FROM INTER-NET TO ENTER-NET

Thich Nhat Hanh coined the word “interbeing” to describe the necessarily relational aspects of being human. While I was away in Mexico to learn Spanish, “Enterbeing” was coined by our leader team and the name has stuck. People often ask about it. While similar to “interbeing”, and clearly a close cousin, “enterbeing” leans more toward the external, public, and equally necessary, relational aspects of being human, while “interbeing” leans more toward the personal, inner dimensions of relationality. I believe both are spiritual.

Today I am pondering what it might be like to have an “enternet” parallel to the “internet”. In cyber space time and place are no longer limiting factors. One can post a thought from India at 2:00 am, or from Australia at high noon. It may take weeks for responses to any of these posts depending on the receivers on line habits. While this may be an advantage in some ways, it is not the complete picture. What would it mean to move from cyber space to common ground, where time and space is here and now? What would it mean to move from emails on line to face to face conversations? From chat rooms to living rooms? From words of a screen to faces, gestures and virtuous presence? From private any time communications to public, real time discourse?

While I am not wanting to criticize the value of internet, I am proposing that it needs a complementary enternet—a space, a network, a system for virtual reality to move to virtuous relationship. The inter needs an enter. The yin a yang. And do not the chat rooms, bulletin boards, dating services and websites of viritual reality cry out for face to face encounter, real presence, common ground?

Virtual reality belies its name. It is almost real. One step behind, or ahead. A friend recently told me about his nephew who is in the army in Iraq. He was able to communicate with him by email, and though the nephew was not able to respond to every email he received, my friend was able to post the latest news, tell him what was happening and convey his concerns and blessings through this miraculous technology called internet. My friend went on to describe his nephew’s duties in the army . He is a missile guidance technician. He stays well out of the war zone in a protected bunker from which he guides the missiles launched by the helicopters tens or hundreds of miles away toward their targets all on a computer screen. When I heard this, I exclaimed, “It’s like a video game!” My friend looked at me, sharing some of my surprise and bewilderment, and said, “That’s exactly the way he describes it.”

What a collision of virtual reality and face to face when death-dealing missiles are targeted from video game operators whose only contact with the blood and dust and cries of war is a “target killed” on a video screen, followed perhaps by a confirmation from the helicopter communications system? How could any values other than efficiency be transmitted via this system? Is there a “mercy key” next to the “kill key”? Is there an option to not fire until you see the whites of their eyes—and then to decide not to fire at all? I’m not sure it is such a good thing to be able to kill on screen without facing its reality on the ground—though isn’t this the direction our technology has taken us since the invention of the bow and arrow? (Let alone the ethics of killing at all!)

And what of the polar opposite extreme? How can one make love virtually? Words are not enough. The best poetry pales to the aroma of wine and roses as two sit eye to eye, cheek to cheek—need I go further? Imagine cyber love, virtual relationship, love rooms on line—it gets ridiculous immediately, not that words on a screen or virtual valentines can’t be part of a healthy relationship—it is just unimaginable for me without here and now, face to face.
So how do folks move from internet to enternet, from virtual reality to real presence, from private communications to public discourse—and interestingly enough, can the internet be a vehicle for this movement?

For five or six years now I have been engaging in an intentional practice of meeting people which we in organizing now call relational meetings, though they were called individual meetings or one-to-ones before. The purpose is not to sell anything or to recruit for any cause, but to enter into the life of another in order to better understand and relate to ourselves, others and God. This is so countercultural, so out of mainstream that it may seem part of virtual reality! However, in meeting one to one there exists great potential for spiritual and social transformation and connection. Interbeing moves toward enterbeing as atomic selves connect to make molecules of new energies and potentials, some lasting only moments, others connecting and reconnecting in mystical reactions until great chains of life come into being.

Recently I have come to use the internet to make appointments for meetings. It is quick and easy. I can post several times and dates, and wait for a response. I have also come to value the internet to reflect and share those reflections with others. I look forward to the bulletin board we are building for enterbeing.org. Even this blog is chance to reflect and hear back. So I am not dissing the internet—however, I am arguing that it needs to serve the real, living, face to face relationships which are in jeopardy of being killed on the screen.

P Moe
March 14, 2005