with the rules and opportunities of this medium). This in its wide- reaching potential perhaps constitutes a force field? A potential field of forces? Is it, too, a shadow of a community? Which way is the shadow moving? Towards the light or away?

Appreciations (14) – Loyalty?

Appreciations (14) – Loyalty?

Torrey Orton

September 25, 2009

Loyal is never something I would have said about myself. It's not even a word I would have ever said in its own right at any time in my life…unless I was reporting someone else's speech or reading their writing. It is a word, even now, which I don't think I know the meaning of. It doesn't resonate, have feel or body, occupy space. It's almost a non-word: one of those I know but don't like and have banned not from memory or recognition but from acceptance and use.

I think it's a word which I don't trust; it seems almost intrinsically unworthy of anyone, though I know it is meaningful for others. My problem with it is that I always see/hear 'blind loyalty' when I hear/see 'loyalty'. This much attention to it means it does resonate, of course. That's what I'd say to a patient client doing to some other word what I'm doing to 'loyalty' here – extolling it with implicit denigration.

Visceral vocabulary
There are some other untrustworthy words for me I'm sure, but their protective covering is keeping them out of my sight at the moment. In my youth I had an aversion to simple intimate feeling language in a relatively typical boy's way for my generation. It arose in part from stereotypical gender socialisation. Then I added to it my aversion to linguistic enticements like claims of love and caring which I too often had seen used as covert manipulations, or so it seemed at the time. I distrusted their intent automatically.

Age has it rewards
My loyalty seems to be increasing with age. It was first noticed 25 years ago by others as a clear attitude of mine towards my wife. It seems I radiate a protective aura about her when I feel others are disrespecting her, especially figures with notional power and too much sense of the primacy of their needs over hers, even where there was no obvious or slight conflict between them. That instance is still definitely present. Others have to do with a small group of male friends to whom I feel connected, and persistently, though episodically, wondering about their welfare, not merely their work. There's not so much cause to radiate defensively on their behalf…probably not appropriate in anyone's masculinity??

But I doubt I really am loyal (not knowing what it is makes doubt easy to raise and hard to allay). I don't pay much attention to my siblings in their various USA places, nor to in-laws here. And I'm somewhat disrespectful of both wife and friends in various ways, but maybe that's not disloyalty, just attachment avoidance. I even get into trouble where my loyalty to someone involves attacking their organisational context. Institutions harbour mongrel twits who actively, though mostly passively as one would expect, disregard out-of-their-league contributions by their fellows to various futures they can't even imagine). It's hard to defend the leading lights without attacking the twit(s). Catch 22's latest incarnation.

Theory of loyalty?
So, I guess this is the beginning of my theory of loyalty. This is the kind of theory I have for most things I think matter. It is an account of the word, the value, the behaviour. I use them to give an account of something to others, either because it is important in a moment of my professional practice (as therapy clients will tell you, I bet) or because it is important to others but somewhat opaque to them – a mystery with attachments raising doubt instead of admiring wonder.

I can see I've got a ways to go with it. I couldn't convince anyone else what I've said is very defining of anything they might do or feel in life under the 'loyalty' title, while leaving my initial sense of its unworthiness as a sentiment and motivation mildly relieved. This is a funny position to be writing from because I can really say I don't have much of an idea about loyalty. Sometimes starting out with little more than an inkling in mind leads somewhere. In this instance the some is small and the times and where are fleeting and far. Loyalty clearly matters to others, so it warrants my further attention.