Over the next week, I’ll be sharing posts from the blog that might be worth a revisit – or a first visit, if you’re new.
I’ll go mostly month-by month, with some thematic stops.
That time my parents told me that during the Cuban Missile Crisis they’d made a contingency plan to OD me on sleeping pills if the missiles were launched…
To consider how they are all exploiting you, your anger, your idealism, your anxiety, and even your desire for change.
And how do we get out? What do we do?
We look at the good aspects of life that we hoped were served by this ecosystem – and perhaps were and are – and we consider two points in relation to that:
What is the cost of finding community, self-expression and so on in the context of this digital/social media world?
What temptations does this digital world touch and exploit in me?
Comparing and contrasting racist language in Hemingway and O’Connor
Yes, it is a relief to find a tribe. I know this well. It’s what “gathered” alot of us online two decades ago – Catholics who didn’t feel as if anything goes, but also weren’t going to wear veils to Mass or even fight about it, and also wanted to be informed about the outrages of Church corruption with as little ideological bias as possible – hard to suss that out in your local parish, true. It can be said for any number of interests and slants – to find, I don’t know – other libertarians, progressives if you live in in a red area, conservatives if you’re surrounded by blue, parents who homeschool, traditionally minded families who don’t homeschool and have no interest….or sometimes just someone to talk to.
Of course!
But in the end, I keep coming back to the conclusion that the ease of finding the like-minded and settling one’s life in that world …is a trap.
The world is fleeting. Our words, our thoughts are as dust. But ironically, that doesn’t make them pointless. What is the best use of these fleeting limited signs and symbols that we use to express our deepest yearnings and truest selves? How shall we use them in a way that actually does communicate our value and their significance, even as we acknowledge that they – and we – are like straw?
For the ephemeral nature of social media, and its use of us and our experiences as the product, enthusiastically offered just so we can be seen and heard, seems different to me. It seems to put into question the time spent on it, both creating and scrolling.
In that world, we only matter to the extent that we fill in the blanks, and what we put in those blanks is only seen if we work hard to learn the rules the Powers have established (today), shape our content to satisfy, not only their rules, but their intentions and priorities that they’ve figured out will get us coming back again and again…for now.
Charlotte was Both 