{"id":16605,"date":"2018-10-24T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16605"},"modified":"2018-10-21T21:34:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T04:34:10","slug":"communication-error-clone-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/10\/24\/communication-error-clone-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Communication Error<\/em>: Clone city"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not long ago I spoke about the communication funnel we can experience when ruminating on past conversations, the funnel often used to lament or predict the future with spent words of our former self. But what if our former selves were alive, their words burning so fiercely that a fiery lake surrounds the present us? If we imagine a world populated by mirror versions of our past selves, then could we truly learn from them?<\/p>\n

I shall call this place Youtopia. Would being able to interact with the people of Youtopia help propel us into a better future, or would they all crowd us, holding us down to become one of them in a form of mob justice? Would they try to convert us to zombies of days past?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Communication Error<\/em> is a column in every issue of Nexus<\/em> looking at communication issues.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you find yourself on a raft resting on the lake of fire, looking at deceased yourselves by your feet, smoke rising and taking the shape of words that you just can\u2019t seem to let go of, should you jump in or face the fate of your raftmates? Well, can you swim through Hell and make it through to the other side?<\/p>\n

Our past doesn\u2019t have to drown us; in fact, it flows violently because the future is an even scarier fire-retardant desert. Looking at our inferno of past conversations, which we can go over again and again, what happens when we want to torch our past but fighting fire with fire doesn\u2019t work? We reach for the sky and jump\u2014jump until we\u2019re ready to fly away, praying that we can see through the smoke.<\/p>\n

There is some truth in experience\u2014in other words, learning to start fires and put them out quickly before you burn yourself\u2014to ultimately learn and better yourself. But how much value can we place on meeting the version of us from last spring, sitting them down for coffee, and asking them how they\u2019ve been? What they could clarify for us? Inhabiting Youtopia with members of yourself, your personal timeline of decisions and mistakes, triumphs and successes, tends to depreciate the value of being the present you, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

For example, what do you think the police-officer version of you would be like? Would they be the smart-mouth cop who gives you the business? Or perhaps would they let you run free, having been one of them after all?<\/p>\n

When it rains, it pours, but when the meteorologist predicts another hailstorm of fireballs and low visibility through clouds of ash from what you said last week, do you still want to live in this city of rumination, of past conversations\u2019 Heaven and, mostly, Hell? I asked earlier if you could swim through Hell and fire water, but how high can you jump?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not long ago I spoke about the communication funnel we can experience when ruminating on past conversations, the funnel often used to lament or predict the future with spent words of our former self. But what if our former selves were alive, their words burning so fiercely that a fiery lake surrounds the present us? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-october-24-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16606,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16605\/revisions\/16606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}