Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Two Cheers for Facebook
I just read an insightful and sometimes touching essay on the positive uses of Facebook in building relationships – particularly long-standing relationships - by Ellen Painter Dollar at the Episcopal Cafe. It is an essay that pointed me to uses of Facebook instead of simply being a passive presence. Dollar, however, recognizes the negative possibilities as well: “Allowing Facebook to be a tool for relationship-building instead of a distraction requires humility, self-discernment, and discretion—qualities that are fostered by spiritual disciplines, honest relationships, self-examination, and confession, not by spending hours in online conversations consisting solely of clever one-liners. . . . As with most human inventions, Facebook can foster intimacy or alienation, compassion or cruelty, substance or stupidity. The challenge is to use it for the former and avoid the temptation to participate in the latter. Facebook is no more to blame for Tyler Clementi’s suicide than the GW Bridge is. But we still have a responsibility to foster online communities marked by respect and appropriate boundaries, to use Facebook and other online tools as instruments of the light and not the dark.”
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/11/two-cheers-for-facebook.html
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One of the great delusions of modern times is the flood of fantasy in our world. Film, television, and radio have been with us for a long time. Now video games have broken through Marshall McLuhan's "Cool" medium, followed by the Internet.
We increasingly live is a world of fantasy. It is a world without real referents. I say I'm Joel Gibbons, but maybe I'm really a flunky in the Chinese Ministry of Disinformation, contributing bits here in hopes of disrupting rational and meaningful discussion of law.
Mary Ellen swears she loves Bob, hoping -- the plot slyly hints -- he will be motivated to fix her car As the World Turns. Mary actually drives to the studio each moning in a brand new Bentley, and Bob can't even straighten his tie, which is why his costume consists of t-shirts and suspenders. We don't even expect to have anything actual out there. Fantasy is an end in itself. It isn't that for the first time human beings can lie to each other without remorse. It's just that for the first time, we don't even care. The text is an end in itself. Just keep talking; I hear you (and of course I feel your pain).
Reality hasn't gone away. It just make house calls any more. If Ms Dollar finds herself with too much free time, I would suggest that she volunteer at the nearest Birthright office.