The Tweets and Me

I have never been an early adopter.  When a new technology comes along, I wait to see how it will turn out.  Even then, I am hesitant.  Sociologists would say that I am a perfect example of cultural lag.  In other words, I am usually behind the curve.

This was the case with the cell phone.  For years, I dismissed these devices as the spawn of the devil.  When I students argued they were essential in case one got into trouble, I explained that I had, upon occasion, been in trouble and got out just fine.  Thus, in one case, when my car slid off a snowy road, I was able to trek to a nearby farmhouse to call for assistance.

Eventually, however, my wife wore down my resistance.  She explained that we needed these gadgets so that we could keep in touch when we were in unfamiliar territory, for example, on a foreign vacation.  It turned out that these phones were also useful for keeping track of our emails and checking on the weather.

Which brings me to my current struggle with technological progress.  For years, I condemned the simplemindedness of Twitter.  The idea of using a few sentences to communicate complex ideas to unknown strangers seemed to me to be a waste of mental energy.

Plainly, I write columns and books.  I am, therefore, personally aware that it takes time and space to explicate important issues.  To reduce them to what amounts to slogans does intellectual violence to topics that require more thought.

Besides, the tweets that popped up on television news programs were often vulgar and insulting.  They reduced the standard of public discourse to its lowest common denominator.  Why would I want to participate in this dumbing down of our already dumbed down society?

But—wonder of all wonders—I am now tweeting.  Not long after passionately explaining to a colleague that I had better things to do with my limited time, I broke down.  I opened an account and began to make routine comments under my own name.  At the moment, I have a grand total of four followers.

What happened?  Why did I abandon my convictions and join the throngs who are on the social media?  Have I sold out in order to modernize my crusty image?

The answer is more mundane.  I recently started a non-profit foundation.  It is called the Social Individualism Foundation.  The goal is to promote a conceptual alternative to the outmoded ideological instruments currently at our disposal.  Having long argued that we are in an ideological crisis, I sought a viable way out.

If Liberalism, traditional Conservatism, and Libertarianism are indeed holdovers from an obsolete past, we need a more relevant alternative.  Happily, I believe I found one.  It entails “principled realism,” “emotional maturity,” personal “professionalization.”

The idea is for more of us to become self-directed decision-makers, whose choices are in accord with social realities.  Instead of pursuing fantasies derived from simpler times, we need to deal with the actual demands of the mass techno-commercial society in which we reside.

I have written about this at length and will shortly be publishing more detailed accounts, but I also came to the conclusion that I require other outlets to promote new ways of understanding confusing challenges.  While I post my columns on a blog (professionalized.blogspot.com), I need more.

This more includes a weekly podcast, but also involves tweets.  The goal is to make ongoing comments about current events so as to put them in an updated perspective.  On their own, no single comment is very enlightening, yet en masse they may add up to a useful corrective.

As it happens, I find I enjoy tweeting.  It takes me almost no time to do several a day and enables me to vent my frustrations via a means other than yelling at the television set.  While I have few illusions that this will change the world, neither do I believe that I am corrupting it.

My father always said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  In fact, I am older than he was when he asserted this.  I would consequently like to amend his contention to read that you may not be able teach an old dog over night, but some of us are quite capable of learning.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University