fizzer

We live under the impression that we can define ourselves through social media. We think that we can curate a self image that is somehow as real as the wild self that is being dragged, kicking and screaming, through time-space. But the truth of post-modern activities is that they merely create another layer of complexity through which we view reality. These are often very rich and highly visible layers of information and narrative, and we believe they have as much power as the unseen.

There are so many forces that we cannot understand let alone control, and so we let ourselves be blind to their existence. Even though we no longer acknowledge their impact upon us, we are effected by these forces all the same.

This is where we have created so much confusion for ourselves:

Often times the layers do not match up. We create a rich and vivid world of meaning and symbols, but just beneath that layer is a very different story, one that keeps working on the whole, working on a deeper level and creating tension in our self-made narratives.

The selves we presents to each other are released from the binds of reality when they are made abstract through the act of being uploaded. Thusly we can create new narratives and meaning without feeling the pull of the deeper, more real processes.

Our newest layer, social media, is the most detached (read: abstract) that we have yet created. The creation of this new layer of self does not eliminate or negate the presence of less abstract selves, but in fact can complicate the more intense and real narratives that are working unbeknownst to us.

We hope to fully and faithfully project ourselves using words and images and videos and interactions online, but these are so finite compared to how rich and complicated reality is. The cognitive dissonance that is created by the two worlds or even the two selfs (real and abstract) is felt through anxiety and through depression. It is felt most intensely at crossroads in our narratives.

When we abstract ourselves we make it possible for narratives to be created apart from our own real and vitally important truth, so a distance begins to grow between ourselves and our community. In fact, we lose community altogether in return for viewers, or what we call followers. Now we might have some true community left, some true participants in our lives, but their role is confused by the viewers who impart their own set of influences upon our lives.

These artificial images of ourselves can never be perfectly aligned with who we truly are, and so should be considered “false images.” The more we engage with our false images the more we create possibility for gaps to develop between ourselves and reality, the more we enable ourselves to move in ways we are not supposed to move. The energy needed to remain in connection with reality is very small compared to the amount of energy needed to realign the abstract to the real, but we are lucky that there is such a thing called grace.

It is through grace that we are not torn apart by our conflicting worlds that we create. Though we might live for years completely separate from the truth, we can, in an instant even, be reunited with reality. Obviously the layers of complicated abstractions will still be present, but it need not have power over us any longer. Once we allow Truth back into us we will not have as much room for the abstract self. If we turn to the real, the false will not fill up so much of our field of view.

“i tell you of dreams. of freedom. of light. you look at me with the eyes of a prisoner. with grey. with despair. you long for soft grass underfoot but still you circle the paved yards of your masters. you are safe in those walls. you are safe and you are fed and you need not have faith, for you have masters. your employer, your pastor, your family, your identity; all of these things keep you safe from the world outside. safe from the light. safe from freedom. for in freedom there is responsibility. in light there is awareness. my dreams are affronts on your comfortable naivete, but your attempts at relief are in vain. the grey and the despair weigh on you like a parked car. like the promise of freedom that arrives without fuel, without motor, without steering. only weight. if only you had chains perhaps we could unlock them. perhaps we could cut you free. but instead you lie down under the weight of man's creation. you are paved over, and then you die.