Each year I visit the village of Cong to attend www.Congregation.ie. The 'entry fee' to this unusual and inspiring un-conference is simply to write a blog post size piece of work on the given one-word-theme for that year.
I am always down to the wire to get mine in on time. I love to think about writing but as you can see from this long neglected (blank!) blog section, I rarely make the time to actually do it. So to kick start my efforts and make a mark on this blank canvas I am going to paste in some of my favourite former Cong pieces. Last year the one word theme was Society 3.0. I wrote a poem. This is it.
Society 3.0
Society? Anxiety
Dis-ease, Unease
Social Media
Retweet Please
A bot, a troll
A Russian spy
Machine Learning
Smart AI
Nothing’s real
All fake news
Hack my profile
Walk my shoes
Sometimes high
Extreme polite
Thin veneer
Shine the light
At underbellies
Darker sides
That live in hope
Of turning tides
Fabrics ripped
Colours worn
All a cover
Now its blown
It's just a word
Do what’s right
All can change
with voters might.
Crowds roar
Placards care
Rocking boats
Who would dare?
Such decorum
Tidy, neat
Agree with all
For safest seat .
But powers shift
Sands too
Time’s up,
Society’s you!
Undecided?
Still at sea?
Now your time’s up
Society’s me!
Takeaways:
1. I was struck by the idea that society is everything and nothing. It’s an artificial collective, a human construct of an idealised movement by the powerful. The very word is laden with arch last century terms like ‘polite society’ and ‘high society’. The origin of the poem is in the countless word associations of society adjectives, synonyms and metaphors – each grappling to make sense of it.
2. Society allows for abdication of responsibility. Society should do this, society must do that, its society’s fault…who is society? Is it everyone or no one or just everyone else? (Hence, “Society’s you…, society’s me”. I couldn’t bring myself to write the manifesto of the new normal society when I can’t decide if it’s occurs by accident or by design. Are we the masters of society’s destiny or does society master us, are we caught in its current?
3. In this most uncertain and chaotic year when the tendency is to grasp for certainty and grab at order, I was unable to get to grips with this Society 3.0 design challenge. We’ve talked all year about how we are ‘together apart’. Maybe I’ve bypassed together and moved straight to apart, detached from society and social engagement and for now it feels too far away to discern its shape.
It’s a stream of consciousness of my fragmented thoughts on a dispersed and fragmented society. As for what Society 3.0 will be, the poem reflects my uncertainties of what society is at all, how it changes, who changes it and the forces within it; technology, politics, the masses, the minorities, the individual.