Social networking symbolises the personal aspect of the Internet and provides a human touch to sanitise its less desirable aspects. It emerged primarily as a means to connect people through shared interests and to exchange information concerning the issues of everyday life. Social networking has also quickly established itself as a powerful medium in which to gauge public opinion on current affairs and events around the world as they happen. Although useful in organising a celebration, it seems to be equally useful in organising a riot!
On the face of it, the facility to create a personal profile and reach friends or a wider circle of acquaintances is tremendously attractive. We all enjoy communicating our interests to like-minded people but it also enables an individual or organisation to scrutinise the personal affairs of others under the guise of affability and friendship. This aspect of social networking panders primarily to the emotional tension generated through the acceptance or rejection of others. However, it’s not a view likely to be shared by the millions of subscribers to Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.
The commercial application of social networking is more insidious. There’s a vast database of facts and information accrued by social networking agencies relating to the likes and dislikes of millions of their members and subscribers. Not surprisingly, this has attracted the marketing strategists and investors who are keen to exploit this huge reservoir of consumer spending power. Critics of social networking have been alarmed at the infringement of privacy rights on certain sites – and the inevitable presence of advertisements and enticing financial spin-offs (which appears at odds with the altruistic philosophy of the founders of the social networking empire).
The proliferation of cyberspace activity and modern technology symbolises the demise of love on the planet. This is because of the massive drain of vital life consumed by the electrical current, or signal, of the billions of smartphones, computers and the world wide system of telecommunications that encircles the globe. Vital life originates from the health and well-being of the planet. The vast web of electrical energy has now created a secondary field of manufactured pollution, representing a shift in the human psyche towards the elimination of the male and female genders. Twitter, predictive texts and computer-generated language have rapidly dehumanised the virtue or power of the Word.
The Word is an energetic reality that arises from the power of union between the two genders: the male and female principles. The idea of this is so far removed from normal human awareness that it’s almost incomprehensible and likely to be regarded as poetic fiction. Nevertheless it’s undeniable that love is on the way out and nobody really has time for romance – and yet the irony is that social networking originated as a means for boys to meet girls at college.
The virtual experience shared by friends and acquaintances is gradually reducing the need for sexual union between the two genders. It is creating the impulse for instant gratification which will become available through technology designed as a substitute experience of love. A man or woman is only as real as their power to love. The Word is none other than the source of love, the impulse behind every human desire. Another name for it is God; but this is likely to be conceptualised until belief in the world is gradually eroded and the awful truth is perceived. We all have to serve the world in some way or other but the trick is not to be seduced by its glamour and the sterile promise of science for a better future through its advanced technology.
The vast majority of the human race will be sucked into the vacuum of the times. Social networking will expand and swell to conquer the world. It’s just a matter of time before love and romance will disappear completely as a quaint pastime of yesteryear. But maybe not where you are!
Lance Kelly 2012