Animals That Dance
“They dance?”
My seven-year-old daughter began to digest the meaning of what her Abba just said.
“Really, the bees actually dance. That’s how they tell each other where the food’s at.”
She looked on curiously.
“Come, I’ll show you,” I beckoned, pulling up the requisite YouTube clip. “The waggle dance. It’s one of the most advanced forms of communication in the animal kingdom.”
This sweet moment of quarantine parenting allowed me to reflect on one of the genuine wonders of creation. Bees communicate the distance and direction of nectar through an elaborate dance ritual. Pretty impressive.
But nothing in comparison to the complexity found within another system of interspecies communication. Nothing in comparison whatsoever.
A Novel Complexity
Humans are unique among all other phenomena in the known universe. While the precise point of departure from all other living species is the subject of immense philosophical debate, one thing is clear:
We are big time schmoozers.
Anthropologists peg the inception of language as the most transformative technology shaping the trajectory of our species. Speech allowed humans to co-operate. It enabled them to co-ordinate action across both distance and time. This synergistic fusion of collective labour yielded seemingly magical results. Cities, agriculture and technology – all brought about by the novel introduction of language as a means of transferring information between the species.
This is all well and obvious to those equipped with a Torah lens of the world. As we know from Genesis, speech is the very creative act through which the universe was conceived. God speaks the world into being, animating physical reality and its incumbent material essence through the ethereal power of the word.
“And God said let there be light.” And just like that, “there was light”.
“And God said it is good.” With this utterance, moral fabric is thus woven into the atmospheric substrate of planet Earth.
The capacity of humans to communicate through speech hearkens to our very purpose as humans, properly defined as those created in Btzelem Elokim – in the image of God.
When our faculty of speech is healthy, we live up to our potential as nearly God-like autonomous moral agents, engendering system-wide improvements for all lifeforms inhabiting the universe.
When our faculty of speech is weak, we inevitably fall short in our mission as beacons of progress. The light we are to shine onto the nations of the world is cast dim.
The Kabbalah speaks of these two levels of relationship as a “face-to-face” vis-a-vis “back-to-back” connection.
Mount Sinai is the quintessential face-to-face experience. Pharaoh – the etymological correspondent of the back of the neck (Oreph), is the archetypal motif of disconnection.
So, let’s be frank. How dim has it gotten?
Tower of Techno-Babble
When a young entrepreneur named Jack Dorsey typed out the words: “just setting up my twttr” in 2006, he could not have possibly understood the significance this short phrase would hold in the annals of human history (recently minted into the blockchain as an ‘NFT’, this first of all tweets recently sold for a $2.9 million). Dorsey’s new micro-blogging platform Twitter would forever transform the way our species communicates with each other.
Twitter can list myriad virtues in its mere decade-and-a-half of existence. The litany includes spurning revolutions against egregious despots, knighting a new cadre of citizen journalists, and countless campaigns to hold individuals and businesses accountable for reprehensible actions. So far, so good.
Yet Twitter simultaneously left a noxious stream of societal debasement in its wake. The primary mode of public expression for millions would hereby be confined to 180 characters (later raised to 240). This hyper-short form of communication is suited for cheap shots. Less so for intelligent discourse.
Even more destructive has been the backhanded dynamic of lateral communication. Imagine two people stake out divergent opinions on a given social topic (hey, it could happen). Instead of engaging in a productive dialogue, they now merely talk the proverbial smack by simply “re-tweeting” each other’s statements with requisite snark and circumstance. The non-parity of discourse provides great fodder for the ideological echo chambers represented by each parties’ followers. Again, less so for intelligent discourse.
Twitter’s woes are paralleled in similar issues native to competing media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Authenticity, nuance, vulnerability, shame and that most important reflexive aspect of speech – listening – are not rewarded on social media. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
The more polarising the rhetoric, the more engagement it gets. The “omniscient” algorithm takes note, serving the post to more and more people. Our neural circuitry floods the synaptic cleft with dopamine (our ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter) with each ensuing like, view or share. And thus we have established a biotechnologically reinforced behavioural feedback loop. Toxic speech has gone nuclear.
Free Speech Now
At the outset of our once-in-a-century global pandemic, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs stealthily launched a beta-version of their new app called Clubhouse. Billed as a “drop-in audio” social network, voice-only chat rooms would counter the prevailing weltanschauung of social media. Clubhouse would be hyper-focused on one singular functionality – facilitating live conversation. No posts, no messages, memes, pokes, likes, stories. Just unbridled speech.
| TERM | DEFINITION |
| Club | An interest group that hosts various rooms |
| Room |
A virtual space where conversations take place |
| Hallway | The scrolling, newsfeed-like list of live rooms |
| Moderator badge | Little “green bean” signifying permissions to call up audience members to the stage |
| Stage |
The section of the room hosting pre-approved speakers |
| Audience |
The section of the room for passive listeners |
| Hand raising |
Click this button to signal to the moderators that you would like to join the stage |
| PTR |
“Pull to refresh” – someone has changed their profile picture and wants to you see the update |
| Dropping gems | Clubhouse lingo for delivering a powerful idea to a room |
And here’s the kicker. This speech would leave no trace. No recording, reposting or rehashing of any kind. This experience would be served live.
The app quickly became the go-to place for an A-list of cultural beacons. Venture capitalists, hip-hop artists and actors flocked to the app. The app’s founders wisely deployed an ‘invite only’ rollout strategy. This cultivated a palpably high degree of social capital on the platform; quality people, quality conversation, buttressed by an air of exclusivity. To this day, you can still only join the app after receiving an invite from an existing user.
Clubhouse is by no means perfect. It has suffered from the same misogyny, racism and antisemitism that has plagued the rest of the internet. Yet it clearly has offered its users a fresh experience in its decidedly contrarian approach to conventional social media. In staying resolute in its singular commitment to quality conversation, it has quenched a latent thirst for all of us entering the second decade of the 21st century: to meaningfully connect with fellow humans.
Timeline
| March 2020 | Launch into iOS store |
| April 2020 | 1 500 beta users |
| May 2020 | 100 million valuation from A16Z |
| June 2020 | Celebrities MC Hammer, Tiffany Haddish and Oprah join Clubhouse |
| September 2020 | Yom Kippur antisemitism incident |
| October 2020 | 10 000 new downloads |
| November 2020 | 25 000 total users |
| December 2020 | 600 000 users, Lion King |
| January 2021 | Valuation at $1 billion |
| February 2021 | Elon Musk breaks Clubhouse, China bans Clubhouse |
| March 2021 | 13 000 000 users |
| April 2021 | Valuation rumored at $4 billion |
The Art of the Connection
The internet was long overdue for a change of pace. Clubhouse seized on this and built a killer product to make meaningful human connection easy and fun. Below are four characteristics of the platform that facilitate this lost art of human connection:
1. Accessibility
One of the astounding things about Clubhouse is how decidedly low-tech it is. While Facebook was busy creating interactive virtual worlds with its ill-fated Oculus VR-enabled Spaces, the Clubhouse founders deftly deployed a technology that has been around for decades. We’re essentially talking about a glorified conference call.
Yet this low-tech approach carries several advantages. For one, it reduces the barrier to entry. Compare joining a Clubhouse room to a platform like Zoom. Each Zoom call requires a harrowing checklist preparation. Is my background respectable? My lighting ample? My clothing exceeding the level of pyjama? By removing video from the equation, people are much more apt to jump aboard into a conversation.
2. Authenticity
Audio can’t be faked or manipulated. While celebrities pay assistants to run their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, they can’t do that with Clubhouse. Each person’s voice carries a unique identity print. It is a platform for real people expressing their real opinions. The conversations are decidedly unscripted.
Moreover, the air of serendipity creates a dynamic of mystery and intrigue. No one knows which way the conversation is going to go. Or if it is going to get tense. Or taken over by unsavoury actors (though the app has a zero-tolerance policy for harassment, this behaviour does still take place in real-time). Each and every experience on the app produces a novel and genuine encounter.
3. Intimacy
Audio is a field of perception that elapses through time. As such, our brains are able to forge a much richer connection with the source of the sound. We perceive texture in voice. Our minds detect micro-expressions of excitement, hesitation, confidence and confusion.
Live long-form audio enables us to receive the information with far greater fidelity. Written articles, premeditated text messages and filter-heavy selfies don’t provide us with a running contextual data the way speech does. We are let into a deeper level of expression. This is coupled with the fact that, unlike television (be it web or cable), people tend to consume audio content with their headphones on. Though subtle, headphones provide an added air of intimacy in conversation (think about your experience with podcasts).
4. Interactivity
What takes Clubhouse to a level even beyond podcasts is the ability to participate in a conversation. You might join a room featuring a bevy of domain experts in, say, US-China relations (as I did a few months ago). The celebrated dissident artist AI Wei Wei, Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin, and podcast host Saagar Enjeti were among the participants in the conversation. Clubhouse allows you not to just glean from the experts, but to interact with them. Simply press the “raise hand” button and you can be part of the conversation.
This dynamic unlocks a world of possibilities. You may gain insight into a long-held question. Alternatively, your question might trigger a divergence of opinion between titans on stage, leading to an hour of rich conversation. Your insight may even position you as a burgeoning thought leader, gain you hundreds of followers and invitations to moderate the next discussion.
Trending Towards Reality
The rise of Clubhouse represents a hopeful trend in what has been a rough patch for social media. The early optimism that accompanied these tech platforms in their early days had all but been washed away in the last half of the 2010s. Social media was just not paying the dividends that we initially bargained for. Or at least the risks were higher. Electoral meddling, the decay of well-being and the corporate abuses of big data have all been chronicled as repeated unintended side-effects.
Clearly, humans were aspiring to something greater with their technology. Clubhouse is the restoration of a modicum of dignified dialogue. The return to long-form conversation is a rejection of callous memes. It is the repudiation of 6.5-minute staged-for-TV debates between talking head pundits. It’s a reminder that 30-second “stories” don’t satisfy our thirst for a genuine connection with reality.
The rise of Clubhouse is but one palpable outcome born of a collective societal yearning emerging in the subconscious mind of millions of people across the globe.
So much of our recent experience with social media has been “back-to-back”, just the way Pharaoh would have wanted it.
When the Jewish people received the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Creator of the world set the standard for what meaningful experience could be: direct, face-to-face connection.
All the plagues of Egypt, miracles at the sea and kindness in the desert were not sufficient. We needed the axial experience at Sinai to forge a direct, personal connection with the source of all life.
The postmodern cacophony of socially mediated “living” threatens to undermine our connection to what is real. Backhanded social media insults debase our dignity as species intelligent interlocutors capable of near-divine greatness. Incessant editing, filtering, cropping and cutting encourage us to mask our true selves. We run the existential risk of settling for less; settling for bondage under a cold and disconnected Pharaoh.
The arrival of Clubhouse on the scene should give us hope for humanity. Moreover, it can serve as a message for us to recalibrate our relationship to Judaism.
Meaningful Jewish Connection
Clubhouse delivered much-needed human connection to millions through providing an accessible, authentic, intimate and interactive experience.
How often does our own Jewish practice fail to clear the bar on these axes?
This Shavuot, let’s take a message from Clubhouse’s playbook.
Let’s make our Jewish experience accessible.
If we feel blocked in a certain avenue, let’s be creative and see how we can get our foot in the door. “The Torah’s ways are those of tranquillity, its pathways are of peace.”
Let’s make our Jewish experience authentic.
How can we remove the feeling of rote habit from our precious rituals? How can we toss aside the feelings of stale stagnation and reinvigorate our Judaism? As it says: “God desires the heart.”
Let’s make our Jewish experience intimate.
We see from Mount Sinai that God desires a personalised, private connection with each of us as individuals. We all experienced God first-hand. How can we cultivate this intimate connection with the Divine, using the socio-genetic toolkit we have each been uniquely given?
Let’s make our Jewish experience interactive.
Judaism does not expect every person to enter the rabbinate. Yet Judaism does not expect any of its adherents to be passive spectators either! Jews have always been a highly literate people, because God desires us to be his partners in creating a better world.
Let’s remember this Shavuot as the year that we stopped holding back. This is the year when we raise our hands and prepare to come up to the stage.
