I Like Maine

Hello world,

I've just returned from four days up in Maine, where I frolicked about with festive Fall frivolity among colorful trees, soaring hilltops and pounding ocean. We had a few days off for Fall Break, so I spent the time with a few friends at one fellow's house up there. Sure was beautiful. Breathtakingly so. 

Of course I'm grateful to God for all times of the year, but this season is especially awe-inspiring for me. Likely for you as well. Anyway, there's much I could say, but I wrote a little article for the Op-Ed section of our school paper. In case you don't subscribe to The Swinging Bridge, I've shortened it and posted below. Hope you like it!

What's Like Got to Do With It?

Your cousin gets engaged. You like that. You post vacation photos. Your mom likes that. You share a joke with a new friend. He likes it. That kid from 8th grade science likes it too. Justin Bieber smiles. And 15 million people like it. 

My question: what is like, exactly? 

It’s no secret that Facebook has radically altered our social world. From the moment we sign over our names we are forever members of a new community – an online society that exists everywhere . . . and yet exists nowhere. Connections unhindered unite us with mindless ease to 500 million people across all manners of time and space. 

Facebook is too large of a monster to wrestle in one go, and it’s too precious to us all to be adequately condemned. But there are certain aspects of this cyber-beast that rob too much of real friendship’s risk to be ignored. And this whole business of “liking”, for me, goes too far. 

Once upon a time, dear cousin would have called you personally to deliver the good news. Mom would’ve been delighted to see the scrapbook you completed. Your joke would’ve been a special moment between two friends. And Justin Bieber, well, in another time he wouldn’t be.

But that isn’t the world our social lives inhabit anymore. Instead, each action can become a public display. In this new reality, the user chooses each social move carefully. He crafts his own image and selects his encounters; or when he so desires he simply observes unnoticed.

So it is in this era of cheapened social interaction that we find the ‘like’ button cheaper still. It takes the remnant of authentic exchange and whittles it to the core – to a primal instinct of pleasure or displeasure. Your personal congratulation to your cousin turned into an exclamatory wall post; now it is a virtual thumbs-up. 

So we have ‘groups’ petitioning the folks at Facebook to create a ‘dislike’ button. After all, if we are reducing our response to a simple affirmative, why ignore the other basic affective state? If this happens, it doesn’t seem long before all words may be lost to our virtual selves; each newsfeed only a litany of thumbs up or down.

I believe that we were created for community and can function powerfully in authentic relationship. And it is this authenticity that is at risk when we maintain a friendship with sporadic 'likes.' There is no depth to our compliment or significance to our approval when it is so diminished. If we were vulnerable behind our Facebook profiles before, we are even less so when we use no words in our exchange. It’s simple and it’s safe to ‘like’ what you otherwise might have discussed – but perhaps it’s too simple, and perhaps too safe. 

You could argue that this isn't a big deal, that though interaction be cheapened, friendship itself is strengthened. Even if you are just ‘liking’ someone else’s social activity, it’s still better than not interacting at all, right? And, anyways, you have 1, 627 friends. You just don’t have time to provide a deeper comment.

But there is a bigger issue here, I think. It’s simply a matter of how much we dare to think. How much will we question the ideas thrown at our minds or the tools thrust in our hands? History is being made by every moment that passes, but it is shaped by the choices we make. So think for yourself about the quality of friendship you wish to pursue; the identity you wish to embrace; the stamp you leave on the world.

Here’s a thought: each action on Facebook is an indelible imprint in time, one that will last even until the day your grandchildren add you as a friend. What sorts of relationships do you cultivate? What do you say? What do you like? Know that this crazy social world we inhabit no longer exists in our memories and old letters on a dusty shelf. It’s with us everyday, and it’s open for all to see.

So what do we do? Perhaps nothing new. We just think about each action, and remember that the gravity of personal dialogue can never be fully reduced to a single click of approval. It’s messy, this friendship thing. Let’s keep it that way.

A Canadian Thanksgiving

A longer post is forthcoming. Until it arrives, I just wanted to wish everyone in the world a belated, but very happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

I learned yesterday that there are a few Canadian faculty here at Messiah. A number of people came up to me throughout the day to inform me that their Canadian professor had informed them that Monday was, in fact, Canadian Thanksgiving. Some of these professors are genuinely Canadian; others claim the title through a spouse or cousin or dog or whatever. The point is, you'll never feel more proud to be Canadian than when you're living in America.

So you tell your American friends that today is Thanksgiving Day in the motherland. And they exclaim, "What!? Canada has Thanksgiving? ...Um, what for?"

And you proceed to explain that though we had no Pilgrims, and no voyage of the Mayflower, and though our first encounter with the Natives is not recorded as a cordial family affair, we still have a harvest and a reason to be thankful. Then you'll tell them that it is celebrated in mid-October, because it's gosh-darn hard enough to farm the frozen tundra in July, let alone November. Then you'll describe how you celebrate in your ancestral igloo, but the turkey isn't cooked for fear of melting the roof. And after we gnaw the turkey, which is actually a Canadian Goose, we wash it down with some home-cooked poutine and throw on our toques before skating ootside.

But, I suppose, if they press you on your facts, they should know the truth. For instance, that the first recorded feast of thanksgiving in Canada dates to 1578. But whoever gets credit for originating the holiday, giving thanks is not as American as apple pie, anymore than it's as Canadian as peameal bacon.

So wherever you're at this Thanksgiving season (which, for me, spans 7 weeks and two countries), I hope it is blessed.

Cheers!
jmb




Mmm, peameal bacon.