Coherence, Meaning, and Understanding 2

Combatting the firehose of the digital world

In my previous thoughts about how we seek out coherence, meaning, and understanding, one commentator wondered how I arrived at the order of the terms. Frankly, I don’t remember exactly but I think it was alphabetical. He wrote that in his experience there was an order to how he considered them:

I found my mind want to flip your framework of three factors from coherence, meaning, and understanding to understanding, then meaning, then coherence. Or you might flip the last two. Clearly they overlap and influence each other. But it is deeply ingrained within me to seek first to understand. Then it begins to mean something, and then I can consider whether it coheres - with its own argument, with orthodoxy, or with my own evolving Jesus-and-Scripture-anchored habits and virtues, worldview and practices.

I appreciate his thoughtfulness. That he finds an order to the process is important. They are related to each other and build upon each other. I do not think it is linear (and my guess is neither does he) but more likely iterative or cyclical, maybe more like a spiral. I find that as I consume more information throughout my day, my previous thoughts about a topic may shift and change. So, using his order, if my understanding about a topic gets rattled, does it then alter the meaning I found and does it shake loose the coherence I established? Looking back on mental models, often when new information arrives that does not cohere with an existing model, my mind rejects it or pays it no never mind. However, sometimes it may cause enough cognitive dissonance to give me pause and make me reconsider my thoughts and ideas.

How might the digital world influence how I find coherence, meaning, and understanding? The speed at which new information arrives is boggling. In an article from Frontiers for Young Minds, a scientific journal aimed at kids, I found this:

Scientists have measured the amount of data that enter the brain and found that an average person living today [2012] processes as much as 74 GB in information a day (that is as much as watching 16 movies), through TV, computers, cell phones, tablets, billboards, and many other gadgets. Every year it is about 5% more than the previous year. Only 500 years ago, 74 GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories.

Of course, it does not follow that today’s “average person” is a “highly educated person” just because they are processing such enormous volumes of data. Looking just at Google Trends, such data may be searches for airline deals, what’s on sale at Amazon, restaurant reservations, or checking the status of a hurricane. It does not seem to be prolonged reading of Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle, or the Bible.

Just considering the sheer volume of data noted above, I began to wonder about attention spans and the content being consumed. The overwhelming daily (hourly?) inputs people face from media in all its forms is so big that we cannot pay attention to all of it, much less consider what gets through to provide us coherence, meaning, and understanding. Again, from Frontiers for Young Minds:

One smart trick the human brain has for noticing important events is to pick out a few things that we see or hear and to hold on to those things and examine them more closely to make sense of them. This prevents us from being overwhelmed by all the many things we see, hear, or feel. For example, even when typing in a quiet office, there are birds chirping outside, cars driving by the window, e-mail notifications on the computer, and many other things that we would better ignore if we wish to get our work done. ‘Selective attention’ is the term that researchers use for the process of paying attention to only a few of the things that we notice with our senses.

For neuroscientists, paying attention has two parts: (1) picking out important things from the flow of information that constantly enters our senses (for example, sight, hearing, touch) and (2) protecting these important things from being overwritten by less important pieces of information.

However, the advent and use of smart phones means that we can be easily distracted. Another article noted that the time spent looking at a webpage (which was how the study measured attention spans) have dropped from 2.5 minutes per page in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2020. What’s the long-term effect of this? Because so many people are spending so much time clicking through screens, when the time comes to no longer look at a screen - say having a conversation with someone or reading a physical book - the attention span is reduced (see also many posts at After Babel).

Further, I wonder whether the content of the media being consumed is thinner. While overall books sales (both physical and e-book/audio book) are climbing, are the other media inputs such as social media feeds, Instagram reels, advertisements, video streaming, and screens everywhere thinning the soup of content? Is the sheer volume of media becoming so immense that it pushes out the thick reading I do of non-fiction or even the Bible? Part of me thinks that if the only inputs I had in a day were one book and a newspaper, that the content I had consumed would be stickier and retain a greater purchase in my mind. The section above about how our minds separate important pieces of information from the less important makes me wonder if I overwhelm my mind with less important information, does the sheer volume push out the more important? Sort of a mental flash flood, clearing everything in its path.

The combination of this thin content and our increasingly short attention spans makes me curious about Christian formation and transformation. How does all this content shape or change how I think about God? Putting it another way, if what I consume is junk food and I throw in an occasional salad, I will be unhealthy, even if I convince myself that I’m doing well by eating the salad. One salad, or one hour reading scripture, is not enough to counter a day’s worth of junk eating or mindless scrolling. If I want to deepen my walk towards Jesus, I need to change the inputs and their volume.

In his study of spiritual formation, Wilson Teo wrote,

[Dallas] Willard…highlighted that spiritual formation can take place for every person regardless of one’s religious faith. He believes that every human spirit is formed either by the spiritual realm or social-cultural factors that are surrounding the person. [J.C.] Wilhoit (2008) has expressed similar views that a person is formed either positively or negatively and the formational process takes place all the time throughout one’s life.

This implies that I’m being formed whether or not I consent to it. Though this sounds a little deterministic, as if I have no choice, I disagree. While I’ll concede that some formation is happening without my consent (our brains are incredibly complex), I need to pay attention to not only how I’m being formed (the process and inputs) but also what I’m being formed into. As a personal example, my decision to walk away from 30+ years of engagement in partisan politics was because I realized that it was forming me into someone I did not want to be. When I walked away, I lost friends and I’ve needed to de-tox for a while before some of my knee-jerkism has dissipated. But I determined it was important for me in my desire to see where and through whom God was working. Partisanship blinded me to how God was working through others on the other side of the partisan divide.

Some of the literature on formation and transformation often equates the two, using them interchangeably. I see it differently. I see formation as the pieces and parts that land in my mind all the time, shaping it. These can be new ideas, new ways of looking at people or the world, or a new understanding that makes coherence occur. Formation started when I was born and continues to this day. I typed “human formation” into the search bar on my laptop and was surprised (but probably shouldn’t have been) to see so many religious sites pop up. Seems the church is in the human formation business.

I see transformation as the altering or changing of a formative aspect of myself. It is the re-making or re-mapping of some part of me to point to a new or different place. So, when Paul writes to the Romans to be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2), his goal for them is to be able to “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” The act of Christian transformation results in me being better positioned to be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

And here’s how I see the two - formation and transformation - meeting up. The practice of spiritual disciplines (see Foster or Calhoun or Willard or Renovaré) has been recognized by the church for its entire history as a means to make ourselves more Christlike. These disciplines both form and transform us, adding new pieces to our being and changing what has already landed in us. I also think it can erase or, at least, push to the background, aspects of my formation that are less than optimal for a Christian. The disciplines crack open the door of my inmost being allowing the Holy Spirit to enter in and make me new.

This process is never over since I live in a world that does not want this process to happen (see The Screwtape Letters or Against the Machine). It is a daily and lifelong endeavor. The key is that I have agency. I do not take a passive stance, allowing myself to be pushed around by these elements. I can choose to address how I’m being formed and, using the Christian disciplines, allow myself to be changed by the Holy Spirit. And my coherence, meaning, and understanding (or understanding, meaning, and coherence) can shift towards being more oriented towards Christ.

What the end result looks like is unique to each of us. In the next essay I will discuss how our use of bricolage shapes the lived religion we each practice .