I found myself developing the uneasy feeling that "stupa" was an adjective used to describe people who accepted writing assignments the titles of which contained words they did not understand. I scurried to a dictionary. I am of the generation that equates the size of a dictionary with its veracity. I'm not talking gigabytes here, I'm talking "effort required to lift the thing." Webster's Third International Dictionary is a reassuringly hefty tome and informed me that a stupa was:
a hemispherical or cylindrical mound or tower artificially constructed of earth, brick or stone, surmounted by a spire or umbrella, and containing a relic chamber; esp: a Buddhist mound forming a memorial shrine of the Buddha.
I am also a member of that group of faculty members who have become accustomed to being able to access just about any chunk of information I need without leaving my keyboard. I fired up Netscape -- not the Communicator 4.01 which sometimes crashes my system, but old reliable Navigator Gold 3.01. It informed me that the Oxford English Dictionary on-line was still under development. So I clicked my way over to the library and accessed the Encyclopaedia Britannica OnLine. It presented me with the following:
Stupa Buddhist commemorative monument usually housing sacred relics associated with the Buddha or other saintly persons; it is an architectural symbol of the Buddha's parinirvana, or death. The hemispherical form of the stupa appears to have derived from pre-Buddhist burial mounds in India. As most characteristically seen at Sanchi (q.v.) in the Great Stupa (2nd-1st century BC), the monument consists of a circular base supporting a massive solid dome (the anda, "egg," or garbha, "womb") from which projects an umbrella (chatra). The whole of the Great Stupa is encircled by a railing and four gateways, which are richly decorated with relief sculpture depicting Jataka tales, events in the life of the Buddha, and popular mythological figures.
Buddhist commemorative monument usually housing sacred relics associated with the Buddha or other saintly persons; it is an architectural symbol of the Buddha's parinirvana, or death. The hemispherical form of the stupa appears to have derived from pre-Buddhist burial mounds in India. As most characteristically seen at Sanchi (q.v.) in the Great Stupa (2nd-1st century BC), the monument consists of a circular base supporting a massive solid dome (the anda, "egg," or garbha, "womb") from which projects an umbrella (chatra). The whole of the Great Stupa is encircled by a railing and four gateways, which are richly decorated with relief sculpture depicting Jataka tales, events in the life of the Buddha, and popular mythological figures.
The Indian conception of the stupa spread throughout the Buddhist world and evolved into such different-looking monuments as the bell-shaped dagaba ("heart of garbha") of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the terraced temple of Borobudur in Java, the Lamaist variations in Tibet, and the multistoried pagodas of China, Korea, and Japan. The basic symbolism, in which the central relic is identified with the sacred person or concept commemorated and also with the building itself, is retained. Worship of a stupa consists in walking around the monument in the direction taken by the path of the sun (pradaksina). Even when the stupa is sheltered by a building, it is always a free-standing monument.
Buddhist stupas were originally built to house the earthly remains of the historical Buddha and his associates and are almost invariably found at sites sacred to Buddhism. The concept of a relic was afterward extended to include sacred texts. Miniature stupas and pagodas are also used by Buddhists throughout Asia as votive offerings. Stupas were also built by adherents of Jainism to commemorate their saints.
Copyright (c) 1997 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reserved
But that was several weeks ago. I'm feeling a little better about having said yes today. And I am feeling better, strangely enough, because of a very sad event. Today, for this paragraph, is July 8th, 1997, and they are burying Charles Kuralt down the road in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Even before I adopted his home state, I had come to believe that Charles Kuralt was one of the most profoundly sane and insightful people I had ever had the pleasure of watching and listening to. All that, and a damn fine writer to boot. So what does that have to do with "The American Communication Journal: Stupa."? Actually, a great deal. Thinking about the life and works of Charles Kuralt finally defined for me what "stupa-ness" we need to seek for The American Communication Journal. That isn't really very surprising given that Mr. Kuralt was a consummate communicator.
This is how it spins out:
My dictionary hunt leaves me with a broad definition of "stupa" as a sacred space which draws at least part of its sacred nature from the relics it contains. A sacred space, to me, is one in which we come to understand a little more clearly what is important in our existence and how we can behave in ways which maximize the positive aspects of human potential while blunting our seemingly all too human inclination to behave in ways which are contrary to our own -- individual and collective -- best interests.
In his writings and television work -- primarily in "On the Road" and "Sunday Morning" Charles Kuralt lovingly constructed a stupa. His works fashion a sacred space filled with relics in the form of stories, stories that help us to -- as I posit above "understand a little more clearly what is important in our existence and how we can behave in ways which maximize the positive aspects of human potential while blunting our seemingly all too human inclination to behave in ways which are contrary to our own -- individual and collective -- best interests."
We could do far worse than accepting some of the essential characteristics of the "Kuralt consciousness" as the guidelines for lending the quality of a stupa to our new journal. Here are some of the characteristics I see as essential to the Stupa a la Kuralt:
Be Immune To Puffery
Like stupa we had best approach this admonition with some definitions. Just what is puffery? I've always felt it had a Dickensesque quality to it so I initially went to the University of Chicago's on-line version of Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Edition [http:// humanities.uchicago.edu /forms_unrest/webster.form.html]. There I found this:
Puff"ery (?), n. The act of puffing; bestowment of extravagant commendation.
Puff"ery, n. Exaggerated commendation especially for promotional purposes : HYPE
That is not to say, I would hasten to add, that we should not attempt to wield our electronic sticks with the highest level of proficiency. We should. Part of our task is to model exemplary communication practices in a new medium or context. With computer-mediated communication there is an unprecedented level of danger that the bells and whistles of this new "printing press" will overwhelm the thoughts and insights of the poets, novelists, journalists, and just plain folks who may choose to use it. The Disney site is one such example. It uses just about every bell and whistle there is -- but never seems to get down to what Disney used to be so good at -- telling stories to children. I'll give you a link to the Disney site here, but be careful before you click; this site takes a long time to come down even with the best of connections and lots of RAM.
Distrust Flattery
One of the primary reasons it is hard to execute mandate number one is that so many people are telling us we are wonderful, relevant, insightful, and important. That is wonderful music to the ears of people who have spent decades hearing -- "Oh, you guys teach speech, right?" or "Communication -- just what do you do there?" Puffery is the result of our internal conviction that this new communication medium is wonderful beyond belief, and that we are its guardians. Flattery is the same words coming out of the mouths of others. Both will distract us from doing our job as best we can. Our last four points address how we should build this stupa new journal.
Treasure the Truth Found in Common Places
The introduction to Daniel Boorstin's book, The Image or What Happened to the American Dream [Atheneum, 1961] is called "Extravagant Expectations." It begins:
In this book I describe the world of our making, how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life. I recount historical forces which have given us this unprecedented opportunity to deceive ourselves and befog our experience. Of course, America has provided the landscape and has given us the resources and the opportunity for this feat of national self-hypnosis. But each of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience. We want and we believe these illusions because we suffer from extravagant expectations. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are extravagant in the precise dictionary sense of the word -- "going beyond the limits of reason or moderation." They are excessive. (p. 3.)
Of course, America has provided the landscape and has given us the resources and the opportunity for this feat of national self-hypnosis. But each of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience.
We want and we believe these illusions because we suffer from extravagant expectations. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are extravagant in the precise dictionary sense of the word -- "going beyond the limits of reason or moderation." They are excessive. (p. 3.)
I remember it like this: As the network faded in from commercial the image of a newscaster standing on a Mars-like landscape appeared on the screen. I do not recall the newscasters name.
"I'm So and So from CNN. I'm standing here on the surface of Mars awaiting the arrival of Pathfinder." He then chuckled and pointed out that he was, in actuality, standing in a test site for the Mars rover, Sojourner. "But we've come to expect reporters everywhere haven't we?" he asked his colleague back at the anchor desk.
"Yes, we have," she affirmed smoothly segueing into the next story.
Kuralt's view of the world was quite the opposite. Rather than seeing reporters literally standing astride the heavens, he encouraged us to look for the amazing in the mundane. He was no Luddite, and would certainly share our amazement in the doings at the Red Planet. But he was more attuned to the magic of human ingenuity revealed not in Mars rovers, but in everyday ingenuity. In the way in which, for example, Grover "Nub" Hayes of Cherokee, Alabama, contrived to get his mail to the house from his rural mailbox perched down a steep incline and across the street. But get it to the house without ever leaving the comfort of his own front porch. It involved towers, pulleys and the crank from a '47 Chevy.
Kuralt revealed human stamina and perseverance not by charting the path of a spacecraft 120 million miles across the solar system; but rather by examining a road built by Gordon Bushnell, a retired diary farmer in Minnesota. Seems that Mr. Bushnell didn't want to just shoot pool and watch the tube during his retirement; so he decided to build a straight road between Duluth and Fargo. Mr. Bushnell got a pain in his side soon after he retired and his doctor told him he'd have to have his gall bladder out. The good farmer decided to begin his road right away , so he could take time off for the surgery. He did the work himself, with an old John Deere tractor, a wheelbarrow, a #2 shovel, and limitless optimism. Mr. Kuralt was impressed with the 9 miles of road Mr. Bushnell built in the first twenty years of his retirement. But Kuralt was even more impressed by the goodwill and determination those miles represented. And no, Mr. Bushnell never did get around to having that gall bladder taken out. "Seems the more I worked, the better I felt," he told Kuralt.
As we set out to create "a completely on-line, blind-reviewed publication, dedicated to the conscientious analysis and criticism of significant communicative artifacts." [http://www.americancomm.org/~aca/acj/acj.html] let us not lose sight of the fact that many of these significant artifacts can drop out of sight amidst the puffery and flattery we have already railed against. For example, today [July 10, 1997] many of the on-line news services I subscribe to are all a buzz about 1) Vic Amelio being ousted as the head of Apple computers, and, 2) Microsoft shifting its on-line strategy away from a television-like model back to a more web-dominated, free access model.
These two announcements will undoubtedly impact the stock market, and will perhaps effect the rise and fall of a handful of startup companies that are banking on one strategy or the other becoming dominant. But they are not significant communication artifacts that warrant a place in our stupa. There may be some stump or stoop issues there, but not stupa ones. Far more "stupaesque" would be an examination of how people are using email and web sites to meet the needs of children. Or perhaps examining the ways in which web pages that contained GIS data were being utilized around the world to maximize the impact of, and minimize the overuse of, fertilizers and insecticides. An examination of how CMC can put seniors in touch with each other and with their families -- there's a stupa kind of issue. Those stories might have made it "On the Road."
Look for Truth in Small Packages
One of my favorite "On the Road" pieces was about a coffee shop -- pre-Starbucks -- located in Bob Arell's drug store in Arcola, Illinois. All the regulars had their own coffee mugs in a rack of pigeon holes on the wall behind the counter. They would come in and Bob Arell would reach up and pull out their mug, and pour them a cup of coffee. And you could always tell whose mug was whose because Mr. Arell had painted an identifying icon on the side of the mug. A regular whose nickname was Blackie had a black key painted on his mug.
They were small things -- those coffee mugs. Far smaller than my Bruegger's Java Travel mug. But they bore mute testimony to some essential truths about our culture. You had to drink 100 cups of coffee before you got one with your name on it; that speaks to issues of constancy and permanence. So do the facts that these were real coffee mugs -- not Styrofoam or plastic. And they were unique -- each little hand-painted symbol stood for that one person whose cup it was. There were no corporate logos swooshing across these cups, no movie characters, no pictures of race car drivers or rock stars. Just books for a teacher, a tractor for the farm equipment dealer, and a black key. Finally, they reflected the reality of the community as well. When you died or moved away -- they took down your cup. Life, in the real world, moves on.
Just little things, those cups -- but certainly relics that help us "to understand a little more clearly what is important in our existence. . ."
The communication artifacts of the 21st century will be overwhelming in their complexity and in their sheer numbers. One of the stupa functions of the American Communication Journal should be to ferret out and preserve those coffee cups in cyberspace. Those cybercups will be more ephemeral, more illusive than the cups in in Bob Arell's drug store. A collection of cyberhaikus may live for centuries in a database somewhere. But finding it will make the uncovering of Emily Dickinson's hidden works seem like child's play. Personal homepages may reflect a fascinating self-portrait of a culture. But it is an always shifting, multi-faceted, million-faceted mosaic. How do we put those coffee cups in a pigeon hole? There's another stupa task if I ever saw one.
Look for Truth in Beauty
That's one of those phrases that you worry about even as you type it. It frightens me because I am aware of the ways in which our society has come to substitute that which is currently deemed beautiful for something of enduring truth. As the father of two daughters I am terribly bothered by the currently vogue images of anorexic young people who dabble in heroin. Much of avante garde culture defines this as beauty, but there is precious little truth to be found in that visual assertion.
There are some problematic similarities regarding the assertion of beauty in the world of on-line communication. Beauty is a concept in flux -- some of the most visually appealing sites offer the least in terms of serving the needs of the user. Like the painted carnival wagons that traveled the backroads of America in the latter half of the 19th century selling Uncle Artemis' Amazing Healing Elixir, many of today's slick sites are merely interactive eye-candy which seek to separate us from our cybercash.
Here again Mr. Kuralt comes to our aid. He directed our attention to two types of beauty. The first was aesthetic, artistic, a shareable expression of the soul. But somehow it was still beauty of the common experience, accessible to us all; more Andrew Wyeth than Rembrandt, more Shaker than Chippendale, more Georgia O'Keeffe than Thomas Cole.
Someone else did the Taj Mahal, Charles chose the towers that Simon Rodia built in Watts between 1921 and 1954. Someone else did the Faberge eggs, Kuralt did puffin eggs, snuggling in a nest off the coast of Maine.
The second type of beauty was a pragmatic kind of beauty, where form and function were closely allied. We would follow the construction of a cello, not simply to appreciate the fastidious selection of the wood, the intricate carving and meticulous construction; but more importantly to marvel at the music that arose from the instrument in the hands of a master musician. The beauty in this instance arises from a partnership of artists -- instrument maker, composer, performer.
But there is no snobbery in the "Kuraltian" concept of beauty. He would find as much joy in the cutting of ice blocks and the making of ice cream in a New England village as he would in a cello maker, composer and performer. Kuralt showed us the beauty in a thing well-made to serve the genuine needs of both artists and the common people.
These types of beauty need to be reflected in our stupa. The task is not easy since the world of new communication technology which forms our vehicle is entranced with faster, slicker, smoother, cooler. As we move into the cutting edge of communication technology and the dissemination of scholarship, the calculated use of appropriate armor in our search for truth in beauty may avoid the need for copious bandages that often accompanies life on the cutting/bleeding edge.
The notion of form following function serves as excellent chain mail in this endeavor. As we seek to model the best use of our 21st century sticks and tablets we will continually need to ask does this attribute -- link, graphic, video, sound -- make the message better, deeper, richer -- more valuable to the user? We must also ask does this attribute make the experience of encountering the message more interesting, involving, memorable? These are not really new compositional and editorial concerns, but they now take place in a far more complex environment.
Demand that "Good" Results From What You Do
This is after all a piece concerned with a stupa, a sacred space. The construction of a sacred space has rarely been the province of value-free social scientists. In a stupa you need to say "Here is what is sacred, this is what should be. Here is how I make the world a better place." But as always -- to stay on the sacred theme -- the devil is in the details.
I was going to steal a line from the Hippocratic oath and say "First, do no harm." But I surfed around a bit and discovered that the accurate quote would be "Abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous."
Internet Wiretap Edition of OATH AND LAW OF HIPPOCRATES [http://jcbmac.chem.brown.edu/baird/Chem22I/humanrights/HippocraticOath.html]From "Harvard Classics Volume 38" Copyright 1910 by P.F. Collier and Son.
Let's say for example that I am writing a traditional article on the use of the internet by hate groups and terrorists. A paper journal provides a variety of de facto barriers which inhibit the use of my study in pursuit of "deleterious and mischievous" ends. First, the distribution of most academic journals numbers in the thousands -- if that. So there simply are not many copies around to fall into the wrong hands. Second, not many people read those few copies of academic journals that are available. Third, even should a potential terrorist want to access the information hidden in these few copies of an academic journal, a considerable degree of time and effort would be necessary to access the material in a paper world. First, s/he would have to know the title of the article "Aggressive Behaviors of Antisocial Individuals in the Emerging Context of the HyperCyber Community." Second, s/he would have to realize that the title was talking about terrorism. Third, well, you get the idea.
An article in an on-line journal that can be accessed by contemporary and emerging search engines presents a whole different kind of reality. First, -- unless we are talking about a "password protected by subscription only" scenario -- the potential audience is immediately in the millions. In the password protected world that huge audience is still only a "View Source - Copy - Paste - Post" sequence away. So the work becomes available.
Not only is the work available, it is findable. The work itself will use the words that refer to those hate groups and their activities. Hence when a user searches for the "terrorist+internet" the article will pop up. It is the same kind of dynamics that occurred when child protection web software first came out. If you did a net search on the name of one of those software packages you were served up a page full of links to all the adult sites that -- in order to avoid prosecution under the now-defunct Communication Decency Act -- advised users to install that software on their computers!
Finally, if the research is being done correctly, the finished piece will contain active links to the sites of the groups being studied. Hence my article becomes a valuable tool for the very groups whose activities offend me.
For myself, as an individual scholar, this has never been a problem. I have most often chosen to examine what is good about the media -- seemed to be plenty of folks willing to focus on the bad side. But Pollyanna can't be the foundation of editorial policy.
Can the ACJ reject works because of the problems I have outlined above? Not while remaining a serious source of scholarly research. A greater danger lies in failing to examine the dark side of the web. I believe that it is in the ignoring of those issues that we become co-conspirators, passive enablers.
But balance is a moral issue. The homicide rate is plummeting everywhere in America except on television. There, on the news and in the dramas, people continue to drop like flies. Broadcasters have long since abandoned both morality and journalistic ethics in the pursuit of ratings. We can certainly learn from their bad example.
In the ACJ as stupa, we must acknowledge that good can come from examining the bad; but we must further realize that good grows more swiftly from championing the good. Hence , as stupa builders, we should encourage the exploration of those uses of this new communication environment which assist us in making our world wiser, safer, more beautiful, and more enjoyable.
I think Charles would like that.