THE GOOGLE GOD AND FACEBOOK FAITH

 Dare to Defriend and Not Know

The Google god is not an archetype, neither does it profess or possess any creative potentiality. The transcendence of the Google god derives from its archival and bridling of big data by the wisdom of referendum; transcendence rises and falls along with the page rank of the petition, called a search in Google theology. Like the torch, kerosene lamp, and light bulb before it, the Google god illuminates, but it is the only one of the four with potential for unintended and unperceived self-deception. While the Google god invites seekers to be omnipresently informed, it can’t prevent the onset of superficial omniscience or vaporous illusions of intellectual omnipotence.

For many, the Google god’s prolific ability to connect the curious with dynamic facts and figures, and to transport knowledge and perception from oblivion to digital presence, is in fact god-like. So prescient is the Google god, discerning how and why seems no more ambitious than simply discerning when and where. Impressed with the Google god’s apparent proficiency, many discount the reality that this digital matchmaker frequently traffics in unsubstantiated and unqualified references. In the absence of cogent inquiry, experience, and vetted source materials, indeterminate references beget errant inference, which beget twins: context free supposition and beguiling subterfuge (BS).

The Google god satisfies the most pernicious itch of the age, instant gratification. With no more than a few keystrokes or smartphone swipes, the Google god is presumed to confer sufficient acuity so as to challenge a bonfire of experience with no more than factoid marinated kindling. Bonfire informed diagnoses by board certified physicians, are often impugned by patients intoxicated by context free web factoids. Nevertheless, the Google god’s standing remains undiminished; instant gratification syndrome derives from the disposition of the seeker, not premeditated technology treachery.

Instant gratification often manifests rudiments of narcissism. Instant gratification narcissism craves presently unattainable personal accomplishment and unmerited relationship fidelity. However, one needn’t commiserate, Facebook Faith considered the ultimate in affirming social agency, is available over-the-keyboard. Facebook Faith allows the offline you, to create and nurture an otherwise unattainable online you. While gods normally do the creating, Facebook Faith also exhibits transcendent god-like power; it allows you to create a virtual autobiographical you, in your own imagined image.

The first fracture in the Facebook Faith continuum occurs when you can no longer ascertain which is the corporeal-synaptic you, the one in front of the screen or the one on the screen. You needn’t worry; by the power of Facebook Faith, you can turn the on screen you, into the you the you in front of the screen prefers, thus eliminating the confusion of who’s who. Facebook Faith clearly evidences pandemic potential; friends beget followers, who beget instagrams, well known side affects of digital narcissism.

Instant gratification narcissism addicts insist on knowing, seeing, acquiring, and being in the now. The addicted can be seen everywhere peering hypnotically into small mobile anti-social electronic prostheses. Instant gratification narcissism inspired by Facebook Faith evidences an incontrovertible progression:

Stage 1: The on screen you deprives the corporeal-synaptic you of informed emotional feedback.

Stage 2: Both you and your on screen friends are overwhelmed creating more endearing versions of your on screen selves.

Stage 3: Disengaging from the screen no longer returns you to the potent presence of your corporeal-synaptic self.

Stage 4: The corporeal-synaptic you craves tactile and emotional contact, but has little inter-personal skill by which to socially engage others.

Facebook Faith leaves the corporeal and digital you in the now but more isolated and emotionally estranged than ever. You are an un-convicted co-conspirator in your own scripted digital autobiography. In this now, dispassionate hook-ups stand in for the tedious thrill of discovery and romance. In this now there is no growth borne on the seas of rejection or impetuous unexplainable embrace.

Evidencing a mutual identity of interests, the Google god and Facebook Faith prophesy a paradise of social and professional connectivity, personal enlightenment, and endless engagement with a variety of new friends and interests. However, in this paradise where intimacy varies in accordance with flexible privacy settings, you’ve somehow and for some reason become praise addicted and easily insulted. Because there are many more digital-incantations than corporeal-synaptic you, your emotional state requires continuous dynamic recalibration; you confuse yourself and others.

The only you that matters possesses an essential essence that can only be touched where the virtuous and immoral you coalesce, the soul. There you may be disconnected yet engaged, informed but disinterested, ungrateful but nevertheless accountable, unapologetically entitled but neither presumptive nor dismissive; here there is no judgment. This is the place where the creator embraces you in love that preserves intimacy, where faith imparts truth and light that enables desire to court conviction, and where true friends summon you to be no more or no less than the one and only you.

Dare to defriend and not know.