Re: Time - "You Are Not My Friend" Essay

I have been house/cat sitting for a friend of mine and along with the fact that I love her cats, I get the added bonus of getting to look at her Time Magazine when it comes in (I don't usually read enough of it every week to make it worth subscribing to). Today, the October 15^th, 2007 issue came and on the back page (pg 82) there is an Essay by Joel Stein entitled "You Are Not My Friend" which got me thinking about a few things.

As you know, I recently finished getting Spiritgeek.com up and running. One of the first things I did was send out a notice on MySpace using their "Post a Bulletin" to all my "friends" asking them to take a look at the site and give me their comments and suggestions.

Well, either my "friends" are not friends or no-one actually reads the bulletins, I'm guess the latter since everyone I talk to directly did not remember getting the post, including the great goddess of my received bulletins since she sometimes sends 2 or 3 a day.

So, back to Time magazine. The essay goes into how all these online "social" networks after a while can take up an awful lot of time and energy trying to keep up on. What really caught my interest was the following:

But really, these sites aren't about connecting and reconnecting. They're a platform for self-branding. Old people are always worrying that r blogging and personal websites and MySpace profiles are taking away our privacy, but they clearly don't understand the word privacy. We're not sharing things we don't want other people to know. We're showing you our best posed, retouched photos. We're listing the Pynchon books we want you to think we've read all the way through. We're allowing other people to write whatever they want us on our walls, unless we don't like it, in which case we just erase it. If we had that much privacy in real life, the bathrooms at that Minnesota airport would be empty.

Joel Stein

It makes me wonder if I have been going about MySpace and such the wrong way,. I don't expect these people that I meet to invite me to Sunday brunch the next time I am in town, but unless "friends" are strictly about the numbers then is there a real point?

I cannot speak for anyone else, but the start of the final paragraph is more about how I choose my "friends":

Until we can build some kind of social network where we can present our true, flawed selves--perhaps some genius can invent something that takes place in a house over dinner with wine--I say we strip down our online communities to just the important parts.

Joel Stein

I get tons of requests for my "friendship" from girls who want me to look at their sexy photos which tells me they haven't actually looked at my profile, it plainly states that I am gay, so I refuse them and on many occasions mark them as "spam."

If you want to be my friend, it's actually really simple, have something, anything of value to say or do. Write something of interest, have a thought or two bouncing around in that skull of yours or write and sing a new song with your band, just be something other than cyber-waste.

Any takers? You show me your flaws and I'll show you mine...

It is done...

After more work then I expected it to be, the new Spiritgeek.com website is finally up and running.

It came out absolutely beautifully. We still have a few issues to work out regarding the lack of standard compliance that a few browsers have, but it is workable and can be read until I get a chance to address them.

Enjoy!

Morality, What or Why?

The following is a post I made this morning on InterfaithForums। I thought you might like to comment on it as well.

Enjoy the holiday!

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I was reading another thread here earlier today and ran into one of those arguments that just makes my blood boil sometimes. Maybe it was just a touch too close to home, but as much as part of it had to do with closed-mindedness regarding something that is an integrated part of my life, it brought up a question that I run into on a regular basis.

Morality, is it about What or Why?

In the dictionary, Webster defines morality as:

1. a : a moral discourse, statement, or lesson b : a literary or other imaginative work teaching a moral lesson
2. a : a doctrine or system of moral conduct b plural : particular moral principles or rules of conduct
3. : conformity to ideals of right human conduct
4. : moral conduct : VIRTUE

Merriam-Webster

Most moralists claim to believe that morality is some combination of 2 through 4 but they tend to be most closely tied to definition #3. Traditionally, moralists think that they have a set of rules, divinely inspired or otherwise, and as long as you abide by them you are a good and moral person. I seriously question that since if that were the case, it would seem that the act that is immoral in one situation would be immoral in all situations.

Lets start with the example of killing another person. If my nation-state or recognized group is at war with your nation-state and I kill you in the execution of that war, I am not only moral, I may well be a hero, unless I break some rule of engagement. On the other hand, if I kill you because you looked at me the wrong way and I felt you had slighted (dissed) me, I am not only immoral, but likely to become incarcerated if I am found out. So the morality is not about the act of killing, but in the why I performed it.

We run into similar arguments regarding sexual orientation which is a much stickier subject. Some feel that if you are attracted to someone of the same gender as yourself, that you are by definition an immoral person. Somehow I suspect that God, who has been claimed to have chimed in with agreement to this position depending on whose interpretation you follow, is likely to be more concerned with why I am sleeping with someone rather than if they have an X or Y chromosome.

If I, a male, go to a bar and pick up another guy and we go home to get it on, am I immoral? If so, would I still be immoral if I had picked up a girl instead? I tend to think the morality come in the why. If I use you as a life-sized 98.6 degree sex toy for the purpose of getting my rocks off, I would say their are likely to be moral issues there, especially if I have alluded to having something more than a hook-up in mind as my intention.

So the questions I am putting out there are these:

1. Is morality about what or why?
2. If morality is about what, how can something be moral in one sense but immoral in another?
3. If Why, by what basis do you determine the morality of a situation

Examples to show your case would be appreciated...

Life Update #2

Well, it has been a productive week. 1st, I decided that I hated the way the Spiritgeek.com site was looking and decided to scrap it and redo the imagery and color scheme. I have been working in Photoshop and have a design that I am much happier with.

I finally set a job change date in that I gave notice to the limo company last Monday that Friday, August 31, would be my last day. My boss took it surprisingly well and seems to be quite supportive of what I am planning on doing.

Things are getting better on a day to day basis and I should be quite ready to go full-time on Spiritgeek.com by the beginning of September.

Narcism, Einstein and a Little Extra

The other day, a friend sent me a joke that goes as follows:

Q: How many narcissists does it take to change a light-bulb?

A: One, he holds the bulb while the world revolves around him.

Narcism is defined basically as "inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity." Now anyone who has seen Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt's movie "Se7en" knows that vanity, as pride, is one of the "Seven Deadly Sins" along with lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath and envy.

I read a few ears ago about a respected child psychologist that believed that children should never be reprimanded since it could, and likely would, damage their little egos. When we look around us at some of the stories that inundate us on the news about young and pretty people who seem to think that they are above the standards that are required of the rest of us. Some say it has to do with their celebrity, or as Stephanie Miller puts it "Celebu-tard", status.

We have created a world in Western Culture that cannot sustain itself without learning to become aware that the selfish, vain and single-minded view will lead to our destruction. We praise and adore those who are basically distract us from what we need to become aware of, truth and Truth. It's not hard to understand, but we can only run for so long. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, we can sedate ourselves into forgetfulness but eventually we have to deal with what issues were there in the first place.

The good news is that we, as the children of God, have the ability to change the reality when we are truly ready. Our Father created us in His image or so scripture says, unless we are not his children but just a toy, part of our birthright is the ability to create.

Einstein once said that if we learned to use our complete capacity of mind, we would no longer require physical bodies to interact with.

Let's learn to find the Truth that lies within and truly make the promises of the Messiahs a reality, Jesus reminded us by quoting Isaiah when he said, "Do you not know that ye are Gods?" but he also commanded us to "be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is Perfect." I happen to believe he meant this, not as some lofty and unattainable goal but as a literal idea.

Being in fascination with ones self only becomes a problem when we forget that it's not our outer self, the body and position within society, that should be the subject of that fascination, but that which outlives the body it manifests that we are to look toward. In finding our REAL self, do we find Truth.

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And now for something completely strange and different.

As many know, I am a Star Trek geek as well as a huge fan of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and when I saw this this afternoon, I just had to put it on here as an s&g (for those who don't know, s&g is S@!ts and Giggles). As I have said on many occasions, life is supposed to be fun, so have some! Here's a little something to start you off on the right foot.