The Internet Highway
A brief exploration on the realtionship between communication, worldview, and values.
Would you like to be a little more effective in communicating online?
Speaking online is something more and more people are doing. It also seems to be something some other people are doing less and less. Why? From my observation I submit that many people are driving over others, some are crashing, and others are smoothly driving to their destination, as on a highway or street. Sadly, some are dying, never to raise their online voice again.
What can we do to make online interactions better, that is, more helpful and efficient, and ultimately more glorifying to God’s own character?
I propose and offer four guiding principles for online communication, expressed in terms of driving—
Where are you going? Pick your destination. A destination being a specific goal in the communication. What precisely are you trying to say, and just as on a trip, how long will it take you to get there? What tools do you need for the journey? The destination will give you boundaries so you don’t over tax yourself or others, driving on and on forever until you’re out of gas and lost in the middle of the road not knowing where you are or how you even got there (people have various mental and emotional bandwidths — attention spans). In other words, for conversation, timing is key to the most effective communication, just as in driving knowing the eta of your final destination gives you and more importantly, those listening, mental context.
What are you driving? Drive slow. How? Remember that life and death is still real and the reality of cause and effect still applies, even online. Be primarily investigative rather than executive, that is, look before you leap and watch where you’re going on the small steps toward your ultimate destination. We should cultivate the character of a slow, deep, critical thinking, thoughtful responder, rather than that of a quick, shallow, credulous, passionate reactor. Or in the short, simple, clear, and profound words of James the Apostle “be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.” And “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”.
How are you traveling? Distinguish which road you’re on. Are you on a highway, a dirt road, a mountain road? What do I mean? The context and medium is itself just as much a message as what you’re saying. Think about how the context and medium affects the kind of subject and content you are trying to communicate or how it takes away from what you are trying to say. The environment of the conversation will influence the message and lead it to be interpreted one way or another. The informal education of the context in which you communicate is just as instructive and perhaps may be even more influential than the formal choice of words and subject matter. The entire online world itself is a kind of informal education system. Who are you in different contexts, and is the online world a different persona than your non-digital presence? How is the medium, in this case the internet, shaping your style of communication, influencing or distorting the message you are trying to deliver, and most importantly forming your real life character and history, that is who you want to be?
What did you accomplish? Review the journey. How was the trip? In other words, how was your message received? Was it understood? Was each step by step point clear to your audience? Did the picture they receive accurately reflect the image you were trying to paint? The story you were trying to tell? The song you were trying to sing? Was their mind informed, or their heart comforted , or their will directed? Depending on what your goal was— whether the soul’s entire worldview, the will’s behavior, the mind’s beliefs, or the heart’s values, you should assess the efficiency of each statement, idea, or lesson presented in order to practice better communication for the next time.
A final note on these points is to remember that the entire online world, being an informal education system, is therefore also like a vehicle. Maybe we can say, a train? It’s going somewhere, and it’s going somewhere fast. But one day the train will reach its destination. It will all come to an end. And the key question is, who will we be when it’s time to get off that train forever?
One of the major challenges or “road blocks” in communication online, and especially when trying to share the Bible with others, is ignorance regarding the subject of worldviews and their relationship to values. Would you like to understand a little bit more regarding this relationship? If so, read on—
If you ask someone what their worldview is, many will not be able to readily give you an answer. There are lots of people who live in their worldview, that is, behave in it, but do not know how to articulate it, or they have challenges doing so. Sometimes they do not even know why they do certain things and how it is they came to believe what they are doing is right or wrong. It also does not mean they do not have a worldview. It just means that they may need guidance or reasons to bring them out to the forefront in terms communicable. But once you start talking to people, if you do not even address the subject of worldview, after a while, it is likely that you will run into many road blocks and will end up going in circles.
Do you know what a worldview is? Did you know that worldviews even exist and that every individual has their own even if they don’t know how to articulate it? Do you know how to identify yours as such and how to communicate it? Do you know the principles that guide your view of the world and did you come to form them on your own or did you follow someone else’s habits and lifestyle because they seemed or felt good, right, or true? By what or who is your worldview ultimately informed?
Regarding the subject of values, whether we realize it or not, we all desire a shared sense of values. But how do you get there? The road to shared values begins at worldview, worldview allegiance to be more specific. Why would people give something of value like money, or even greater value, themselves or someone they love, to a system, belief, or ideology which they fundamentally belief is either false, evil, or dangerous?
A shared sense of values makes it possible to cooperate. Without a shared sense of values, it is impossible to cooperate or ultimately even to communicate. Why? We live in an age where money and values speak. Values are the message, and conversely, messages are the values. If your message cannot prove to be of value, it will be forgotten, rejected, or despised. So a cure to argumentation and disharmony and division is shared sense of values which removes competition and makes progress actually possible. But the values, being the deepest part of the person, that is, the heart, must only be reached from the most foundational and basic starting point—worldview, that is, reality and basic facts. Only then can behavior and beliefs be changed because the heart sits at the center of the beliefs one holds to be true and the behaviors or actions which follow those beliefs.
So if this chain of order is true, the order of worldview, to values, to beliefs, to behavior, then we must begin with worldview. They must see the truth in order to value the truth, which then leads to believing the truth, and finally obeying or following the truth.
From investigation of Scriptures the major pillars of a worldview I find are—
Reality (Indisputable facts)
Allegiance (Related to the power of free will)
Assumptions (Maybe understood as the precognition and reasoning capacity)
Values (Sense of self)
These four subjects I find to be foundational to a worldview paradigm.
If we pay close attention to these in our conversations with others, we may find ourselves better able to communicate with and to them as fellow human souls that have hearts, minds, and strengths.