As an introduction to the many similarities that religion and the virtual world share the first chapter in Godwired bombarded me with information I did not realize I knew. One of the most interesting concepts I came across was the idea of voluntary submission. Voluntary submission is an idea I would find hard to examine in a positive light. Being a motivated, go-getting, independent person is something that our culture admires in people. It is people with those characteristics that usually do well in life, submission is not a word that can be found in their vocabularies. I did not find it surprising that voluntary submission and virtual life seemed to be connected. This was not surprising to me because the number of people who are dragged into a virtual cycle of living usually seem to have lost their power to stay away from their virtual lives or have lost their zen in the real world.
The idea of voluntary submission makes me ask: Why it is so easy to commit to an internet profile? When did we decide that spending an hour online could substitute a real conversation with someone? and What is it that makes us(society) feel more comfortable in a virtual rather than the world we live in?
I have come to a conclusion that voluntary submission in the virtual world is so easy because there is a loss of self that happens when we log on to- insert social media here-. We are living in a world where the rules have been in place for many many years and to change them is virtually impossible. Having a life online allows us to pick and choose the world we would choose to live in. We pay attention to the pictures we post and the comments other read because we finally have a say in the way our world is ran. We are empowered by a virtual life where in reality power to do the same in the real world is what we lack.Our virtual realities serve as a fix "into and imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection".
I love the questions you are asking and your concern for what is clearly a social-media-addicted culture all around us. I perhaps disagreed somewhat with your statement that there is a "loss of self that happens when we log on" to social medias. Rather, I think that there is a loss of self from some other source, perhaps something core within human nature. Or maybe a loss of self is more of a realization of a lack of self. What I mean is... we may never have had a sense of "self" as we thought we did. We might not even have a self at all. What does that even mean? What IS the self? I think that possibility (that we have no self and if we do we don't understand it) is a real, visceral and terrifying thought for most people. I think social media might be more of a place to continue the fantasy of the "self," rather than a place to lose it. Or perhaps the "real" self that somehow exists somewhere outside of social mediums and media is squished and squelched underneath facebook, twitter, and everything else. Or... or what if our "self" really IS only found in social mediums, through social constructions, social affirmations, and dialectic encounters? What if there is no self at all until we connect to others?
ReplyDeleteOf course, I do believe in the "self," but I don't like the idea of the "individual" quite so much... I'm more playing with ideas than anything else. Feel free to engage my questions or ask me some further.
-Frank
"The idea of voluntary submission makes me ask: Why it is so easy to commit to an internet profile? When did we decide that spending an hour online could substitute a real conversation with someone? and What is it that makes us(society) feel more comfortable in a virtual rather than the world we live in?"
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it is "easy" to engage online because it is something we are lacking in our everyday lives. We no longer are a culture that sits on their front porch and the neighbors come over for lemonade and pie after dinner. I think we are all craving connection that we no longer get from society. You go to work and sit in a cubicle alone, you drive an hour home alone, you come home to a family that probably ate dinner without you....I think our culture is a lonely one and it has been moving that direction for a few decades now. Even, let's say, you have a job where you connect with people all day and you ride the bus home and your family is waiting at the table when you get home: you can only connect professionally with the people you work with unless you have weird boundaries, if you talk to someone on the bus you're a creep or a bum, and your family is only your family and often times perspective is limited within a family dynamic. Perhaps the necessity of online communities is arising from not having a connection in culture instead of being a means of connecting with a different culture. We feel more comfortable connecting with an online community because community where we live simply doesn't fulfill us anymore. Humans as social beings need to connect and communicate with others. And if we dont do that in our neighborhoods or our churches (how many churches close a day?) where do we do that? Online.
--Megan