The Social Trap

While I certainly don't expect others to adopt "David's way" of living in this cultural soup that we find ourselves in, I do hope to be at least understood.  (I find that even this more modest hope is itself a nearly impossible task.)  And since I tend to make decisions slowly and after lots, and lots, and lots of puzzling over things, it often happens that my reasons for doing things can't be stated in a quick one-liner.  It often takes plenty of conversation to grasp the bolus of my thinking on a topic. (NOTE: I don't pretend to think that I have come to the "One Right Decision", but I have come to a conclusion, which leads to decisions, which then can also be tempered by additional thoughts and concerns of others.)


One of the primary reasons for this blog in particular is a hope that those that may read it (and my Dad in particular) will, by reading the things that I am reading, be able to have productive conversations because we are both speaking in the context of having read or heard the same things.


Thus, I have put a "Forum" page link on the top row of buttons, because ultimately I don't want this to be a monologue, but a dialogue, and the Forum is simply one way of doing that.  (I also occasionally send out hand-written letters as another form...and even (sharp-intake-of-breath) occasionally talk face-to-face with someone.


That being said.  One of my decisions has been to choose not to partake in the Facebook revolution.  I think that there is a potential for me to use it in a disordering way...not interacting with others in a way that is consistent with how I want to participate in the world.


And here are some thoughts that contribute to my general view of relationships.


(Feel free to argue.)


Alan Jacobs posts here on the topic of the nature of human interconnectedness:

"Andrew Keen:

"Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone. On Liberty, the 1859 essay by Bentham's godson and former acolyte, John Stuart Mill, remains a classic defence of individual rights in the age of the industrial network and its tyranny of the majority. Today, as we struggle to make sense of the impact of the internet revolution, we need an equivalent On Digital Liberty to protect the right to privacy in the social-media age. Tapscott and Williams believe that the age of networked intelligence will be equal to the Renaissance in its significance. But what if they are wrong? What if the digital revolution, because of its disregard for the right of individual privacy, becomes a new dark ages? And what if all that is left of individual privacy by the end of the 21st century exists in museums alongside Vermeer's Woman in Blue? Then what?"

But this is just replacing one untenable generalization with another. As everyone knows, surely, we want and need to be alone sometimes and to be with others sometimes. Mental and spiritual health is found in the proper balance of the two, which must be different for different people. Every the most solitary crave connection sometimes; even the most social need time alone to re-charge. It would be hard to deny that the internet has been a profoundly rich and healing place for many lonely people. The questions are, or should be: What is the right balance for me? and, Have I achieved that balance?

As I commented in a post some months ago, advocates of the Big Social like Steven Johnson think we have been too solitary and too disconnected and need — as a society anyway — to move towards more connection, because connection generates ideas. My response to that was that (a) the generation of ideas is not the only social good, and (b) it’s hard to look at the proliferation of social media that I and my friends are occupied with and think that we don't have enough connections. My suspicion is that we need fewer connections, but (as I suggested in my previous post) more multi-dimensional ones. Keen overstates the value of privacy and under-rates the value of social connection, but he’s surely write to think that solitude is right now the endangered condition."

Citation:

Jacobs, Allan. "The Social Trap". Text Patterns Blog on The New Atlantis website.

<http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2011/03/social-trap.html>