God

The Google God and Facebook Faith

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.

 

America and the Great Sheppard: 1620 to 1960 (Part 1 of 2)

AMERICA AND THE GREAT SHEPPARD: 1620 TO 1960 (PART 1 OF 2)

The Lord is My Sheppard…Psalms 23

By December 21, 1620, the Old World was fully aware that the New World was not located off the coast of China, but Cuba. Nevertheless the New World was far enough away that the trip required many arduous weeks on the open seas. In 1620 the New World was not yet bi-coastal or bi-sexual, had no Travelocity or Expedia specials, no Holiday Inn or Ritz Carleton suites, no Park Avenues or Sunset Strips, and no Red or Blue States. What it had was lots of new communicable diseases, low yield harvest seasons, and an infant mortality rate exceeded only by that on board Slave Ships crossing the Middle Passage. Contrary to contemporary folklore, New World settlers were far more often inspired by the potential for economic gain than religious conviction. These hearty settlers would soon realize they were no more capable of surviving New World challenges alone, than were sheep to find green pastures and still waters in the absence of their Sheppard.

Even with an attentive British Monarchy, manageable agrarian conditions, and a treasure-trove of soon to be discovered natural resources, what was needed for survival in the New World of 1620 was a Sheppard. Religious Pilgrims and Entrepreneurs alike realized their most valuable asset was trust in the Great Sheppard who’d crossed over with them, nestled in the posh cabin of His Word. These New World Sheep mixed their Faith and the Word, summoning the Great Sheppard. By his power and authority: all their wants were addressed absent re-supply pipelines, their security assured against a formidable indigenous foe, and they realized immunity to infections for which they bore no biological resistance. They experienced His presence in the disquiet valley, in the shadow of no place to retreat. They feasted on Word pudding and cups of more than enough.

Never did it occur to those who organized this sector of the New World into an America to disavow their dependence on the Great Sheppard. Its first President who proclaimed every man’s right to worship any Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience, also wrote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible”. Founder class (high, low and in between) Americans, to numerous to mention, openly proclaimed their allegiance to the Great Sheppard. The Capital City of America itself was laid out architecturally in the sign of the Great Sheppard, as if it would be His forever. One beam of His Cross was formed by the Capitol Building and Lincoln Memorial, and the other by the White House and Jefferson Memorial. The Washington Monument, whose capstone was engraved, “Praise be to God”, occupied its center. In that America, the Great Sheppard was welcome at home, work, school and play.

The Great Sheppard lovingly nurtured His unique Nation of Sheep drawn from many flocks by rod and staff. Throughout American history, to include the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Agricultural, Industrial, and Technological Revolutions, the Great Sheppard maintained an urgent relationship with His melting pot flock. During these epic eras, America’s economic and emotional vibrancy were unmatched in the annals of history. Americas embrace of the Great Sheppard was so fertile: school days began in solemn reflection on Him, its currency advertised trust in Him, its most revered anthem implored His blessings, elected officials considered their duties sacred before civil, and His Word led America from the emotional disfiguration of slavery. The New World and its Sheep of every ilk belonged to the Sheppard.

Since the Vietnam War, Sexual and Counter-Cultural Revolutions, circa 1960, America’s relationship with the Great Sheppard has become increasingly discordant and distant. His purpose is being supplanted by the power, passion and pleasure addictions of the Sheep, the True Vine is being pruned to accommodate New Age foliage, and spiritual illumination is being dulled by the air bush of enlightenment. In this America, Politics, Economics and Religion adroitly campaign to create a New New America. Yet, absent an abiding relationship with the Great Sheppard; Politics constitutes no more than a choice between a blindfold and earplugs, Economics is a pseudo science where borrowed hope is substituted for assets, and Religion is but loss of personal liberty at the hands of another. Will America have to reprise the winter of 1620 before it shuns its New Old World fascination and returns to the fold of the Great Sheppard?

Coming PART 2 OF 2, COUNTRY WITHOUT A SHEPPARD: 1960 TO 2010