Point of View: How Perspective Influences Cultural Trends and Communication

A Narrow and Vanishing Perspective

I only have one opinion so it is the only one I can give.  I know that sounds narrow minded and resistant, but isn’t that really what it boils down to with everyone?  However, the problem with opinion is that many time opinions are irrelevant in an atmosphere of constant change of culture and communication technology.  As a result, one of the challenges in modern world is to understand the speed that culture is changing right before our eyes and how the communication of ideas is in constant state of flux.  Therefore,  on the high speed information network, the challenge reinforces a constant need to adapt to changing constructs and to understand that there may be an inhibited ability to comprehend the rate that information passing before our eyes is  feeding a blurred generational and cultural myopia.  In a world  where a narrow perspective is vanishing, some people may ask: Does any generation have an absolute truth or a point of view that is constant, timeless, and irrefutable through all of time, generations, and cultures to balance information contained in the communication of ideas?  Obviously, while there are differences about the answer, the ideas that many people hold as timeless principles of truth seems to be quickly vanishing in the milieu of ideas and being edited within the context of modern culture. A strong point of consideration about information and communication in a world that is technology bound is the strong evidence to suggest that the happenings of culture today are affecting, not only what subjects are relevant to the times, but how communication occurs in the 21st century.

In recent blog post Ed Stetzer (2011) cited Adlai Stevenson who stated, ‘”That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.’ He did not have a particularly high view of the next generation, but he does challenge us to consider the radical changes in thinking that are sometimes seen between generations” (Stetzer).   The apparent point to be understood is that every generation has a perspective that shapes contemporary beliefs— what is deemed important—values that form a perspective about level of importance of certain ideas.  In addition, it is not just the message of communication and values that is important, it is the fact that methods of communicating from the past are vanishing and being replaced on the super highway of technology. Consequently, what is apparent from an understanding cultural transformation in the 21st century is that a present cultural perspective is shaping point of view and validating the principle that both the vehicle and the message in every generation creates a shift in how people in a given generation arrive at a destination that they believe is truth and in a vehicle that the present generation creates its own mind-set.

Just as people from different cultures, races, and people groups think differently about important issues, generations are cultural subgroups of the macrocosm of human existence.  It is evident that each  thinks differently about matters of  believed to be of importance.  However, remember that successive generations hold a different point of view that is emerging and is relevant to the time.  Therefore while people may disagree, different perspectives are worth taking time to consider. It is said that one thing common to every generation is how the collective perspective is internalized. Ed Stetzer  (2011)  cited George Orwell’s perspective, which states that “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it” (Stetzer).  Someone from a past generation may ask: Are current generations really more intelligent or are earlier generations wiser?  Obviously, the answer depends on perspective – what it looks like from where you are standing or pontificating.

What perspectives are influencing the way life is understood in the 21st century?

The perspective, the unique way life is understood today, is a sociological and cultural phenomenon. For those who want to deny reality and continue to ignore what is shaping the point of view of the emergent culture of the 21st century only creates frustration and disconnection, which does not offer any substantive answers or a reasonable framework to understand reasoning behind current ideals.

Ideologues and philosophers offer suggestion about what is occurring, but unfortunately understanding ideals and philosophy alone will not provide efficacy that creates effective communication. Ideals, are generally moral ideas or mores’ based on certain group identification that create expectations about how people should think or act. Philosophical assumptions are the ways that beliefs are rationalized into reason.  Thus forming, the informational content of perspective. Values or axiology has more to do with what is deeply felt, importance, passion, and motivation that affect beliefs. For example, the   felt importance of something believed to be true.  When tension deposited in life experience that conflicts with values, it results in conflicting ideas about importance that creates a  disconnect between perceptions and experienced reality.

The question is formed: Who/what is right how can the way values are felt be rationalized with experience that does not match a reality believed?  Unfortunately, I find myself at odds with most idealist and the emphasis upon what should be and find myself focused upon what emerging culture is saying. As a point of reference something that needs to be understood is how to  connect perception to reality.  Consequently, the constant flow of information  redefines the importance of what seems logical in one generation as information is disseminated and absorbed into successive generations.  Therefore, there is a tension that exists in the message and mode of communication that results in aberrations in what is felt about the information, which places the greatest emphasis upon perspective.

Obviously, anyone can give an opinion about what is wrong with something.  However, knowing what is wrong is not the critical issue in communication of solutions that are workable.  One perspective that some people have is to write people off who look different, think different, and have a differing perspective.  Another point of view is to embrace the culture and learn the language, thinking, and mindset of the 21st century.  Seeing someone else’s perspective is not whitewashing culture or moralizing behaviors, it is asking why do people do that in the way they do and understanding if the desire is to connect, communicate, and build meaningful relationships that we need to understand more than what we know.

With the increasing isolation of people and the desire to have relationships, there is a tremendous opportunity to step outside a solitary opinion and understand people as part of a culture that thinks different than we do.  The opportunity demonstrates a tremendous potential, if we will take time to understand how perception formation is impacting beliefs and governs the content and methods of communication in the 21st century.

Point of View Perspective Beliefs God Theology Church Traditions Statistics Surveys Theory Demographics Communication Context Relationships Unchurched Christian Universalism Philosophy Vision Mission Outcome.

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Living in the Shadow of Technology: Noise and Electronic Communication

lt is like living by the freeway and hearing the noise of traffic passing by– hour by hour– day by day.  The noise of the traffic, constant movement, telling the story that people are busy and that life is moving on, everyone traveling in their own direction, but where are they going?  To a charted direction, toward a destination of choice, to a reality created, the panacea of choice: Traffic constantly moving, what does it mean? Creating familiar sounds, the constant clatter of technology moving day and night describing meaning, declaring truth moving forward on a journey to somewhere, but where will it go, and what does it mean? Familiar sounds, which resonate a message, machinery moving, always going, traveling at the speed of sound, advancing electronic communication at its finest; but is the message communication between humans or just the clatter of technology?

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What the Trends in Social Networking Reviews Suggests: Identity Crisis and Confusion

Image via Wikipedia

What impact is social media, networking having upon relationships? The question is simple and the answers given are loaded with different opinions. Relationships are at the core of the discussion and reveal changing perceptions and an emergent paradigm developing. A quick Google search will reveal pages of links to web pages that offer opinions and suggestions.

Business is integrated into social relationship creating potential questions about efficacy in mixing business and pleasure. In a recent blog on Harvard Business Review , Jodi Glickman notes that young adults in the workplace are abandoning emails and moving toward social media as one of their primary modes of communication, Because social media is so, well, social, the lines are becoming increasingly blurred between business and personal matters. ( Thom Rainer) An important part of the question is connected with a sense of self, identity, and role expectations.

The shifting reliance upon social media and networking sites raises an important question about how we understand relationships and utilize boundaries in regulating relationships to create effective outcome in life. An answer to the question about measurable impact upon relationships that it is good, but also bad. Social media has become so commonplace many have a hard time even thinking how they’d live without it. “We’re getting reliant on Facebook to keep us updated,” said Malia Griggs, editor of the University of South Carolina‘s student magazine. Griggs wrote an article last year taking a satirical jab at how Facebook is changing the way we communicate. Personal relationships, she says, are now a matter of public discourse. “It’s less personal its less between you and that person, now there’s room for others to come in and comment on it,” said Griggs. “There’s a lot more room for feedback from your friends and people who aren’t even your close friends.” You can tap into it anywhere, anytime — an online existence so vast and absorbing, most offices have policies against it. Malia Griggs The impact upon the business-relationship dichotomy has paradoxical implications: While on the one hand enhancing market presence, providing technological convenience, a constant Internet “Brand” which is identifiable and available, at the same time blurring the lines between professional and personal identity. Potential danger is identified by Glickman (2011) in Harvard Business Review who said that, “with technological interchangeability comes risk—maintaining relationships with friends with whom you do business and keeping business out of the realm of your friendships.” This observation identifies questions about how and what will define relationships as well as what principles govern what is appropriate in each context.

There is a wealth of information that shows how relationships, networking, and connection have upon business. However how can you know when, “friendliness has become a liability” (Glickman)? One good sign is when what occurs in the private world is so indistinct that there not a clear understanding of how professional identity is different from personal identity. Private problems on public networks bring people into your personal life that may not be anticipated or wanted. Attorney David Shea said that “In divorce cases, it’s amazing how often we use this now … We’re on Facebook several times a day.”( Shea)

Private problems become public matters affecting, not only the perception that people have, but it has an  impact upon effectiveness that can make or break a career, a marriage–your life. Everyone needs good friends, but a missing boundary that is important is privacy: everyone does not have the right to know everything about you– ask whatever they want, especially about deeply personal matters that may prejudice perception when shared.

Two good points to be made are: Collaboration is Critical and Relationships are Important. ( Thom Rainer) However, there must be fundamental balance discovered about what boundaries should characterize the shifting emphasis from a solo voice to group voice—individual identity and group identity. Social networking is not going away and is certainly the most effective immutable principle that will predict life or death in the business world today. More research needs to be done and greater understanding gained will be integral to creating responsibility and balance that says about social networking, “I choose to learn from it and make the best of it’ (Rainer).

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Can Change Have a Negative Impact on Relationships?

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr

In Gary Collins book The Search for the Soul, quotes Mother Teresa who was asked: what is the greatest problem that people in the world face?  Her reply was “loneliness.” At the same time the culture of today has been described a time of emptiness and spiritual hunger. In the loneliness and spiritual emptiness that is explicit within our modern culture another term has been used to characterize the outlook of people in modern America; pessimism. Is the cynicism of our age, widespread dissatisfaction with a culture that has embraced rationalism, obsession with technology, only to see increased evidence of war, violence, poverty–environmental pollution–the decline of spiritual influence–things are not getting better with all our technology, an indicator of the absence of distinctives beliefs that can empower hope that transcends, mere, things and provide significance to existence?

The existentialism of the modern world that has put so much emphasis on me and I resulted in a generation of people who are together every day, but we have become solitary islands in the masses of humanity and technology.  I recently posted on Facebook, “The hardest thing about being an island is the solitary existence of being alone against the elements. The islands stand alone, solitary and are hardened by circumstances, weather, and time. When the sun goes away and the storms bring the pounding surf and the ravaging winds, the island must stand alone because that is what islands do until they are washed away” (2010).  It is a painful and isolated position that many people in the world have arrived at, but have no destination in mind.  With all the text-messaging, posting on social networks, and twittering; while people are connected to so many people, they may still be disconnected from healthy, meaningful relationships with others that will bring an efficacious way of living.

One of the great problems that characterize existence today is that life is replete with narcissism and self focused interests. If a person wants to deal with the problem of loneliness and find spiritual answers, then having a meaningful relationship with another person is something that requires integrity, honesty, and willingness to get off the island. Maybe, what is needed is realizing that what is best for others may not be what is best for me and being okay with that. This is the place where an attitude of servant-hood begins. The greatest of all spiritual gifts is the expression of love that is given in a way that sacrifices what benefits me and gives what someone else needs. (1 Corinthians 13.)   The great paradox of today is that we have evolved with a great amount of intelligence and technology at our finger tips, but the basic communication skills of people are deficient when it comes to relating to others in ways that foster healthy outcomes.

Has the individualism of the 70’s that spawned humanism, the “Me” generation, the “Now” generation been more than can be absorbed and processed? Alvin Toffler wrote about the stress that too much change to quick has upon culture, “Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in people by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time”.  It is implicit within the behavior cues that are demonstrated by the absence of effort to connect that there is the subtle deception that says, “everything is all right and that we have become an advanced people”, when the evidence suggests that we are broken and need intervention to address the spiritual emptiness and loneliness of people today.  It has been said that, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions” (Leonardo da Vinci).  What can we learn from marriage and divorce statistics? One half of all first marriages failing in the first five years and  that sixty percent of all second marriage fail?  It is evident that the side effects of an evolving culture has rippling effects that can be seen in the lack of ability to function in relationships which is the thumbprint of the spiritual void in American culture.

One of the great challenges is to understand and not just to diagnose the problem.  To possess the ability make a meaningful contribution to life by being a change agent is the challenge.  We have the ability to understand, but will we? An imposing truth about what will be the answer to loneliness and the spiritual void may be characterized by a statement of truth, “The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn” (Alvin Toffler).  In the Garden of Eden, the first relationship problems were solved by a spiritual solution to the needs of humanity.  What is it that can be learned from that?  The people have changed, but the solution remains that when we do not have a right relationship to God, all other relationships disintegrate.

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