Twitter and the experience of temporal neurosis

Bye-bye (original picture available at: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/good-bye-to-all-that-twitter.html)

Recently, I reconnected to my twitter account, created five years ago and never used since then. As I am constantly looking for new sources of daily news, I thought that using Twitter more systematically could be relevant (although I have to confess, I am still struggling with it...) I also wanted to experiment and see how I could use this platform for keeping track of everyday insights emerging through my online readings. The experiment is just starting (you can check my account @alhadeffjones)

As I explore and discover more tweets and more people tweeting everyday, I am experiencing mixed feelings that seem to be quite common nowadays: the excitement of discovering new people (but not necessary new ideas) and the depressing feeling that keeping up with the pace of social media runs against other rhythms of my life (e.g., the pace of family, intellectual and working lives). This feeling in itself is not particularly original; it definitely reveals a broader ambivalence about current technologies of information and communication, already well documented in the media.

The ambivalence of a medium

What seems relevant to me, at this stage of my experimentation, is to try to keep this tension alive and to question the deeper meanings it carries. On one hand, the need for novelty, fresh insights, connections and the excitement of instantaneous connections; on the other hand, the need to consolidate what is already there, to preserve oneself, and to embrace the duration of long term perspective and lifelong development.

The problem is not so much about choosing between one or the other. The issue would be rather to learn how to regulate between openness and closure, instantaneity and duration, excitement and boredom, etc. Those are interesting "motifs de dualité" (Bachelard, 1950) that are constitutive of the everyday rhythms of our lives (sometimes we feel the need to be connected or stimulated, other times we prefer to remain on our own or quiet).

Defining temporal neurosis

Being able to regulate the way we relate to those aspects of the everyday life cannot be taken for granted. Pain and suffering can emerge from the difficulty to manage such ambivalences when they take larger proportions (e.g., compulsive behaviors). For that reason, it may be important to name the phenomenon characterized by the difficulty to regulate such tensions.

As I describe it in Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017), Gaston Pineau (2000) refers to the term "schizochrony" (from the Greek: schizo- meaning split; divided; and chronos, time) to express the tensions people experience when confronted with conflicting temporalities (e.g., family versus working time, biological versus social rhythms), or when we feel subjugated by rhythms that are imposed on us.

The tensions experienced when using social networks, such as Twitter, are of different nature. I think it may be relevant to use the expression "temporal neurosis", in allusion to the meaning given to this expression in psychoanalysis, to go further in the description of such phenomena. The notion of "temporal neurosis" stresses not only the conflicting, but also the ambivalent nature of the temporal tensions that may be experienced in the everyday life, for instance through specific behaviors experienced as symptomatic. Temporal neurosis constitutes a specific expression of "temporal conflicts" (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017).

Revealing our ambivalences toward the experience of time

If the notion of schizochrony suggests deep temporal clivages, the idea of temporal neurosis would rather refers to the state of tension and inner conflictuality that people may experience when considering the complementary, antagonistic, and contradictory nature of the rhythms that are constitutive of their own activity. Temporal neurosis is expressed by those moments when we wonder whether we should keep up with a specific pattern of activity (e.g., checking one's email or Twitter feed), change its frequency (to slow down or to accelerate the way one relates to it), or more radically introduce some kind of rupture in such habits. The term neurosis would suggest therefore a conflict between pressures coming from within (e.g., desire, repulsion) and from the outside (e.g., collective expectations, requirements).

Temporal neurosis should not be conceived strictly as a psychological phenomenon revealing personal ambivalences or inner conflicts. It should rather be conceived as socially produced by the everyday experience of temporal dilemmas imposed on us by the institutions we live through (family, education, work, etc.) From that perspective, the current development of social media is just reactivating temporal dilemmas that have been present earlier in the history of our society. Temporal neurosis represents therefore an 'update' of older forms of symptomatic ambivalences.

Now that the ambivalence is labelled, the question that remains is how do people and institutions learn to deal with such dilemmas and internalized conflicts? How do we learn to manage our own ambivalences toward the costs and benefits of new technologies and the rhythms they impose on us? How do we learn to avoid being captive of an hegemonic temporality (e.g., being stuck in social media) and maintain flexible rhythms of activity?

Some choose to stop using the platform, other keep struggling... what about you?

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Cite this article: Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2017, September 18). Twitter and the experience of temporal neurosis. Rhythmic Intelligence. http://www.rhythmicintelligence.org/blog/2017/9/18/twitter-and-the-experience-of-temporal-neurosis

An algorithm to measure the complexity of lived rhythms?

Daft Punk (Photo: MemoMorales97; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daft_punk.jpg)

Colin Morris (a self-described "unemployed programmer and deep learning enthusiast" interested in "machine learning and data visualization") recently published an intriguing paper titled "Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?" in The Pudding, a weekly journal of visual essays. This paper takes over a reflection, started in 1977 by Donald Knuth, a computer scientist, in a paper titled The Complexity of Songs. At that time, Knuth questioned in a humorous way the tendency of popular songs to drift away from content-rich ballads to highly repetitive texts, with little or no meaningful content.

Morris's contribution literally tests Knuth's 1977 hypothesis with data. He analyzed the repetitiveness of a dataset of 15'000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2017. To proceed, he used a compression algorithm (the Lempel-Ziv algorithm or LZ) used to compress files such as gifs, pngs, and other computer archive formats. As explained by Collins, the LZ works by exploiting repeated sequences: "How efficiently LZ can compress a text is directly related to the number and length of the repeated sections in that text." The results of Collins's experiment are very clearly described in his paper through several graphics and animations. They tend to demonstrate the hypothesis according to which, since the 1960s, popular music became more and more repetitive (or, in other words, easier to compress at a higher rate):

"In 1960, the average song is 45.7% compressible) ... By 1980, the year's most repetitive song is Funkytown (85% compressible) ... An average song from [2014] compresses 22% more efficiently than one from 1960."

Discussing the results of his study, Collins explores differences among genres and artists and establishes comparison charts, organized by decades. By browsing his paper, you'll learn that Daft Punk's (1997) "Around the World" is the most repetitive song produced during that period, Rihanna the most repetitive artist in Collins's dataset, or that rappers like J. Cole and Eminem tend to be consistently non-repetitive.

Repetition, rhythm, aesthetic value and the way they relate to society

Even if it does not assert an aesthetic claim, Collins's study brings one more piece to a long tradition of reflections questioning the relationships between aesthetic rhythms (e.g., poetry, music, dance) and the rhythmic features that characterize a sociocultural environment at a specific period. The questioning of the rhythmic features inherent to cultural production, such as poetry or music, has a long history. For Plato and Aristotle, rhythms used to refer to the principle organizing the succession of elementary and complex units composing poetry, music and dance. Their approach was congruent with a conception of aesthetic judgment privileging some kind of measure (metron). As discussed by Couturier-Heinrich (2004), during the 18th century, after the contributions of poets such as Moritz, Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel and Hölderlin, the concept of rhythm appeared again in reflections on aesthetic, privileging the inner qualities of a text, rather than its measurable attributes. During the second half of the 19th century, Wagner and especially Nietzsche reinitiated the discussion. The evolution of aesthetic rhythms was then interpreted as a sign of societal mutations, associated – among others – with the cultural and economic shifts characterizing modernity and the industrial revolution (Hanse, 2007).

Repetition and the quality of lived experience

Beside the fact that it proposes an objective measurement to describe how lyrics may have evolved during the second half of the 20th century, Collins's study brings in my opinion an additional element to the current research around rhythmanalysis. To locate it, I must first reframe it in the light of a reflection around the relationship between repetition and the quality of lived experience. Since Marx's analysis, the "tyranny of time" in capitalist society remains a recurring theme in sociological studies focusing on the role played by the rigidity, the coercion and the regularity imposed through the temporal framework of industrialization (e.g., assembly line, taylorization). As discussed by Lefebvre (1961/2002, p. 340), the relationship between alienation and repetition is both a matter of quality and quantity. Thus, different types of repetition have to be distinguished (i.e., taking into consideration the level of difference and creativity they involve) to analyze their value and meaning.

Working on an assembly line, or repeating every day the same routines within a classroom, may be experienced as alienating because repetition is lived as a source of monotony, tiredness, consumption or exhaustion (Jacklin, 2004). It dispossesses therefore the person from one’s own embodied experience. It does not let room for self-creation, plenitude or harmony with oneself and with the world. From this angle, the redundancy of the pragmatic demands of everyday life may constitute a source of detachment that separates daily actions (e.g., at work, in school or in the family) from what generates them (e.g., impulse or desire), resulting in an emptying out of meaning and the banality of the quotidian (Lefebvre, 1961/2002, 1992/2004). Alienation may come therefore from the separation between creative impulses and the repetitive rhythms of life (Lefebvre, 1992/2004). This is one of the reasons why Lefebvre’s rhythmanalytical project was grounded in the study of the rhythmic dimensions of the every day as potential sources of alienation. (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017, p.164)

Experiencing repetition and the mathematical measurement of redundancy

The contribution of Collins's study becomes particularly relevant, once it is linked to a broader reflection around repetition and the quality of lived experience. Collins's contribution translates an intuition. The intuition that the complexity of cultural production may be decreasing through time, according to some standards (e.g., the level of redundancy of information) or varies depending on an artist's repertoire. In a way, some would argue that there was no need to establish such a sophisticated demonstration to make that claim. The merit of the approach is that it provides one with an objective measurement to describe such an evolution. As formulated by Collins: "I know a repetitive song when I hear one, but translating that intuition into a number isn't easy." In social sciences, rhythmanalysis usually refers to a praxis first conceived from a qualitative perspective: the study of the qualities displayed by the experience of rhythmic phenomena. A contrario, in biology or in medical studies, rhythms analysis is based on quantitative data (e.g., the measurement of cardiac activity). What seems to me particularly interesting with Collins's approach is the fact that it demonstrates the value of using a specific algorithm to measure a dimension constitutive of the evolution of the complexity of cultural productions. By providing an analysis that goes beyond human capacity of perception, it provides us with a richer description of the world we are living in.

Computational complexity and rhythmanalytical research

From a methodological point of view, the idea of using compression algorithms to measure the level of redundancy of information opens up a stimulating avenue for rhythmanalytical research. If redundancy may be conceived as a marker of the absence of creative impulse, understood as a sign of loss of the self (Alhadeff-Jones, 2017), then its mathematical measurement provides us with a relevant tool to compare situations and evaluate their evolution through time. No need for a sophisticated algorithm to know when an activity is experienced as too repetitive, especially when the inconvenience is experienced through one's own body. Things become more tricky when we start considering activities involving discursive practices. Again, it seems that there is no need for an elaborated research setting to determine that working for instance at a call center may constitute a repetitive activity, shaped by unimaginative scripts. But once you want to compare activities, such as those involved in teaching, caring, or helping others, things become much more complicated.

Following Collins' example, we could imagine following a cohort of professionals (e.g., teachers, trainers, doctors, nurses) who would accept to have their voice recorded during a whole day, several days a year, several years in a row. Using an algorithm such as the LZ could provide us with a measurement of the level redundancy of their discourses, how it compares between professionals, between fields of practice, and for the same person, how it evolves through time. I have never been a proponent of quantitative approaches in human sciences, but it seems to me that such a tool would represent an interesting instrument to explore, through different contexts and different periods, the level of complexity of the discursive rhythms involved in one's activity.

Said in another way: In a time when standardization and quality management require people to follow predefined procedures, and adopt standard formulas, being able to measure the level of creativity inherent to one's discourses appears as an interesting way to describe how people learn (or unlearn) to resist through time to the increasing homogenization of human practices.

What about you?

When do you experience repetition in a way that seems debilitating?

What kind of strategy do you implement in order to enrich your everyday practice?

How do you know when you need to revise what you used to do in order to make it more creative?

Feel free to use the comments section below to share your feedback and questions. Thank you.

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Cite this article: Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2017, June 6). An algorithm to measure the complexity of lived rhythms? Rhythmic Intelligence. http://www.rhythmicintelligence.org/blog/2017/6/6/an-algorithm-to-measure-the-complexity-of-lived-rhythms

The experience of regression as a temporal marker

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) (source: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-piaget.jpg)

I have two young children. As a psychologist, I can't prevent myself to see them growing and compare what I observe every day with what I have learned at the university 20 years ago... Among the notions that I remember, Piaget's ideas around "regression" recently came back to my mind.

Back to Piaget

For Piaget, regression may occur each time one gets to a new stage of cognitive development. As a new form of mental structure is emerging, it provokes a disequilibrium in the way the child processes new information (e.g., the discovery of a new object or a new behavior) – what Piaget calls assimilation – and her/his capacity to modify her/his existing ways of thinking – what Piaget calls accommodation. Such a disequilibrium may temporarily lead to regression, until a new way of thinking or behaving emerges. In this post, I would like however to go beyond the cognitive aspect of regression, well described by Piaget, and question the experience of regression beyond the formative years of childhood.

Everybody experiences regression on a regular base

Such a phenomenon is common throughout one's life. You may be skillful at using a specific tool or technique; whenever you have to adapt what you already know to a new setting, that involves for instance new ways of thinking, you may become temporarily clumsy (e.g., throwing out your hammer when you feel frustrated with the construction of an IKEA bookshelf). More deeply, it may also occur whenever one is confronted to a new environment.

For instance, the first years when I moved to the United States, even if knew how to speak English, my capacity to express myself in this language was far less sophisticated than my ability to speak French. It took me years to feel self-confident whenever I was speaking English in a professional setting. Probably because I was very self-aware and because language remains critical in my work (writing or teaching), this transitional period led me to experience a feeling of regression, considering my feeling of autonomy; I felt dependent on relatives and colleagues to make sure that I was expressing myself appropriately at work (e.g., asking them to regularly proofread what I was writing). Years later, I perceive this period as a springboard that allowed me to develop a specific linguistic skill and, even if I don't master it as well as my mother tongue, I do not experience the same feeling of dependence or regression anymore, whenever I evolve in an English-speaking environment.

Regression is a rhythmic phenomenon

When I observe my children learning and regressing throughout the sequence of activities that constitute their everyday life, I perceive regression as being fundamentally a rhythmic experience. I can see both of my children regressing whenever they feel jealous of each other; there is a pattern of behavior that occurs again and again. We experience regression on a regular base during our childhood. We also experience it as adults (intellectually, emotionally and socially), whenever we experience a gap between a new situation (e.g., new knowledge, new relationship) and our cognitive, emotional and social ability to deal with it. That means that regression is a form of experience that tends to repeat itself through time and throughout one's existence; this is a "periodic" phenomenon. It is recognizable, because it is characterized by a way of thinking, feeling or relating to others, that tends to be less appropriate that the level of adaptation we usually display at a specific time of our life; regression displays therefore some form of pattern. It is also inscribed in a specific time of one's existence. It belongs to the historical movement of one's life; a movement that is expressed by actions that are never fully self-similar. Following Sauvanet (2000) rhythmic criteria (pattern, periodicity, movement), we can therefore conceive the experience of regression as a rhythmic phenomenon.

Regression may reveal the way one relates to one's own development

The experience of regression tells something about where a person stands (mentally, emotionally, socially). It expresses something about the present situation, as much as it reveals connections with the past ("I don't understand, I used to be capable of dealing with such situations in the past") and a possible future ("If I overcome this challenge, I may feel more skillful"). The experience of regression appears therefore as a temporal marker. It is a marker because it draws attention to our own way of being through an unusual pattern of behavior. Also, we all have different ways of experiencing regression. For instance, it can be acknowledged, denied, understood or feared. So, questioning one's experience of regression is a way to learn something relevant about where we are in time, that is, where we are in relation to where we used to be, or where we may be in the future, and how we relate to such changes. If education is about learning and development (among others aspects), then questioning the experience of regression appears as a strategic way to position one's learning in regard to one's development. And because regression keeps occurring in one's life, it also reveals something about how one evolves through time. It constitutes a significant temporal marker.

What about you?

Are you aware of the times in your life when you feel regressing? Do you notice specific patterns in the way such an experience repeats itself? Do you perceive an evolution in the way you may deal with such an experience? Feel free to share your comments below!

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Cite this article: Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2017, May 23). The experience of regression as a temporal marker. Rhythmic Intelligence. http://www.rhythmicintelligence.org/blog/2017/5/23/the-experience-of-regression-as-a-temporal-marker

Envisioning the rhythms of a transformation

Source: "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle

Adult development is obviously a matter of time, but could we envision it as a matter of rhythms? How to develop a rhythmical theory to describe how adults transform themselves? Those questions are located at the core of my ongoing reflections around transformative learning and rhythm theory.

Transformation as a discontinuity

Transformation is often conceived as a 'discontinuity' shaping one's life. It may for instance be triggered by a crisis, an event or an accident that brings one to reorganize the way one lives and the way ones conceives who we are and what we do. This conception is at the core of many theories in psychology and adult education, including Mezirow's (1991) transformative learning theory.

Transformation as a continuous process

Another way to conceive the emergence of a transformation in one's life suggests one to envision it through ongoing processes that are barely noticeable, either because they are unconscious or because they are so casual that they do not attract attention; what Jullien (2009) calls "silencious transformations". Thus, the transformations that characterize the development of a child may be conceived as 'continuous', as everyday little changes emerge – often unnoticed – until they eventually contribute to significant markers of one's growth (e.g., the first step made, the first word pronounced, etc.).

Transformation as a rhythmic process

Those two conceptions of transformation do not have to be opposed to each other. Conceiving them altogether requires nevertheless to develop a language that allows one to describe the relationships between continuity and discontinuity. In my opinion, this is what is at stake in the development of a rhythmic conception of change (Alhadeff-Jones, 2016, 2017).

When a butterfly comes to rescue

To illustrate this claim, I have started using the two videos below with the participants of one of my courses to raise their attention to the rhythmic aspects of one's development.

I start with this video, as it represents the stereotypical way one envisions a transformation: the emergence of the grown butterfly out of its cocoon; the ultimate discontinuity!

After nine days of behind the scenes changes, the adult monarch butterfly is ready to meet the world! (Source: Jefferson Lab)

Then, I show the video below, which chronologically comes first, as it illustrates the production of the chrysalis itself; a phenomenon often overlooked when one refers to the 'birth' of a butterfly as an illustration of a transformation.

Change from a caterpillar (the larva) to a chrysalis (the pupa). (Source: Jefferson Lab)

In both videos, what is striking is the rhythmical features of the changes that occur. Time lapse videos are particularly powerful to reveal such rhythms, as they would remain otherwise invisible to the naked eye (more on that in another post!). Both videos display specific rhythms inherent to the changes that occur in the body of the caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly, but they are more pregnant at some stages than others.

Such phenomena, although quite complex, are obviously not as complex as the ones that affects human's life. They provides us however with powerful analogies to start grasping what is at stakes when one pays attention to the micro-changes that occur through a process of transformation. They display the everyday rhythms inherent to a transformation.

What about you?

Do you know any other examples of natural or human phenomena that display rhythmic features inherent to transformative processes in a way that can be easily perceived by human senses? Please, use the comment section below to post your suggestions. Thank you!

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Cite this article: Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2017, April 6). Envisioning the rhythms of a transformation. Rhythmic Intelligence. http://www.rhythmicintelligence.org/blog/2021/1/19/envisioning-the-rhythms-of-a-transformation