Full Circle Associates

Tinariwen is an amazing musical group from the Sahara. I'm listening to a cut from their latest work, Aman Iman: Water Is Life

As I was listening and reading the album notes, I came upon this quote. The last line grabbbed me.

So forget the myths, forget the 'guns-and-guitars' fantasies and tales of blue-men on their camels. The humanity, the wonder and the epic sweep of the real Tinariwen story doesn't need any photoshopping or romantic embellishments. It is the raw tale of an everyman, who was cut off from history and embraced the modern world, who lost his home and found solace in the guitar, who through pain and exile invented a new style of music that could express who he is and where he's going. Nothing mythical or exotic about that. You can find the same story the world over.

On Monday of this week a bunch of us gathered on a phone call and IRC chat to mull over what happens when our human hatefulness spreads itself across our online haunts. It was both a fascinating and unfulfilling conversation, crammed into an hour, with some participating in the chat, some on the phone and, for me, a sense of many quiet ears listening, but unseen. We stayed mostly at the conceptual level and our forays into sharing our feelings and experiences did not have the space to ripen and deepen. But that's what you get on the phone in an hour, eh?

The persistent question I was left with was how can the online world accelerate or decelerate our global path towards destruction or balance? I'm particularly torn at a tension between the basic patterns of humanity, such as the story of Tinariwen, which is repeated the world over, and this strange new phenomena of network response. We can now echo our truths and lies quickly over the world. Our ability to transmit our stories in ways that are outside of our local context, our circle of known people (community or whatever) is, I think, an earthshaking change. I don't think I have fully appreciated the dimension of this change yet, nor its implication on our behavior.