Laura Boleyn- Connection to Comm.

Martin Buber’s I and Thou, does not only connect to our class, Wilderness as sacred place, but also to, as I found out, my communications class. As I was reading through the book, I found a side note that related the ideas of Martin Buber and his I-Thou, I-It to interpersonal communications and the relationships we have with the people in our lives on a personal and impersonal level.
In class, we learned Buber’s idea of reciprocity, where we are touching but we are also being touched by the surrounding environment; its animals as well as geographical features. When in a place, you are touching the environment and communicating with it but you are also being touched, spiritually or otherwise, by the location. In communications class we learned I-Thou relationships where two completely different people are interacting and not only are they different but they are also changing moment to moment. The I-Thou relationship focuses on the moment and how we are in the present, not on how we were in the past. For communications, the I-It relationships can be personal or impersonal and focus on people as objects, as what they can do for us. This relationship is stable and detached, and also predictable. For example, getting someone to love you or getting someone to pump gas for you.
This lesson on interpersonal communication also suggests the importance of both I-It and I-Thou relationships. You cannot have one without the other. Buber states that humans cannot exist without I-It relationships and if we exist only on I-It relationships, then we are not fully human. The lesson of this side passage in relation to Martin Buber was to consider our most important relationships and ask the questions, “To what degree can they be described as ‘I-Thou’ or ‘I-It’, How satisfied are you with this level of relating, and What obligation do you have to treat others in an I-Thou manner?” The book challenges us to analyze our communication styles and change them based on our answers. Through the ideas of Martin Buber, we are asked to question how well we communicate interpersonally and how healthy our relationships are.