I guess I’m going to make this a weekly thing, too: blogging NYT’s "Modern Love" column. 

     Today’s piece, by Sandra Burton, is great.  It is about how technology mediates relationships.   As I started to read it, I felt rather out of it – I am not an inveterate cell phoner and I do not text message – but, then, about half way through, she brought it around to a point I could understand: "I would actually have to learn about him the old-fashioned way, in person."  Yes, I thought smugly, new communications technology does not really change the basis dynamics of creating and sustaining relationships.  But the story changed once more, suggesting that, in fact, technology can play an important part in how we meet and learn about each other.  I was wrong in my first impression of the article (just as she had been with the jerk she had met in the bar), and that makes for a good story.

    But how can I possibly work ancient Chinese philosophy into this?  Just watch…

     I can say with some confidence that "text message" does not appear in any of the classical Chinese texts.  But we can find some hints in how the ancients might deal with modern communications if we look at how they understand language more generally.  Two weeks ago, we saw that a Confucian view of language would deflate the meaning of endearments.  Today, Chuang Tzu might be more relevant.

    If we think of text messaging as a dialect with its own linguistic conventions [ 😉 ], then Chuang Tzu’s approach to language might add something to Burton’s story.   Think about this passage:

The spoken isn’t just bits of wind.  In the spoken, something is spoken.  But what it is never stays fixed and constant.  So is something spoken, or has nothing ever been spoken?  People think we’re different from baby birds cheeping, but are we ever saying any more than they are?

     Now change the first two uses of the term "spoken" to "text message," and we get: "The text message isn’t just bits of wind. In the text message something is spoken."

     Of course, the passage reveals Chuang Tzu’s – and the general Taoist – skepticism about our ability to express ourselves in language.  Words are inadequate to truly reflect who we are and what we are feeling.  Yet, however imperfect language – or text messaging – might be, something is said.  Perhaps it is something that can only be understood in the immediate context; its meaning may seem different if we pulled up a message five years from now.  But something is communicated. 

    And what is communicated has something to do with our natural selves.  Even if we try to use the most eloquent words, our speech does not accomplish much more than "baby birds cheeping."  Just as birds use chirping and singing to convey immediate sensory experiences and sensible needs, our speech does just about the same. 

     So, Burton was right to be suspicious when one of his messages seemed to change tone, from happy banter to self-serving defensiveness.  However vague the message – it is easy to misread inflection in the flatness of electronic writing – something was being "spoken." 

    Chuang Tzu would have liked the fact that she called upon her intuition and instincts to get a sense of the moment.  And, I think, he would have applauded her thought to see the fellow in person again to discover if she was misreading him, or if his cheeping really was revealing something more fundamental about his personality. 

     And it worked!  It turned out that the text message was a window into his soul, and her foreboding that he was a risk was right. 

    Any great moral here?  Not really.  Just that our words, whether on paper or on screen, may mean less than we intend and more than we desire.