What "Virtual Friendship" Is Doing To Us

When "Know Thyself" Becomes "Show Thyself"

(Researcher Analyzes Costs of Virtual Friendship)

By Genevieve Pollock

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 2, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Online social networking sites are gaining popularity, but they may be transforming our culture in unexpected negative ways, said a biotechnology expert.

Christine Rosen, author and senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society, said this as part of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Lecture Series, sponsored by the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. The talk, titled "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism," was broadcast March 13 on the Internet.

Rosen noted the popularity of online social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, stating that the latter reported 150 million members in January. If Facebook was a country, she added, it would be the eighth most populated nation worldwide.

She prompted a closer look at these sites, observing that most people ask the question, "What is it doing for us?" The author acknowledged that these tools help to bring people together and improve social networks; a person homebound with a unique illness can connect with a community of others in the same situation.

She continued: "But I'd like to ask a different question: What is it doing to us? What is it doing to our sense of social boundaries? To our sense of individuality? To our friendships?"

The researcher underlined the need to question the role of technology, and how it has changed the understanding of friendship. She stated, "Friendship in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from real-world friendship."

Personal transformation

Rosen noted, "These sites make some certain types of connections easier," but as they are not tied to geography or a community governed by its own social norms, they are subject to personal whims.

This, she said, "frees the person from any kind of responsibility that tends to come with membership in a community, and this changes the tenor of any relationships that tend to form there."

Traditionally, she observed, "friendship is a relationship which involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific contexts." It depends on mutual revelations, and can only flourish within the boundaries of privacy.

On networking sites, however, there is a concept of "public friendship," which is fluid, promiscuous and bureaucratic.

The author asserted that "the very architecture of these sites is set up to get you to behave in a certain way." It emphasizes gathering friends, ranking and managing them. She noted that it promotes a "frantic friend procurement where more is better."

Rosen affirmed that this demand to collect friends and to perform constantly by marketing ourselves can undermine "our ability to attain what the site promises, a surer sense of who we are and where we belong."

Today's social networking sites organize themselves around the person's hobbies, interests and photographs, she observed, and thus "your entry into this world is through the revelation of personal information."

The author acknowledged that these sites make it "easier to stay in contact with a wider circle of people," but she noted that they "favor interaction of greater quantity," not necessarily greater quality.

Self-absorption

Rosen also pointed that the sites "are starting to encourage a different kind of narcissism." She added, "There are definitely opportunity costs when we spend so much time grooming ourselves online."

The researcher asked whether the time spent online is well-spent: "In investing so much energy in improving how we present ourselves online, are we missing opportunities to genuinely improve ourselves?"

The sites that encourage you to "broadcast yourself," which is the tagline for the video-sharing Web site YouTube, allows greater self-promotion than before, she noted, and can reinforce a belief that every mundane detail of our lives is worth publicizing.

She pointed out that many people engage in personal broadcasting just "because they can," but that they are often unaware that it also transforms who they are.

People are not just living in the moment, but are publicizing the moment, she said. It is a different level of experience that has real implications for the human person.

There is a cost, Rosen pointed out, seen in cases like the Florida man who committed suicide while people watched online. She explained: "The distance and abstraction of our online friendships and online relationships can lead to a kind of systemic desensitization as a culture if we are not careful about it. […] We expose everything, but are we feeling anything?"

The researcher noted along with the increase in online networking, there are increasing levels of reported loneliness. The sites make connections more convenient, taking the risk and real work out of a relationship and turning it into information.

She noted the arrival of a new networking site, boffery.com, which describes itself as "a place for you to document your sexual history and map your sexual connections."

People will always feel vulnerable about being cut off from the human community, she said, but these sites depend on a person's desire to reveal things about themselves or compare themselves to others, which can increase anxiety.

"Social networking sites have made our relationships more reliable," Rosen concluded, "but whether they have made them more satisfying remains to be seen."

Reiki Therapy Considered Unchristian

US Bishops Declare Reiki Therapy Unchristian
Denounce Its Use in Catholic Institutions

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Reiki, a Japanese alternative medicine, lacks scientific credibility and is outside Christian faith, making it unacceptable for Catholic health care institutions, the U.S. bishops' conference stated.

On Saturday, the conference issued the "Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy," developed by their committee on doctrine, headed by Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and approved by the administrative committee Friday.

The document notes that "the Church recognizes two kinds of healing: healing by divine grace and healing that utilizes the powers of nature," which "are not mutually exclusive.

"Reiki, however, "finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief," it explained.

The guidelines note that this technique of healing "was invented in Japan in the late 1800s by Mikao Usui, who was studying Buddhist texts."

The report continues: "According to Reiki teaching, illness is caused by some kind of disruption or imbalance in one's 'life energy.' A Reiki practitioner effects healing by placing his or her hands in certain positions on the patient's body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki, the 'universal life energy,' from the Reiki practitioner to the patient."

Spiritual healing

It further explains that the therapy has several aspects of a religion, being "described as a 'spiritual' kind of healing," with its own ethical precepts or "way of life."

Reiki "has not been accepted by the scientific and medical communities as an effective therapy," noted the guidelines. "Reputable scientific studies attesting to the efficacy of Reiki are lacking, as is a plausible scientific explanation as to how it could possibly be efficacious."

Nor can faith be the basis of this therapy, the bishops affirmed, as Reiki is different than the "divine healing known by Christians."

They explained, "The radical difference can be immediately seen in the fact that for the Reiki practitioner the healing power is at human disposal." For Christians, they said, "access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Savior," while Reiki is a technique passed from "master" to pupil, a method that will "reliably produce the anticipated results."

Insoluble problems

The guidelines state: "For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems. In terms of caring for one's physical health or the physical health of others, to employ a technique that has no scientific support -- or even plausibility -- is generally not prudent."

On a spiritual level, the document states, "there are important dangers." It explains: "To use Reiki one would have to accept at least in an implicit way central elements of the worldview that undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither to Christian faith nor to natural science.

"Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man's-land that is neither faith nor science.

"Superstition corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's religious feeling and practice in a false direction. While sometimes people fall into superstition through ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the name of the Church to eliminate such ignorance as much as possible.

"The document concludes, "Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy."

Seek The Verdict Of Conscience

“While we should strive for spiritual perfection of mind, purity and peace in God, it will be found to be not a little beneficial to this that we should return quietly into the inner secret place of the mind in the face of everything said, thought or done to us. There, withdrawn from everything else and completely recollected within ourselves, we can place ourselves in the knowledge of the truth before us and undoubtedly discover and understand that it does us absolutely no good, and rather the contrary, when we are praised or honoured by others while we recognise by the knowledge of the truth about ourselves within that we are blameworthy and guilty.

And just as nothing is any help if externally people praise someone if his conscience internally accuses him, in the same way on the contrary it does a man no harm to be despised, maligned and persecuted when he remains internally just as innocent, blameless and without fault. On the contrary he has all the more good reason to rejoice in the Lord with patience, in peace and silence. After all no adversity can do any harm where evil is not in control, and just as no evil goes unpunished, so no good goes unrewarded. Nor should we wish a reward with hypocrites or expect and receive profit from men, but from the Lord God alone, not in the present, but in the future, and not in fleeting time, but in eternity.

It is clear therefore that nothing is greater, and nothing better than to enter into the inner secret place of the mind always and in every tribulation and occurrence, and there to call upon the Lord Jesus Christ himself, our helper in temptations and tribulations, and to humble ourselves there by confession of sin, and praise God and Father himself, the giver of correction and the giver of consolation.

Above all one should accept everything, in general and individually, in oneself or in others, agreeable or disagreeable, with a prompt and confident spirit, as coming from the hand of his infallible Providence or the order he has arranged. This attitude will lead to the forgiveness of our sins, the deliverance from bitterness, the enjoyment of joy and security, the outpouring of grace and mercy, introduction and establishment into a close relationship with God, abundant enjoyment of his presence, and firm cleaving and union with him.

But let us not copy those who from hypocrisy and Pharisaism want to appear better and different from what they are, and to make a better impression and appearance before men of being something special, than they know in truth inside to be so. For it is absolute madness to seek, hunger for and aspire to human praise or renown, from oneself or others, when one is in spite of it all inwardly full of cravings and serious faults.

And certainly the good things we have talked about above will flee him who chases such vanities, and he will merely bring disgrace on himself. So always keep your faults and your own incapacity before your eyes, and know yourself, so that you can be humbled and not try to avoid being held as the lowest, vilest and most abject scum by everyone when you are aware of the grave sins and serious faults in yourself.

For which reason consider yourself compared to others as dross to gold, weeds to the wheat, chaff to the grain, a wolf to the sheep, Satan to the children of God. And do not seek to be respected by others and given precedence before others, but rather flee with all your heart and soul the poison of this disease, the venom of praise, the concern for boasting and vanity, lest, as the prophet says, The wicked is praised in his own heart’s desires, (Psalm 10.4) and Isaiah, They who speak good of you, deceive you and destroy the way of your feet, (Isaiah 3.12) and the Lord in Luke, Woe to you when men speak well of you! (Luke 6.26).”

That we should seek the verdict of our conscience in every decision – On Cleaving to God

– SAINT ALBERT THE GREAT

(This was taken from the internet website: AETERNUS )

A Humble Opinion Of Oneself

"You don't love in your enemies what they are, but what you would have them become by your prayers." (ST. AUGUSTINE)

"If it seems to you that you know many things and thoroughly understand them all, realize that there are countless other things of which you are ignorant. Be not haughty, but admit your ignorance. Why should you prefer yourself to another, when there are many who are more learned and better trained in God's law than you are? If you are looking for knowledge and a learning that is useful to you, then love to be unknown and be esteemed as nothing. ... It is great wisdom and perfection to consider ourselves as nothing and always to judge well and highly of others. If you should see someone commit a sin or some grievous wrong, do not think of yourself as someone better, for you know not how long you will remain in good state. We are all frail; but think of yourself as one who is more frail than others." (THOMAS A' KEMPIS, from the book THE IMITATION OF CHRIST)