social networks

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Steve and all, --- about that article on social networks you just sent out: 
   Yes, indeed. 
        This is the key line in that article about social networks, I think:

  "..a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.
           
ab:  Of course we're talking about an overlap with sociometry.

The trouble with that word, sociometry, is that it puts a boundary or a stamp of methodology on a basic idea that is bigger than the method. What is that basic idea?  Tele or rapport, feeling preference, feeling liked and becoming increasingly aware of when one does and does not prefer to interact with another, and what's that all about---this is important and not easy to access through many more familiar methods.

      It's problematical because it's very vulnerable, very deep. We're not supposed to think in certain ways. 
   
Another line in the report: "What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave," said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. "Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, ... etc.  What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way."

            AB: The common assumption, for example, is that you can make yourself be interested if you try. That's generally prevalent in our schooling and culture. 
          What if it isn't true? What if we have only a little power to modify our level of interest or disinterest. Perhaps we can shift the relationship or group dynamic so that it's more interesting. At least, I'm finding, it's helpful to become more explicitly aware of the degree to which I become tempted to tune out.
    (This is part of counter-transference or projective identification work for a therapist doing therapy.)

  So thank you, Steve, for stoking up an ongoing process of contemplating what sociometry is really about, thinkng about the many aspects of our relatedness. I want to include my tendencies to deny my lack of interest (or even less than complete interest), and instead, notice this as an aspect or element of tele. 

        Tele may be to preference what archetype is to instinct---I don't know--- but I suspect that the inter-personal resonance takes off from a more basic foundation of preference... I enjoy this role component. I enjoy it more if you enjoy it with me, and more if you enjoy that I am enjoying it with you. That kind of back-and-forth-ing.

        But the roots of sociometry lie in our becoming more aware of the range of preferences available to us. 

  A related point: In a more mobile culture, and with the internet, and in other ways, the idea that (1) there are even more compatible people out there; and (2) I can find them and connect with them---this raising the bar of expectations---leads to people holding out, not wanting to commit (?), seeking to find better jobs, living situations, moving and searching. This undoubtedly has both positive and negative (and unintended) consequences. 

          Finally, I want to suggest that I become ever more humble and circumspect about talking about sociometry because I think that, applied in our personal lives, it requires a heavy infrastructure of processing skills, else it be experienced as overwhelmingly threatening, shaming, anxiety-producing. Eventually, humans need to learn the self- and social-management skills that include this reality, the dynamics of rapport, but as I say, we also need to flesh out what else needs to be learned to contain these types of awareness.

     Warmly, Adam

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