Ego

Ego can be a touchstone and a prison. While finding one's center involves a certain amount of devotion to self-discovery and understanding, finding one's most peaceful and compassionate place in human society involves turning from one's own needs in favor of awareness of the needs of others. I believe the person with the most developed, secure ego is also the person whose ego is least apparent in productive social interactions.

The current bee-hive mentality which is popular in some segments of society can be a retardant to healthy ego development. Conformity and the distractions of the mass-think which develops in social media rob time away from reflection, solitude and reading those sources which would lead to self-discovery and understanding. Facebook-think is a salad of shallow observations, one-liners and thumbs-up "likes".

Distraction from suffering does not address or modify its source. It fuels denial through bolstering an attitude that everyone is the same in every way. This equivocation deepens dysfunction when it is used to seal over deep scars of developmental trauma, individual genetic problems or chronic relational problems. While the sense of belonging is soothing, it does not heal or modify individual challenges, which can worsen when ignored over time.

So, there is a great challenge in this Twitter age. While constantly being and writing about "me", man do not take the time and effort to analyze and understand the "me" being communicated to the world. What is it's purpose? Where is it channeling its energies? What is its place in society?

I see my own humanist practice as working on my self-understanding in order to better contribute to the human experience through communication and action in each moment. I seek to be a process, as opposed to a fait accompli. An important part of that process is the constant interaction and influence of others in various settings and relationships as my days progress.

Discovery

When you move through life, do you feel whole? Does your sense of self move with you? Does your perception of yourself and your life change with each circumstance you encounter?

Discovering who you really are is perhaps the most valuable and satisfying activity of any life. It is not easy. The mind can be a trickster.

The current prejudice in American society is anti-judgment and anti-analysis. This makes serious investigation of who you really are more difficult. Peer pressure may encourage you to pretend to be whoever you wish to be in any moment. Peer pressure may encourage you to accept your unhealthy obesity or drinking problem. Peer pressure may dissuade you from asserting what you know to be true or just. In some ways, the Facebook society is an extension of high school, not a mature environment, which promotes serious self-discovery.

Knowing yourself requires the dedicated practice of truth-telling. And it starts in front of your mirror. This requires time, patience and courage. Along the way, you may learn self-forgiveness, self-acceptance and the joy of rebuilding yourself in each moment into the person you wish to become.

Boundaries

The bee-hive mentality which has arisen due to social networking sites has its benefits and drawbacks. For the socially adept, the Facebook phenomenon can enhance an already vibrant social fabric: An actual social life, in other words. However, for the socially and geographically isolated, the social network sites can deepen isolation in three-dimensional terms. The illusion of a social life is not an actual social life.

There is no touch on Facebook; there is only "in touch". There is no kiss, no held hand, no reassuring shoulder rub. Facebook is a construction of pixels on a screen, wired to keyboards and mice. Nothing more.

I recently had several very unpleasant encounters in branches of a major banking institution. I found I was dealing with highly educated and abysmally inept customer service personnel. They were treating me like one of their Facebook friends, I assume. Unable to make the distinction between their roles as employees of a bank and Facebook friends or friend-of-friends, they addressed me in an insulting and personally intrusive manner.

One bank manager, a woman of obviously unhappy disposition, held a bank check containing my funds tightly to her pregnant abdomen as she interrogated me as to how I planned to spend my own money. She was stunned when I told her it was none of her business and advised her to hand me my funds immediately. She did so reluctantly with a look of consternation, like some short-circuited zombie.

Working in the virtual and working in the actual are different. In the virtual, electronic switches allow you to play god with your virtual reality. In the actual, the virtual attitude is called narcissism. It is high time that those of us who are able to discern these less-than-subtle distinctions practice active education of those who are unable to do so. Apparently, their parents did not do a very good job of it.

Texting

I recently had an experience which baffled me. An old friend posted a comment on my first essay for The New Humanism, a journal of the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. She was good enough to email me to alert me to her dissatisfaction with the comment on retrospection. When I read the comment, I was stunned. It didn't read at all like her, as I have known her for about 25 yrs..

The comment has been removed with her consent. I have processed my initial feelings of disappointment and anger at the glibness of the comment in the context of a journal, which I highly respect as a serious forum for Humanism. The whole experience has made me think quite a bit.

It seems we are all becoming sloppy with our speech in print. That is, with texting and Facebook-ing day in and day out, our communication is becoming too immediate and uninhibited in general. This is one of very few situations which have effected me in this way, but I hear stories quite regularly in media about cyber-bullying and bad communication in new media. More contact, less quality. I feel the pull of it, the challenge to be who I am with one line.

My own style of writing is frequently criticized in on line situations. I have been told I am too formal, too stuffy, cold, too intellectual, too uptight, etc.. I have stopped frequenting chatroom situations because of this and have no intention of embracing Twitter.

There are reasons why I write as I do. I began my schooling with severe dyslexia in a Roman Catholic school in 1955, when Catholic nuns saw dyslexia as a sign of the devil. I spent many hours crying in a closed coat closet at the back of my first grade classroom. This unintentionally Skinnerian method scared me into reading from left to right eventually. I learned to slow down and ignore the mockery of my classmates as I picked through the words through restrained sobs.

Later on, I had two pen pals. One in Australia and one in France. They were wonderfully encouraging tutors. The girl in Australia, who planned to be a nurse, gave me my first compliment as a writer. She wrote that she waited every week for my letters and saved them to read at night before she went to sleep. My French correspondent, who wrote to me to learn English, gave me confidence by allowing me to explain English idioms to him and coach his study of my language. Since I was useless at French, this was a true gift: I learned that I could communicate intelligently with someone in another culture without having to be discouraged by my deficiency in their language.

My pre-medical course in college was grueling for me. It was a bad fit, but my parents urged me on for their sake. In my sophomore year, I desperately wanted to be an English Literature major. I was immature and seventeen. I allowed myself to be talked out of it by my parents. My English Literature professor at the time became quite upset and ignored me for the rest of the time I was at that campus. In a strange way, I took his anger as a compliment.

The years have given birth to a series of personal journals with diary entries, poetry and short stories. I am a writer. I have been since an early age, but I have only been able to say that I am a writer with confidence for the last several years.

Now I find writing is becoming casual speech, and casual speech is corrupting writing, in my opinion.

I know I am definitely not the first 60-year-old who has felt like a stranger on a strange planet. But, I am not happy or comfortable feeling that way. I want to be in tempo with the Zeitgeist. I try to maintain an interest in expanding and changing technologies.

I guess I have found a boundary which I do not wish to cross. 'It's all good' has never been my slogan, because it isn't all good. Some of it is pretty awful. I will continue practicing considered, honest and mindful speech to the best of my ability. Whether by mouth or by keyboard. It is who I want to be and who I continue to try to become.

Practice

There is a current media blitz, waged by humanists and atheist organizations in the US. One of these promotes Greg Epstein's "Good Without God", an examination and exposition of humanism in modern society. This is all good. The more options of developing a constructive daily practice the better.

However, in this Facebook age, I do worry that a core piece of the message conveyed by Greg Epstein and others is being missed in the same way that a core piece of many religions is missed routinely. Humanism and religion are structures of intellectual conviction about the nature of the human experience and how best to make that experience worthwhile, moral, ethical, meaningful.

The practice of humanism or religion is the daily application of principles to reality in each human life. Some call this service, some call this mindful compassion, some call this practical morality. This practice piece, in my opinion, is the core value and worth of humanism or any religion.

The Facebook age is about information sharing, networking and virtual community. None of these is practice, as understood by most belief systems. These may lead to or support practice, but practice is something the individual does in real time with real people on real issues. Painting a disabled person's apartment is practice. Visiting hospice patients is practice. Volunteering in poor school systems is practice. Caring for your own elderly parents on a daily basis is practice. Teaching your children nonviolence and ethics is practice. Writing against injustice or for social progress to your political representatives is practice.

Virtual practice is not real practice.