Who's In Your Sphere of Influence?
April 2024 \\ An Exploration Issue
Hello!!
I’m back with another exploration issue - who even am I? I find myself ruminating over ideas of role models and formation and social mirroring these days, so we’re gonna run with it.
In the last couple of issues, we’ve started investigating what role models are, and the types of figures who capture and keep our attention.
Today, I’d like to push these ideas a bit further, make them even more visible and connected to daily life - y’know, where most of us live. And I’ve got more pictures!
As you read, I’d love for you to think about who populates your spheres of influence. What does this help illuminate for you? What does it make possible in your life?
And when you’re done, I’d love to hear from you about these ideas. Let me know what you think I’ve missed or should investigate more deeply. Allons-y!
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As we’ve already mentioned, time and congruity (or congruence) are two major factors that affect who we identify, choose, or accept as role models. But we also have a third factor: proximity. Proximity is the degree of closeness between physical objects, the distance between yourself and another, or between other individuals who become groups. The nearer you perceive or experience yourself in relation to another, the greater degree of interaction or connection you feel yourself to have with them.
If you've ever noticed that your circle of friends shifts from one context or circumstance to another - such as from college to post-graduation, or from a group trip to regular life - you've experienced the effect of proximity on your ability to maintain those relationships. The internet and digital communications technologies can help support your relationships, but we often forget or overlook the heavy lifting that "mere" physical proximity does for us. And I suspect that we are clarifying the edges of the support that digital communications technologies provide (and finding it a pale facsimile of other means of communication).
Anyway, proximity is a key factor in our relationships with others, and especially in our relationships with role models. I want to focus primarily on physical proximity, as in the actual spaces in which we encounter and share time, interactions, and connections with others. For lack of a better phrase (at the moment), let's call these physical spaces "spheres of influence."
Thus far, I've identified (thanks to Fiona Murden) three main spheres of influence, with two different channels of communication or interaction available in each sphere. The three spheres are the personal, the communal or situational, and the aspirational. The two communication channels are in-person and real-time (IRL), and digital and asynchronous (OL).
The Personal Sphere
In the first, smallest, and most familiar or accessible sphere are our most private relationships. These include our families of origin, extended and chosen families, and of course, our friends. These are the folks with whom we live, eat, fight, travel, and sleep. We most often have IRL interactions in this sphere, whether at home or in public spaces; these interactions are usually supplemented by OL interactions.
This is probably where we find relationships with the greatest degree of proximity and intensity, as where we have the best opportunity to determine the congruity of those with whom we have relationships.
The Communal/Situational Sphere
The next sphere of influence is the communal or situational. "Second places" such as work or school fall into this sphere, as well as "third places" such as gyms or athletic fields/clubs, coffee shops, houses of worship, community or government centers, and so on.
When we enter this sphere, it's most often for a specific purpose and for a finite period of time. And while we can spend large chunks of time in such spaces, they are not necessarily our primary "sphere," and we tend to have more transactional interactions with those we encounter.
The people we meet here include colleagues, clergy members, clerks, coaches, bureaucrats, local politicians, and community leaders. IRL interaction is possible and likely, but it's also just as likely that we'll have OL interactions, mediated through ordering apps, texts, social media, or email. We may find that our interactions in this sphere land on the asynchronous side of the spectrum, where communications provide only the data necessary and nothing of the person or people behind it.
While we might see the same people over and over again, we only see them in this one context, for a limited purpose and period. Determining the overall congruity of those we encounter in the communal or situational sphere is difficult, because we lack consistent proximity, context, or intensity of interaction.1
The Aspirational Sphere
The last sphere of influence we're looking at is the aspirational. This includes national and international figures such as politicians, celebrities, and social media influencers. It also includes historical figures and fictional characters, such as Marcus Aurelius, Aragorn, Queen Elizabeth, and Wonder Woman.
We are unlikely to ever interact with such people IRL, unless we attend a special event or somehow work for or with them. Most of what we know about these people comes through print and digital media, and our interactions will be asynchronous and fleeting, or even entirely imaginary.2 In this sphere, we have little to no time or proximity to the person, and have few means of determining their congruity.
Layered Spheres
Now that we've considered each sphere on its own, let's see how they look layered together.
It's...a lot.
When we really pause to examine the plenitude of interactions and observations we experience on a daily basis, it's no surprise we all feel overwhelmed and worn out.
I have wondered lately, in light of our exploration of "databasification," if we all feel like every interaction, every relationship, is starting from scratch every single time. We in some fashion "dump" our memories, our narrative of the person and the relationship because we've become trained toward an always-on, always-connected, 24/7 instantaneity of information.
But more than this, we're overwhelmed and worn out by the sheer speed and scale of possible interaction - to the point that we don't even "see" the person on the other side of the screen, the counter, the table. They've become abstractions, obstacles, simulacra. We've lost sight of them as real, significant people, capable of influencing us toward certain ends and means, and equally capable of being influenced by us in return.
What strikes me in seeing these spheres and channels mapped out like this is just HOW. NETWORKED. we are to each other, and not necessarily, or just, in a digital sense. Our social media technologies obscure and distort these connections, making them simultaneously more banal and more urgent than they might actually be. And what I suspect that banal urgency hides from us the ways in which our attention is blinkered to the influence we unconsciously experience precisely because our attention is so blinkered to one specific sphere at the exclusion of the others.
I speak, of course, of the aspirational sphere in its social media incarnation, with its online celebrities and "influencers" and the consumer capitalist ethos and habits we're constantly driven toward and shaped by.
Since around 2012, when smartphone adaption achieved ubiquity in Western societies, it seems like our need or appreciation for "third places" has shrunk. We want to go somewhere where we can hang out comfortably, but we've all migrated to "virtual third places." We've also cultivated a concomitant inability to conceive of public spaces as anything other than revenue generators; they must exist for growth, monetization, and profit at any cost.3
So we all seem to have personal spheres invaded by the 24/7 aspirational, and hollowed-out communal or situational spheres. And no one's really happy about it, and no one's really got a solution.
So what questions are we asking that keep giving us the same old tired answers?
And what questions could we ask that might help us imagine different futures?
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
Though any interaction can be intense, however brief!
We won't go into the dark side of imaginary relationships (i.e., obsessive fans) here!
Truthfully, somewhat understandable, given a general lack of political will for public infrastructure and common services.