I've been in a vegetative state this week, mentally and otherwise, but I got a shot in the arm from several recent posts. My fingers are beginning to find that slender thread of gratitude again. And yes, somehow, this thread is leading me to the Third Lesson in a series of lessons that are less related to journalism than originally claimed. Of course, it all makes sense to me.
Ahem.
Thinking, really thinking, is not just about ascribing meaning to circumstances and experiences--it's about questioning. It's about realizing that our thoughts are never final, never settled, never closed to debate. We seek meaning by questioning it. And this is the fuel of politics, the exercise by which we engage with the world around us.
There is something more to thinking; a reason our questions are relentless, unlimited and surprising. How is it that we can exceed our existing categories and find new fields of judgement and hope with which to evaluate our ideals? How is that we overcome the inadequacies of our standards? How do we know what questions to even ask?
AND, how do we know how to interpret the new and unprecedented? How do we come to understand what we didn't understand to begin with?
Hannah Arendt called this an "independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges anew in full spontaneity every deed and intent whenever the occasion arises." For Arendt, human thought does not subsume everything under a preexisting order. Now this is where it gets good: when we are confronting the unprecedented, we "[think] from the standpoint of everyone else." We "compare our judgment not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgement of others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everybody else."**
And this, my friends, is IMAGINATION. Imagination is about trying on perspectives that you don't actually have access to. Anthropologists and ethnographers have tried to gain access empirically, but the best of their efforts have only aided the imagination. We draw on everything we've learned and remember to interpret and make meaningful everything outside our prior experience. Think about it, the imagination is such great faith--faith in the possibility that symbols and signage can give us true connection and understanding.
Wait, I'm not done. Imagination thrives on community. Perhaps it even is community. And this is why people are asking, Could the internets be preparing us for societal leaps? The network of networks is expanding our capacity for shared experience and purpose, but only if we use our imaginations and wield it well.
I am not a journalist, but this is my message to those who are. This should be both the lifeblood and the aim of our news. When we begin to understand the political process--our democracy--as reflective questioning, and we begin to situate the process in a hopeful community, we can begin to imagine some really amazing shit. Journalism should be about building communities that are equipped to empathize with one another.
That thread of gratitude I mentioned earlier was discovered in the very honest, very shameless thoughts of others. If there is anything I learned this summer, it's that I don't want to be a journalist or an anthropologist or an anything if I'm not doing something as personal as this right here. But I'm not ruling them out. Who's to say those professions can't lead to the same kinds of connections?
**I can't find the exact place I pulled these quotes from. Sorry.