Connecting classes and fixing the world

As my limited readership knows, I've been pretty inspired to do new and different things this semester. I could go on about how I've had good semester with friendships and personal tranquility in my life, but I think a lot of what has inspired me, this semester has actually been my classes, as sappy as that sounds.

My classes have been so thought provoking because, to steal a term from an author I read for my Media Technology and Cultural Change class (Jenkins), there has been a certain "Convergence Culture" surrounding my classes themselves. By this I mean my classes have come together and I have been able to form opinions about the world and how I see things by combining the overarching themes of my different classes. To stretch things a little further, what my Professors have been trying to communicate to me through my classes has come together nicely and enabled me to form my own theories about how to fix the world.

I'll start with my Comparative Politics class. Although I am somewhat frustrated with the overly technical nature of Comparative and its superficiality, Professor Bleich and the material have communicated two really interesting ideas to me. First is that there are no easy answers in the social sciences and political change comes incredibly slowly. Second, is the idea that social capital and civic engagement (Putnam) is essential to a functioning democracy.

So being the political animal I am, I've thought a lot about how what America really needs is civic engagement--a change in the country's culture. This has been reinforced by my 2oth century American Culture class which has taught me (little to my surprise) that with the perils of the consumer republic, suburbanization and other cultural phenomena going way back, our culture is seriously distracted, apathetic and commercialized.

Enter Media Technology and Cultural Change. One of the many things I've learned from this class (that everyone at Middlebury should take) is that with the convergence of old and new media and the new creation of networks, there is tremendous opportunity for more civic engagement and the creation of a better democratic institutions.

But it won't be easy, and change won't necessarily come hand and hand with technological change.

And this brings me to my creative writing class. In my talks with professor Payne, I've thought a lot about a fundamental need for us humans to communicate to one another. To reach out and acknowledge our similarities in going through the struggle that is life. To a large extent, this human connection is what our culture is lacking. We are drifting apart.

So in order to solve our problems (the largest of which I believe is social disintegration ie. loneliness), we need a change in culture. In order to change our politics (poli sci class), we need to change our culture (American Studies) with the correct implementation of technology (media tech class) and with art and human connection (writing class).

I don't pretend to know how to go about changing our society organically, but I think between poetry, politics and PC's we can take some steps in the right direction.