Individual liberty in a social world

I wouldn’t mind meeting Socrates for a coffee and telling him just what I think of his pearl of wisdom – the unexamined life is not worth living. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time lately examining various aspects of my life. Just when I think I’ve finally got a handle on it all and am indulging in a harmless bout of self-congratulations, wallowing in the fact that as lives go, mine isn’t all that bad at all,  fate intervenes and with a swift kick, lands me flat on my ass back at square one. Generally, these moments of introspection are precipitated by something I read or hear – something that resonates with the inner voice that is my conscience. The latest provocateur is writer/entrepreneur Andrew Keen, who made a recent appearance on the TEDx stage here in Budapest

Cult of the social

In his 18-minute presentation, Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture, spoke of the cult of the social and the 21st-century expectation that we reveal ourselves to all and sundry, be it through blogging, Facebook updates, or tweets. He fears for the fate of individual liberty in the networked age – what Silicon Valley is now calling ‘the social world’. He quoted the famous line from the movie The Social Network, from the on-screen character Sean Parker – we lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the Internet – and goes on to say that we’re on the verge of a new world, a place where we are living online, where the virtual is becoming real, a world where data is the new oil and those who have control of this data, control the world. He contrasts the issue of loneliness as an essential human condition with the hyper-visibility we are embroiled in today – the new reality of the digital world.

Digital narcissism

I hadn’t ever given my use of Internet much thought. I would never describe myself as a social media junkie. I check Facebook a couple of times a day to see what my 200+ friends are up to (who’d have thought I’d ever be so popular!). I don’t access it by phone and my status updates rarely concern me. I don’t have a check-in application; the world doesn’t need to know where I am at any given moment. I never post photos of people as I see this as an invasion of privacy. The amount of personal detail available about me is negligible. I don’t tweet.  But … (gulp) … I blog. I say that as if I’m confessing to some heinous crime and wonder if this makes me guilty of what Keen calls ‘digital narcissism – the embrace of the self’?

Eliminating loneliness

Back in 1961, Clark Moustakas, in his book Loneliness, describes the phenomenon as ‘a condition of human life, an experience of being human which enables the individual to sustain, extend and deepen his humanity’. Whether we define loneliness as a state of being alone, of experiencing solitude, or simply feeling lonely, it is a fact of life.  Or it was …

In his TEDx talk, Keen quoted a line from the real-life Sean Parker in a recent interview in Forbes magazine where he says that his pitch with his new company, Airtime, is to ‘eliminate loneliness’.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and blogs are already doing a damn good job of making us think that we’re closer than ever to our friends and family; we now have the capacity to be in touch 24/7. And while this might, on the surface, seem like a good thing, I wonder if we’re not diluting the quality of our interpersonal communications to the point that we are simply talking (or tweeting, or blogging, or updating our status) to remind ourselves that we are alive and despite the overwhelming numbers of friends or followers that we might have, we are, in fact, distancing ourselves from humanity.

If my status update doesn’t attract a bevy of comments, is this akin to being ignored? If only a handful of people read my blog, does this mean it’s worthless? If I have 700 Facebook friends and 1000 followers on Twitter and a klout ranking of 89, does that make me a better person than someone with no online presence at all?  That the lines between the real world and the digital world are blurring is scary, but it’s the pervasiveness of the social world that is scariest of all. It’s time to re-examine our relationship with the Internet and how much of ourselves we are losing in being so visible. While it might appear that we are doing little more than engaging with the freedom of expression offered by social media, perhaps Keen is right to be concerned about the future of our individual liberty.

First published in the Budapest Times 14 October 2011

What’s your excuse?

There are times in life when all our troubles pale into insignificance, when all our hardships morph into blessings, when all our complaints seem very trivial indeed. This happened quite a lot to me when I had a television and was regularly subjected to images of emaciated children covered in flies, slowly starving to death before my eyes. I suspect that I’m not alone when I admit to having become inured to such tragedy. Deluged by media commentary, drowned in graphic content, I now sadly view these events as just another headline; just one more still shot in the montage of human misery that happens to someone else, somewhere else. The Internet has reduced the distance between your home and mine to milliseconds rather than miles; it has also distanced me from reality by creating a virtual world that has little bearing on my own. Although I try to do good things, to be a good person, and to live a good life, when someone breaches that wholesome goodness and lays siege to my soul, I am perhaps more troubled than most.

Too complacent?

Last weekend, in the Uránia theatre on Rákóczi út, TEDxDanubia played out before an audience of 460 people. A full day’s programme of speakers lined up ready to delve into our imagination, to stimulate, to motivate, and to entertain. This independent TED event is the brainchild of Vis Mentis, a Budapest-based non-profit social enterprise founded by Mányai Csaba and Szénási Zoltán in 2010. Their mission is to initiate and drive projects that focus on quality of life rather than simply standard of living; projects that reconcile progress with sustainability and build on the power of social innovation and responsibility (where have these two lads been all my life?). The event brought together a heady mix of composers, ethologists, food urbanists, mathematicians, spiritual diplomats, statisticians…a veritable KITE fest of knowledge, inspiration, talent, and experience. I had been smugly evaluating each speaker for content and delivery, measuring their performance against how I might have fared, were I a subject matter expert on anything other than being single. It was late in the day, coming towards the end of the final session, when the penultimate speaker took the stage and shattered my self-assured complacency.

Too cynical?

John P. Foppe walked out, sat down, opened a can of Coke with his toes, poured it into a glass and holding it by his foot, raised it to his mouth and drank; he was born without arms. You’ll no doubt think me cruel and heartless when I confess to a fleeting moment of awe which was quickly replaced by the pragmatic reflection that not with all the yoga practice in the world would I ever be dexterous enough to imitate that particular move. The cynic in me braced herself for a down-home, American-style dish of ‘survival against the odds’, which would be inevitably followed by dessert in the guise of a book plug. So when he began by telling us that he had created his own disability, I sat up and began to take note. This was no ordinary man, and this would be no ordinary presentation.

Too conditioned?

In his allotted 18 minutes, John P. Foppe explained that at the intersection of what we see (our perceptions), what we do (our practice), and what we are (our emotional reactions) lies reality. And as co-creators of our reality, we need to start taking some responsibility.  Having no arms is a condition that he was born with; but he created his own disability. John’s mother, tired of his aggressive, manipulative ‘woe is me, help me out here’ attitude, and fearful that he would never live an independent life, rallied his seven brothers under the banner of tough love and made them promise not to help him unless they could see that he was making a genuine effort to help himself. His descriptive account of the first day he tried to put on his pants, unaided, at the age of 10, was both tragic and comical. His account of that pivotal moment, when he realized that he had a choice to make, cut to the bone. It has made me reflect on the conditions in my own life that have become a disability… conditions that are holding me back.

As he pointed out, the only real handicaps in life are the small thoughts that blind us, the hardened feelings that deafen us, and the irreproachable excuses that paralyze us. And yes, suitably chastened, recognizing that he had indeed hit a nerve, I bought the book. What’s your excuse (Thomas Nelson, 2002) has also been translated into Hungarian under the title Vállalod? The video of John’s talk will be available soon on www.tedxdanubia.com

In love … again

I have fallen in love. Truly, madly, deeply. I know I do so at a somewhat alarming rate, but this time it’s for keeps. I simply can’t imagine any circumstances under which I would fall out of love with this man. And no. This isn’t the lustful blush of a fatal attraction but rather the result of an earth-shattering, mountain-moving, tsunami-like surge of emotion that has lodged itself firmly in my bones, having already run roughshod over my heart.

Havasi Balázs defies all conventional wisdom as to what an internationally renowned concert pianist should look like. Not for him the gloved hands and associated delicacy. Although clad in black from head to toe, his ensemble – shiney patent boots, black jeans, fitted black shirt, black suit jacket – was a far cry from the tuxedo’d look favoured by many in his position. Foregoing the combed-back or side-parted hairstyle also favoured by his ilk, his shock of blond hair screamed rad!

Taking the stage for the final session of the TEDx Danubia in the Urania theatre in Budapest, Havasi’s mandate was to share with us something of his search to find a new musical lanuguage to communicate, ‘not to copy, not to imitate, not to replay the concepts of others. Rather to create a new style in which his classically trained style is mixed with the musical inspiration of the modern world around him’. He was coming on after the legendary John Foppe, who had had the first standing ovation of the day; a hard act to follow. But follow it he did, and in what style!

According to Havasi, with the advent of social media, composing music is a little like writing a message, putting it in a bottle, and then casting it into the ocean for somene else to fish out and add their creativity to it. The compostion is the music. The ocean is the Internet. One tune he composed in his attic room in Hungary – Tüdérálom – has found him aclaim all over the world in the package of Tracey Thorn’s You are a lover. In 2009, he set a new world record for the fastest pianist, 498 repetitions in 60 seconds. And when you see him in action, beating the music with his left foot, rising and falling on his seat, leaning in to the keyboard, you see how this is possible. He plays with every inch of his body and soul – not just with his hands, heart, and mind.

He told us of how uncool it was to be a pianist growing up, how he took pains to hide it from his friends, afraid that playing the piano would exclude him from playing ball or hanging out. But that when they came to see him play (he was playing classical music back then) they all converted. Who said Bach could not be fun? This classically trained graduate of the Hungarian Academy of Music always wanted to be a rock star. And he sees no reason why his classical training should stop him. So when he launched into his latest piece, it was loud, loud, loud. The sound filled the Urania and I had little trouble imagining him playing Wembley or O2. Not far into his piece, we could hear the drums but not see them. Then on stage wheeled Andy  – the drummer from the Hungarian band, Hooligans, who made the news a while back for being accused of  causing ‘moral damage’ to the citizens of Moráhalom. With tatoos for sleeves, he too was in black, punctuated by chains, studs, and piercings. That the pair have played together before was obvious; that they share a mutual respect was tangible, that this unlikely duo from two completely different musical backgrounds could together produce such an amazing sound, was inspiring on so many levels.

I have no doubt in my mind that Havasi will accomplish his goal of ‘reinterpreting the possibilities and dusting off the concept of piano concerts that has solidified over the course of centuries’. In front of 400+ in the Urania on Friday, 25th March, 2011, he made a start. For me, the performance last night ranks right up there with seeing BB King play in a boxing ring in Dublin so many years ago and seeing Leonard Cohen on his comeback tour in an outdoor gig in Amsterdam.

I am kicking myself that I didn’t know of him in time to catch his concert here earlier this month, the Symphonic Red. Symphonic conveys a musical world that cannot be categorized into any of the traditional musical genres. It contains elements from New Age, World Music, classical and pop music, as universal contents cannot be squeezed into the limitations of a single genre. Bertie Downs, the manager of REM heralded the birth of a new musical category in relation to this project, which he labeled World Classical Music. It is a new, multicultural genre that will touch the souls of people all around the world.

So, my friends, help me keep this love affair alive. If any of you reading this ever hears of another gig, anywhere, let me know. My bags are packed and I’m ready to go…