Speaking of flowers, I have recently noticed patches of daffodils popping up all over the place. And this bothers me. "But why, Rachel, should the glorious tidings of spring irritate you delicate moral senses?" Yes, I am a chronic sufferer of hayfever, but this is not why. I find the daffodils very suspicious, for the following reasons:
They are all the same size, which appears to be fully grown.
They have the same number of flowers in each cluster.
They sprung up at the beginning of this week.
They are all the same.
I never saw them growing, nor anyone planting them.
They're perky and perfect, and I despise them like other things that are perky and perfect but made of silicone. (Not really, plastic boobs attract plastic minds. Haha... They don't bother me as much as these flowers.) It's as if they magically appeared, locked and loaded, ready to bring a splash of yellow into a dreary March.
Okay, they've been planted fully grown, in little clusters around campus to look nice. I'll get over it. Their life here is fake. They are intended to look nice for students and visitors and squirrels and whoever. I just find it a little surprising that the spontaneous, natural beauty of spring has been cultivated to please us.
Not even the perfect beauty of the cycle of life is beautiful enough for a college campus. Apparently, when it is "time" for flowers, there will be flowers. Bam, flowers. "Like it. They have natural beauty. It will make you feel serene and connected."
There isn't much more to point out about this, except how we cultivate beauty for aesthetic reasons, and therefore lose the deeper, essential meaning of such things... But really, that's all.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
How to: Press Friendships in a Facebook
We are the inhabitants of the 21st century. We have amazing technology that allows us to do things that are impossible in nature. And though we are able to alter the course of nature, one must ask if we are simply fooling ourselves. Sure, we are able to deny organic or biological order, but what about the indisputable way of things? Take, for a very small scale example, keeping friendships with digital tools like “MySpace,” and “Facebook”.
Such tools make it easy for us to communicate and keep in touch with people that we might otherwise never hear from again; who are not a priority. We can keep up with that friend from elementary school, the random hookup from your freshman year in college, the first young love, that girl you met at the grocery store, and potentially, everyone you ever encountered.
But what about new people, or friends who are most important? Can we realistically make enough room for the old and new alike? Are we expected to network and network until our social webs are nebulous and we walk by a blonde and say, "hi Ashley!” when her name is actually Sarah, because her profile picture looks just like another blonde's? Or, is there a critical mass, a maximum capacity of humans in our life?
Are these new social tools appropriate for our use? Maybe there just isn’t enough room. What if our minds and our hearts only have 5 positions to fill (dependent on individual emotive capacity)? Can we fit all the people we ever liked inside of us: in our heads, on our hard drives? And how many friends do you need? The best ones will always be a part of your life, like friendships before digital networking.
It is gluttonous for us to want to keep it all. Relationships can suffer while someone is still on your "friends list” but you never "write on their wall." People are “friends” with hundreds, thousands of other people. I doubt anyone keeps in touch with all of those people on a daily basis. It would be the only thing they do. So, if we can't possibly or consistently show that we care about all the people we’ve met, should we act like we can?
Why line them all up in front of us? You will hear about your cyber, quasi friends every day, whether or not you like them. And they will just be friend number 340 on a list of 500. They will continue to take up space in your life long after you have stopped interacting. We are trying to make social connections into a material thing that lasts, removing the ephemeral beauty of serendipitous encounters. You keep them around because you’re greedy and not because you actually value the experience you had. Because friendships are now material, people want to show them off, like jewelry. And, like our other possessions, our commitment to them, which is in public writing, will burden us. These material relationships will clutter our lives just like all the other junk sitting on the kitchen counter.
Friendships are not, and shouldn’t be made a material thing. Think of the commitment and the clutter, and the desire. Taking a page out of the Therevada Buddhist philosophy, it is our desire that causes suffering. We are only heightening our suffering by entertaining the fantasy, the desire to possess friendships, which are just one of many beautiful things we wish could last. When they are material then we can possess them, and the more we think we can, the more it will hurt when we realize we can’t.
The emotional conundrum comes not in the technology, but in what it really means to us. The technology isn’t a problem; it has practical, expansive, potential and application. But it is also convincing us that everything that was ever important can be permanent.
So thank you, creators of “MySpace” and “Facebook”, for also indulging our fantasy that friendships can be pressed like flowers. Just press the Faces and images and text into a cyber book, and it will all last forever.
Such tools make it easy for us to communicate and keep in touch with people that we might otherwise never hear from again; who are not a priority. We can keep up with that friend from elementary school, the random hookup from your freshman year in college, the first young love, that girl you met at the grocery store, and potentially, everyone you ever encountered.
But what about new people, or friends who are most important? Can we realistically make enough room for the old and new alike? Are we expected to network and network until our social webs are nebulous and we walk by a blonde and say, "hi Ashley!” when her name is actually Sarah, because her profile picture looks just like another blonde's? Or, is there a critical mass, a maximum capacity of humans in our life?
Are these new social tools appropriate for our use? Maybe there just isn’t enough room. What if our minds and our hearts only have 5 positions to fill (dependent on individual emotive capacity)? Can we fit all the people we ever liked inside of us: in our heads, on our hard drives? And how many friends do you need? The best ones will always be a part of your life, like friendships before digital networking.
It is gluttonous for us to want to keep it all. Relationships can suffer while someone is still on your "friends list” but you never "write on their wall." People are “friends” with hundreds, thousands of other people. I doubt anyone keeps in touch with all of those people on a daily basis. It would be the only thing they do. So, if we can't possibly or consistently show that we care about all the people we’ve met, should we act like we can?
Why line them all up in front of us? You will hear about your cyber, quasi friends every day, whether or not you like them. And they will just be friend number 340 on a list of 500. They will continue to take up space in your life long after you have stopped interacting. We are trying to make social connections into a material thing that lasts, removing the ephemeral beauty of serendipitous encounters. You keep them around because you’re greedy and not because you actually value the experience you had. Because friendships are now material, people want to show them off, like jewelry. And, like our other possessions, our commitment to them, which is in public writing, will burden us. These material relationships will clutter our lives just like all the other junk sitting on the kitchen counter.
Friendships are not, and shouldn’t be made a material thing. Think of the commitment and the clutter, and the desire. Taking a page out of the Therevada Buddhist philosophy, it is our desire that causes suffering. We are only heightening our suffering by entertaining the fantasy, the desire to possess friendships, which are just one of many beautiful things we wish could last. When they are material then we can possess them, and the more we think we can, the more it will hurt when we realize we can’t.
The emotional conundrum comes not in the technology, but in what it really means to us. The technology isn’t a problem; it has practical, expansive, potential and application. But it is also convincing us that everything that was ever important can be permanent.
So thank you, creators of “MySpace” and “Facebook”, for also indulging our fantasy that friendships can be pressed like flowers. Just press the Faces and images and text into a cyber book, and it will all last forever.
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