Idle Praxis

The role of communication in creating and sustaining healthy communities and enhancing grassroots community participation has been my personal professional focus in two primary ways: (1) Which communication dynamics need to be strengthened or balanced to discover positive and negative trends within the community to facilitate change (2) effective communication lays the path to success for both myself and for the community I work in and for.
A tertiary analysis of communication theory has fortified a repository of many sage words of advice: the study of communication theory offers the opportunity to be reflexive, engaged and an active participant with the conversation about communication theory. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p 77); communication is one of the most persuasive, important, and complex aspects of human life. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008.). Scholars have made many attempts to define communication but establishing a single definition has proved impossible (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008. ). Theories are not just things to be read and learned, they are constantly evolving works. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Theories are not mutually exclusive from social context and historical traditions, but perhaps a reflection of those (Craig, 2007). Communication theory serves as an avenue of thought to study specialized forms of discourse, cultivated means of thinking and talking (Craig, 2007). Communication Theory is intellectual refinement of ordinary practices; an acts of interpretation (Craig, 2007). Communication theory serves as a fruitful source of ideas and stimulated perfunctory thought (Craig, 2007).


Almost in contradiction to that safe repository, LittleJohn and Foss (Littlejohn and Foss 2008) classify communication as virtually indefinable. Peter Craig posits communication theory as practical while at the same time stating, “even as we do more theory, we become (collectively if not individually) less certain of exactly what we are doing or should be doing. (Craig 2007. ix) 2). Pursuing this professional uber quest within the context of communication theory his theory overload has lead to a dire personal diagnosis of analysis paralysis; the situation where too many choices make it difficult to concretize and cause mental clutter. (Schwartz 2004). The power of analysis paralysis has further had the effect of generating a seemingly idle and discordant praxis out of the uber quest, the predominant question shifting from how to create and sustain healthy communities to how to make sense of and act upon communication theory, which in itself shifts the quest back to how to create and sustain healthy communities.

A primary source for the incongruent need for order in thought, theory, and action comes from Aristotelian histrionics which argue that in the face of uncertainty, in a world based on chance, order emerges in a linear manner as the final and ideal form. Widespread Aristotelian based thinking has imbedded itself as a predominant academic model and has reinforced the idea that clutter and chaotic thought has little value in and of itself other than being observed as a mere component of a linear logical sequence moving toward a final resolution or theory. In an Aristotelian world, idle and dissonant praxis is the antithesis of the best conclusion.

Upholding the linear modality, Claude Shannon formulated a theory explaining the communication of information (Shannon – weaver model, 2003). Shannon’s Information Theory includes the basic elements of any general communication system. Information is the message. Communication is the medium through which the information is transferred and synthesized. According to Shannon, the basic elements of any general communication system includes the following: a) Source b) Sender c) Message d) Channel e) Receiver f) Destination and g) Noise source communication is not just what we talk. Expressions, gestures or visual sense.(4) But effective communication occurs only when the three important aspects of communication viz., 1) visual (used in seeing: the visual sense) (2) audio (pertaining to, or employed in the transmission, reception, or reproduction of sound) and 3) kinesics (the study of body movements, gestures, facial expressions, etc., as a means of communication) are in the right proportion. Therefore, in general, human communication may be defined as, “the process in which all of the three important aspects of communication is involved in the right proportion, in order to exchange information between humans in an effective manner.”

The compulsion toward linearity and the need to avoid dissonance is comparable to satisfying hunger and is reinforced in communication’s cybernetic tradition which states simply that people are more comfortable with consistency than inconsistency. (Festinger as quoted in Griffin, 2006, p 228) People seek homeostasis. The mind is imagined as a system that takes inputs from the environment in the form of information processes and then creates behavioural outputs (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Festinger posits three possible outputs: the first registers the input as irrelevant; the second registers the input as consonant and third registers the input dissonant, registering the input as an opposition to some other consonant or irrelevant input; ergo cognitive dissonance is given its birth. The degree of dissonance experienced is a function of two factors (1) the relative proportions of constant dissonant elements and (2) the importance of the elements or issue (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p.77). Festinger imagined a number of methods for dealing with cognitive dissonance: (1) altering the importance of the issue of the elements involved, (2) changing one or more of the cognitive elements, (3)adding a new element to one side of the tension or the other, (4) seeing consonant information and (5) distorting or misinterpreting dissonant evidence (Littlejohn and Foss, p.78). The application of the theory of cognitive dissonance then is the active attempt to avoid it. LittleJohn and Foss use the metaphor of buyer’s remorse (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p79) to describe cognitive dissonance. Being plagued by regret and second thoughts after a tough choice, people seek information that vindicates their decision and dispels nagging doubt. If an individual states a belief that is difficult to justify, that person will attempt to justify the belief making his or her attitudes more consistent with the statement (Aronson, 2004, p. 164). We succeed in modifying our attitudes because we have succeeded in convincing ourselves that our previous attitudes were incorrect. Acting as if we believe something promotes the belief itself. What becomes illuminated is the ongoing potential for the Stockholm Effect en masse. People are not rational beings but rather rationalizing beings. Humans are motivated not so much to be right as to believe they are right and to justify their own actions beliefs and feelings. When they do something they will try to convince themselves and others that is was a logical reasonable thing to do. (Aronson, 2004, p. 164. 
 An excellent starting place for anyone wishing to experience analysis paralysis, in its own right, are the works of Roland Barthes. Challenging standard beliefs and theorizing on the interpretation of signs Barthes' ultimate goal was to explain how seemingly straightforward signs pick up ideological meaning and work to maintain the status quo. In Barthes’ theory, he states that a sign has a signifier and a signified. The signifier is something that is seen and grasped; what the signifier represents is the signified. You cannot have one with out the other. Manipulation of the signified is the means of retaining social control, or status quo, the modus operandi for modern social marketers, bank robbers, or even community developers.

Paulo Freire challenged the one way flow of Aristotelian histrionics; the traditional communication model. Freire insisted on the fact that communication is a process that cannot be considered in isolation away from social and political processes. But he, like others, called for a greater emphasis on praxis. Freire's "conscentiation" (Friere, 1970) means simply thoughts perceive reality as a process of transformation rather than a static entity. This challenged the one way flow and proposed a communication model rooted in dialogue and discussion. Praxis is reflexive of internal processes rather than external. This again creates a fresh fissure from which to nourish analysis paralysis. Applying Freire’s theory to augment community development strategies creates a paradox; community development is an external process intended to effect change in social structures where reflexivity is internal rather than external. 


A parallel paradox is illuminated by extolling reflection on practice rather than theory (Bordieu, 1991). Those who create theory have an abstract logic that is different from the practical logic of those who live in the social world. Those who create theory, the observers, do not represent practical knowledge. Practical activities represent the world of action, things from the experience of participants. This participant-observer paradox has to do with a person's point of view. One is either a participant or an observer. The paradox emerges when one realizes that it is only as an observer that one comes to know that he is a participant and what that entails. What Bordieu wants to do is to create a theory based on practice where life is seen only through subjective experience.

Imagine now three dialogues: in the first a conversation is forgotten quickly, never to be recalled; in the second an enjoyable conversation takes place, but in recalling it content is not remarkable or specific; in the third, someone makes a statement you which you cannot immediately comprehend, and the result is confusion or perhaps embarrassment. What has occurred in the latter example becomes an occurrence of dramatic proportions that neither of the first two examples illustrate (Briankle, 2006,) . These are the theoretical examples offered by Briankle in an effort to postulate a truth in communication: that the sense of apprehension or uncertainly - when there is a moment, however minimal, of non understanding – is the true moment of communication. The sense of apprehension or uncertainly about what is to unfold more powerfully defines an event that is truly communicative when one does not understand. Communication can therefore take place when it appears not to take place. This theory offers yet another communication paradox – in this case to the linear communication model where communication is understood as an intentional and observable process of creating and sharing information for mutual understanding.

Overwhelmed by detail; better than anything that has been herein reviewed and considered, the best resolution of analysis paralysis comes from the Belgian artist Francis Alys’ work The Paradox of Praxis. In this work the artist took a very large block of ice and pushed it through the streets. The melting ice left an evaporating trail of water and eventually nothing more than a puddle evaporating in the street. Praxis is the idea of deep conviction that hard work brings tangible benefits. But as Alys communicated in this work the struggle slowly, steadily, inevitably dissipates transforming first into distraction (the focus on pushing the block of ice through the streets) eventually into trivial sport (playing and kicking the ice block, in its latter form, along the streets), and finally into a soon to be forgotten wet smudge evaporating on an anonymous city street. (Zwirner, The David Zwirner Gallery).

My conclusion: simply overwhelmed.


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"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -Nietzsche









References
Aronson, E. (2004). The Social Animal (9th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.
Bordieu, P. (1990). In Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology. Sanford University Press
Bordieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge University Press
Briankle, C. (1996). Deconstructing Communication Representation, Subject, and Economics of Exchange, University of Minnesota Press.
Craig, R. T., & Muller, H. L. (2007). Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Griffin, E. (2006). A First Look at Communication Theory (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Littlejohn, S. W., & Foss, K. A. (2005). Theories of Human Communication (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, Harper Collins/ECCO. New York, NY.
The Shannon-Weaver Model. In CCMS, Communication Culture and Media Studies, retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/index.html
Watson, J., & Hill, A. (1989). A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
Zwirner, D. David Zwirner Gallery. The Paradox of Praxis. Retrieved January 13, 2009 from www.davidzwirner.com/news/87/work_2902.htm