Connected; for better or for worse, 'til death do us part... or maybe longer!?

After reading an article in the NY Times book review about a book called "Connected" I was inspired to take my "Internet break". Once the "break" was underway, I decided to go all out and delete my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The book, written by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, is about "The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives". Weeks after reading the review I continued to think about my connections; my friends, my family and my online social network. I kept coming back to Facebook and Twitter and started to wonder how these things might be affecting me in ways I didn't even know!

If you don't feel like reading the (very short and very interesting) article, this snippet will give you some idea of what the research is about:

Christakis and Fowler explore network contagion in everything from back pain (higher incidence spread from West Germany to East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall) to suicide (well known to spread throughout communities on occasion) to sex practices (such as the growing prevalence of oral sex among teenagers) to politics (where the denser your network of connections, the more ideologically intense and intractable your beliefs are likely to be). And while it’s hardly surprising that emotion can be transmitted from person to person, the authors report that getting a $10,000 raise is less likely to make you happy than having a happy friend is — in fact, the raise is less likely to make you happy than is having a friend who has a friend who has a friend who is happy. They even argue — and this is sure to generate controversy — that the obsessive drive to create “nut free” environments is not the result of any real increase in children’s allergies but rather something akin to an epidemic of adult hysteria, spread via network transmission.

I had chosen to participate in Facebook and Twitter for a number of different reasons and for the most part I enjoyed both and found them to be useful and efficient in terms of creating invitations for events, promoting shows, (pushing my blog), etc. One argument from the article that might tip you towards involvement with these networks is the idea that "as among primates, those humans who are best able to manipulate social networks to their advantage thrive" and we all want to thrive and survive, but when does dipping a toe in the water cross over to drowning and do you have control and/or awareness of the transition from one level of involvement to the next? Due to the nature and speed of technology, specifically the Internet, I have to wonder if the rules for every type of interaction have changed completely! Monkeys picking nits are far from websites getting hits.

What finally pushed me to drop out of two of my major networks was the feeling that they possessed a growing energy much more powerful than myself and that that energy may not be a positive one. It may not be negative but it's too big for me to know what impact it could have on my life and it almost seems to have a life or presence of its own! Scott Stossel notes, "the more interesting implications are philosophical. A social network, while not quite sentient, acquires its own agency; it wants things, and it wants us, the nodes of which it consists, to do certain things, whether to gain weight or have oral sex at age 13."

I don't know the answer but I find it interesting to ponder: What does Facebook want me to do? What does Twitter want me to do?

The idea of the connectedness of a flock of birds was mentioned towards the end of the article and although I've written about this concept before and it always reminds me of a theatre technique called Viewpoints. One of the exercises we did in college under the Viewpoints technique involved moving in unison as much as possible in different formations with our eyes closed. Not trying to listen or guess what other people were doing the idea was to sort of "open up" to an unknown sense and to follow the impulses you received. It was a strange exercise and can be difficult to do but when it's happening it's amazing to see how people really do move together.

When I injured my back and saw a chiropractor/holistic healer, one of her healing concepts was to work with everyone in the same room at the same time to increase the healing trend from one patient to the next. I can't remember the name for this but she told me the theory had something to do with pendulums put in a room that eventually start swinging together.

If scientists, artists and healers have all danced around the same idea, as difficult as it may be to believe, I find it worth exploring. The bottom line for me is that I'm trying to practice mindfulness at this time in my life and I've found that the Internet seems to suck up too much of my precious energy. I don't know if I'll rejoin or stay Facebook-free but for now I think I'm starting to feel OK without it. The pang of panic that prickled up inside me when it was time to click "delete" was a shock and an indicator. The intensity of attachment to my account showed me that deleting would be a good experiment for me to conduct. Observing my own thoughts and reactions to the process has been interesting and I recommend the challenge to anyone who's willing to try just for the sake of seeing how it makes you feel! Our reactions show the weight these "things" hold in our lives.

Stossel ends the article by saying, "network science has potential to be used for good. But then again, if all the strutting and fretting that we believe to be the product of our individual free will is really only the antlike scurrying of a collection of nodes, can anyone really be said to “use” the network? Or is the network always using us?"

I'm not sure yet but I'd love to hear what you think!

Sincerely,

Facebook-Free-For-Now

Non Sequitur or the Saturday 2-for-1!

Part I:  The Sun Goes Down

In school I always doodled in the margins.  Since I moved from California to Virginia when I was five, it was easy to idealize the West Coast and my drawings often reflected that which I was "robbed of".  I yearned for the Pacific Ocean because I didn’t have it and I perfected my sketches of palm trees associating the cliché symbol with the magical place I felt I was meant to be in.  I wanted to live where the palm trees lived.

Later in the middle of my high school years, we did come back, but of course getting what you want isn’t always what you think it will be.  Just like coming closer to an impressionist work, the image changes and change can be ugly.  Some native Californians I’ve met resent the palm trees because they, in fact, are non-native species.  They are an ugly cliché just like the symbols I used to sketch and they just don’t belong.

As the sun goes down on another hot day in LA I stand on my balcony and enjoy something else as cliché as “long walks on the beach”.  I enjoy a beautiful sunset that no picture can capture and no words can describe.  Peeking up among the buildings are scattered palm trees and as I look at them my heart opens and softens like the pink light all around us.

We may not belong here, we may be loved by some and resented by others but we’re here.  We are all here together for whatever reason and we are all native to Earth.  Hot and tired I enjoy one of nature’s beautiful offerings with the palm trees as my fellow audience members.  The sky is on fire and a moving painting is being created in front of us, more inspiring than anything I have to offer and absolutely free.  It may be cliché but I’m grateful that my breath has been taken away tonight on this balcony.  Maybe one day I’ll have something as lovely to offer to someone too.

Part II: After Dark

It’s 3:19am and I’m awakened by the smell of smoke.  I look around to see where it might be coming from and realize it’s arrived on the slight breeze that finally makes the temperature bearable.  Southern California is burning and I’m being cooked alive.  San Francisco seems like a distant, little heaven.  Dolores Park a lush green oasis and here I am in the smoggy city of [fallen] angels breathing in the smoke and pollution.  But I have to be here.  Too much of a good place can lull me to a dreaming sleep and this dramatic setting is starting to wake me up…

In the meantime, I’m also kept awake by thoughts of my newest guilty pleasure, the British Comedy “Pulling”.  Finally, I’ve had time to watch some (Internet) TV and it’s been pretty damn great!

Unemployment = Finishing “MadMen”, gorging on “30 Rock” and completing seasons 1 and 2 of “Pulling”.

This show is a brilliant dark comedy that has been called “the anti-Sex and the City” and the “anti-Friends” and it is both.  The story focuses on the life of 30-year-old Donna, her radical quest for happiness in a humdrum life and the heart-breakingly tragic ups and downs of her two best friends Karen and Louise.  The three women end up living together and trying to figure out what they want from life and how to get it, helping and hurting each other along the way.

The comedy is the darkest, the plot lines are heavy and the characters are extremely human.  I found myself laughing out loud throughout the entire 12 episodes and already dying to find out more.  I’m completely drawn in.

Another reason to love the show is that the actress playing Donna is also co-creator and writer, Sharon Horgan.  Much like Tina Fey and “30 Rock”, Horgan seems to pull from her life experience and is carefully carving a new place for the female lead in our collective imagination.  Her lead is not a wife or mother, not an ingénue or merely the counterpart to some man, she is a courageous and yet deeply flawed, narcissistic and yet loveable, female anti-hero.

Now, this isn’t to say that the show is overtly Feminist or that there isn’t also a male writer/creator involved, a male love interest character and other ridiculous (but hilarious) portrayals of women.  But what inspires me is the fact that another high profile, female writer-actor is telling a story and acting it out too!  This is exactly the kind of career I fantasize about and I’m just happy to see it becoming a possibility, at least for some!

I don’t want perfect in my characters, I want interesting and funny and complex!  Donna, Karen and Louise possess these qualities among many others and they aren’t anorexic, twig-figures either.  They’re real looking women with interesting bodies and faces and they’re all wonderful actors.  I don’t know where you can get these DVDs, (I borrowed them from my new roommate) but if you can find them, check out the show!  You won’t be disappointed.

Monday Morning Meditation On A Latte

He said "it ain't easy being green..."  I say, "it ain't easy being.  Period."

Too early to be up on a day off, I left my car at the shop for a tune-up and zombie-walked over to Four Barrel for some caffeine.  Groggy, confused and mesmerized by the intricate leaf design in my latte I reach for my laptop.

No wireless.

Oh yeah, I do remember reading some ridiculous Yelp rant about this at some point.  Forced to sit and scribble on my yellow pad instead I start to wonder...  Why is it so hard to just be here?

If I set down this writing I'm alone, vulnerable and with my thoughts: What am I doing here anyway?  Who are these hipsters walking in and what are they thinking about?  Did the barista judge me for my attempt at Internet connection?  

Thoughts.  Stories.  Mental clutter!  None of this is reality, right?  If I put down this pencil I will have to sit here and exist.  So much harder than it sounds!  Perhaps the discomfort is due to the fact that so much of our culture promotes avoidance and escapism.  Perhaps Four Barrel is more than just your average aesthetically pleasing coffee shop but, in fact, a revolutionary concept, challenging us multi-taskers to chill.  Sit.  Drink.  Relax.

Well, this could be my imagination or another story I've created to amuse myself but either way, I'm rising to the challenge.  I'm going to sit, be present and mindfully sip my latte, which happens to be quite delicious.

I am here.  Here is where I am.

Time to be.

Pencil down.