User talk:Tucker Harding

Relatively Unrefined Thoughts on Lifeworld, Communication and Study

Any time we study anything— ourselves, a topic, a person, a problem, an event, a phenomenon— we do so as inhabitants of a lifeworld. Recognizing lifeworld as a realm in which human experience occurs is important: it necessitates an accounting for our situatedness in a time and place that can have profound influences on who, why and how we are, and in particular our sense of agency in a world created largely by the decisions of persons who, like us, shape and inhabit unique lifeworlds themselves. When we decide to study something, we do so within the total environment of everyday life, and this environment matters: we are persons who form ourselves within a world that shapes us, while simultaneously being created by us.

But why specifically consider Lifeworld when finding for ourselves a place to study?

"Study" is a communication experience within the lifeworld. It occurs by choice, and within a communication environment that shapes the experience and possibility of “coming to know”. Experiences are formed by perceptions, emotions, and interactions resulting from our decisions, and the possibility of knowing is augmented or diminished, strengthened or weakened by experiences that together form the foundation of our personal reality. Exploring and understanding the lifeworld helps us gain insight into the conditions that arise from the richness of individual subjective experiences, and recognize the value of agency as an attribute of all persons forming personal realities out of individual and shared experience.

The lifeworld provides a way of locating where, how and why the creation and interpretation of meaning takes place. It is through our interactions--within the lifeworld--that we develop shared understandings, cultural norms, and social practices. By examining the lifeworld itself, we can uncover the ways in which meaning is constructed, negotiated, and transformed in social contexts, and particularly what's taken for granted, like much of the true everyday experience of being alive. This understanding has profound implications for both why and how we communicate, the chances that our communication choices are effective in our attempts to know, and the development of a shared sense of being important for who and how we are as persons desiring to know and understand ourselves and situations better.

The total environment that comprises the lifeworld is the backdrop against which all social interactions occur, with each interaction necessitating a communication decision. It is within the lifeworld and through communication decisions that we engage with others, form relationships, and participate in social life, both publicly and privately. By bringing the lifeworld concept to bear on our social interactions, we stand a chance to grow our perceptive capacity on how persons navigate their own situatedness, develop and act upon their own perspectives, and link themselves to a world of other situated persons. The lifeworld provides a context for appreciating our shared experiences as persons inhabiting a world of many unknowns, and protecting our hearts against what can feel like an insurmountable collection of unknown unknowns.

The lifeworld is deeply intertwined with culture, itself a kind of communication technology. Cultural practices, beliefs, and values, carried in the form of various cultural memories, are stored and pushed forward in time and across space by different mediums and modes of communication that are at once both of product of, and become embedded within, the lifeworld. Each plays a heavy role in shaping our interactions with persons, places, things and ideas. By studying the lifeworld we attempt to gain insights into different ways of thinking, living and being, as each play significant roles in how we choose to think, live and be as persons. Our choices make a lifeworld that is not static, but rather subject to change and transformation by the active, outward participation of persons in the total environment, and guided by the active, inward process of study.

Communication plays a central role in the construction and maintenance of the lifeworld. Though it may be obvious that communication is how persons share their experiences, knowledge, and interpretations of the world with others, what is less obvious is that it is through communication that we come to know the world at all: it is by communicating the world back to ourselves (which can sometimes be a mysterious byproduct of an attempt to communicate with others) that we come to know. It is the primary means through which we establish and negotiate both personal and shared meanings. How communication occurs– the communicative decisions we make, including the tools we choose to use– matter. Communication in the lifeworld occurs through various channels, and its forms make possible the transmission and reception of information. The persons sending or receiving information constantly and continuously encode and decode the information of their total environment to make sense of it: finding signal through the noise. The very process of encoding and decoding is itself mediated by the lifeworld, as it provides the context and background against which all communication is possible.

Individuals develop and negotiate their identities, engage in social interactions, and participate in collective decision-making processes that in turn reciprocally shape and influence the environment of everyday life. Our shared lifeworld shapes the meanings and interpretations of the messages exchanged, influencing how they are understood and responded to. Cultural values, social norms, historical contexts, and individual experiences all influence communication within the lifeworld, creating a complex interplay between the personal and the social dimensions of communication.

The Lifeworld and communication are intertwined aspects of human existence. Communication is the primary means through which individuals engage with and shape the lifeworld, while the lifeworld provides the context and shared meanings within which communication is possible. Understanding the relationship between the lifeworld and communication is crucial: it is the necessary and only realm in which individuals create, maintain, and transform personal and social realities, arrive at decisions that stand to impact the total environment of all persons, and is quite literally the place of study.