To engage in our world of information exchange

Communication. Ideas. Thoughts and words. The velocity of exchange--verbal, conceptual--is so high today. But I wonder if other things can keep up, things like perception, understanding, and those emotional-emotive states that such comprehension sometimes creates when we are lucky--states like compassion, empathy, or affinity. I hope so. And on my hopeful days I think it must be that such things will at least closely follow the increase in communication--the quantity, speed, and distance across which it travels.

But the key, I think, is that intangible thing I always ask from my students when they arrive to class having "done" the reading but still having nothing to say, nothing to share with me or the other students, nothing to ask. It is the thing that makes up part of their participation grade, works its way into letters of recommendation, and is the core requirement for their papers. It is engagement.

As teachers we ask students to do more than read and listen; we ask them to engage. To engage is different than to receive and it is different also than to consume. Blogs, cell phones, internet video clips, podcasts and the endless list we are all familiar with have exploded the possibilities of reception, consumption, and even the exchange of information and ideas that can be rightly understood as communication. But for all of this to lead to connection--a connection that I hope we would seek to make ever more complex, ever broadened and deepened and therefor sophisticated, and ever more humane, compassionate, and spirit-expanding--we must engage. Engage as we read. Engage as we watch. As we write, text, post, and talk.

The dictionary lists many meanings of the word "engage". Websters has 15. The one that reflects most closely what I am talking about here is:

"To occupy oneself; become involved."

But there is another that perhaps we should aim for as well, and that is:

"to pledge one's word; assume an obligation."

Perhaps there is a giving of one's word, an obligation to assume, in all of this increased communication? Perhaps it is a matter of respecting the word and its power, our own use of it, and others right to it.

There is another definition that I think is worth considering. I haven't ever thought of it when I asked my students to "engage" with a text, an author, or an idea, and I am intrigued and a bit disturbed by the military implications that I had not ever seen before in this word. Definition number 14 is "to cross weapons; enter into conflict." I guess that in a paper, if I saw a student taking on something she or he had read in this way-- as if to "cross weapons" or "enter into conflict," she or he could definitely get an A if it was done well. So perhaps in the same way, crossing weapons in the kind of communication I am pondering today--the blogs and videos and podcasts and internet based discussions--is sometimes necessary, sometimes honest, and sometimes a road towards understanding, community building, and even intimacy.

Perhaps.

Perhaps as long as we respect certain "rules of engagement" and learn to fight fair.

The point of all these musings I suppose is that we must not be passive. Or that if we are, all of the increased "communication" will really just be more noise for our background, more channels to surf, more choices to have, more information to consume, more stuff to receive. But if we are active, if we "occupy" ourselves and "become involved" as we read, watch, and listen, and if we "pledge our word" and "assume an obligation" when we speak, write, post, text, or create, then perhaps all of this velocity, all of this ever increasing exchange has magical, fantastical, and dimension (or at least paradigm) shifting potential.

Peace.