Breaking Ground

As I have said before, I am new to this so I am not breaking any new ground in most instances. However, I have already had a couple of people approach me about "this blogging thing" and "how do you do it?" That is always nice to have someone feel comfortable enough to say can you show me this...?

The reason I bring this up is that there is currently conversation taking place in the blogosphere asking the "community" question. Are bloggers, twitterers, im'ers, social networkers, etc., actually a community?" My initial response would have been yes until Miguel tossed M. Scott Peck's 4 Stages of Community in to the mix.

Based on those 4 stages - 1. pseudocommunity - where niceness reigns; 2. chaos - when the emotional skeletons crawl out of the closet; 3. emptiness - a time of quiet and transition; and finally, 4. true community - marked both by deep honesty and deep caring; I would say that maybe all of this bblogging, twittering, etc is at the #1 level but I truly feel that it all begins to break apart after that.

While others have already talked er rather blogged about this same question, I await and look forward to Gary Stager writing about what is and is not a community in the next few days to get his take on it. If this was divided up into segments like pre-k to 5, middle school, high school, university and above, I still do not believe that you would be able to say that you have a community, yes you might get a few people that become closer and take more time to go deeper into certain areas but I truly think community is involved in face to face, dealing with the same issues and working hopefully toward a common goal/good. While there are many conversations going on and people trying to solve many different problems, I still think there is a lack of truly delving into the deeper aspects of what makes a community just that.

That being said I think this blogoshpere of people has very easily descended into area 2 of Peck's hiearchy of Chaos however the skeletons are not those of emotion that are coming out of the closet, it is rather the skeletons of those who have not progressed beyond their own universe to truly make an attempt to try and realize not only the technical tools available and their potential, but also their own personal tools and potential that they have been gifted with to share with those they come in contact.

So many wonderful reads out there and so few hours in the day.