Current rumours and other baseless tosh on facebook

[sgtkate]

I don't mean to be rude. But of course I understand how Facebook etc works.

 

I'd suggest that a review of what constitutes "friendship" might be enlightening. Aristotle's

Nicomachean Ethics is a place to start. Friendship has to be practiced to be of value. It cannot be done at a distance. A sociological review of Facebook reveals -what is called - a "weak network " of acquaintances . Acquaintances are not friends.

 

"Perhaps the central quality of some of my oldest friendships is that they have endured long periods of being apart" ( Love Undetectable , Reflections on Friendship, Sex and Survival , Andrew Sullivan ,p 194).

Making lasting friends requires more than wittering on -on Facebook-about what we had for breakfast ! So it goes .

 

I'm now off down the Sheath to make a whole cabal of new friends by buying them beer. Ting-a-ling (We laugh).

 

Of course it can be done at a distance! I have a friend who I call every few weeks, and she calls me at similar intervals, yet we have never met. We have supported each other through some of the worst times in my life and having someone who is outside my usual group of friends who I can sound off to is liberating. Perhaps you wouldn't call her a friend but I've known her for 15 years, and might actually meet her this year as she's getting married and I've been invited.

 

Just don't be so judgmental on other peoples experiences. Facebook serves a great purpose, keeping in touch with people who have moved away or people I find interesting enough to follow but don't meet up with often. I do agree that everyone (even agrophobics!) need real human contact in their lives, the feeling of a hug off your best mate when you've had a rubbish day is far better than a phone call, but facebook has a place in my life in the same way email and letter writing once did.

[petemcewan]

Of course it can be done at a distance! I have a friend who I call every few weeks, and she calls me at similar intervals, yet we have never met. We have supported each other through some of the worst times in my life and having someone who is outside my usual group of friends who I can sound off to is liberating. Perhaps you wouldn't call her a friend but I've known her for 15 years, and might actually meet her this year as she's getting married and I've been invited.

 

Just don't be so judgmental on other peoples experiences. Facebook serves a great purpose, keeping in touch with people who have moved away or people I find interesting enough to follow but don't meet up with often. I do agree that everyone (even agrophobics!) need real human contact in their lives, the feeling of a hug off your best mate when you've had a rubbish day is far better than a phone call, but facebook has a place in my life in the same way email and letter writing once did.

 

 

 

 

First off.I don't disagree with the idea that Facebook -et-al, has a purpose in terms of communicating. However, the idea that one can generate meaningful

friendships is a conceit. Many individuals join to make "friends". The word "friend" crop up endlessly in all the post made in this thread.

The 20th century has almost no theoretical explanation of friendship. No exposition of what it means,no defense of it or even attack on it. Those modern writers who have ventured there to deal with the concept of friendship ,have often done so in passing-a brief lecture by Kant. A rant by Kierkegaard. A sublime description by Oakeshot. The first and last serious treatment of the matter was Montaigne's essay "De l'amitee"

You have to journey way back, to ancient and medieval times, to glimpse a word where the relationship was given due account-and seen as worth examining;"as a critical social institution, as an ennobling moral experience, as an immensely delicate but essential interplay of the virtues required to sustain a fully realised human being" (Andrew Sullivan, Love Undetectable ).

It's an intellectual conceit to suggest that writers like Aristotle have little to tell us about friendship because there wasn't Facebook or social media or the phone etc. Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics " commits 50% of the "Ethics" to the description of the concept of friendship. That old geezer knew a "thing or two about a thing or two" when it came to reflecting on what "is friendship".

One of the greatest -dare I say,poetical-expressions of friendship was Tennyson's "In Memoriam ". I suggest you and "Cyclone" read it. The essay by Montaigne was written about a friend that had been wrenched bitterly away from him at an early age.

Cicero's classic writings on friendship was written in honour of a dead friend.

Augustine's expression of grief about the death of a friend is the first time Augustine expressed such sentiments about his loss of a friend. These ancient commentators have a thing or two to teach us about what we think

is the nature of friendship.

Augustine was one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. He described friendship as "sweet beyond all the sweetness of life " . So when his friend died of a sudden illness.His grief was of such an intensity that today we reserve for one of our immediate family. "It starts "Grief darkens my heart......" I suggest you go and find it and read it.

So profound friendship is deeper that sharing a few things in common : like football, rugby,running, climbing,cycling,history and social media.

M. Oakshot has the following to say on friendship ,"A friend is not somebody one trusts to behave in a certain manner, who supplies certain wants, who has certain agreeable qualities, or who holds accepted opinions, he /she is somebody who engages the imagination,who excites

contemplation ,who provokes interest ,sympathy delight and loyalty simply on account of the relationship entered into" (Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis Library Press 1991).

 

So Facebook and social media provide networks of communication-and that's all. Real human relationships -like "Friendship- have to be struck up by human interaction. The coming together in the same physical space.

Social media facilitates the evolvement of acquaintances .

How can one strike up friendships if one doesn't know what it is in the first place ?

Edited December 21, 2015 by petemcewan

[Cyclone]

Nobody (on this thread) has claimed that you can make new friends through facebook.

Personally I've said multiple times that the only facebook friends I think it's reasonable to have, are ones who are friends first in real life.

 

Strawman - I didn't claim that Aristotle had little to tell us. I did however say that living 3000 miles apart was a very different scenario in ancient Greece when compared to today.

[petemcewan]

Nobody (on this thread) has claimed that you can make new friends through facebook.

Personally I've said multiple times that the only facebook friends I think it's reasonable to have, are ones who are friends first in real life.

 

Strawman - I didn't claim that Aristotle had little to tell us. I did however say that living 3000 miles apart was a very different scenario in ancient Greece when compared to today.

 

Thank you for your comments.It's been interesting.

[RootsBooster]

A lot of people on FB currently outraged by (and sharing) the Daily Mail's sensational headline about UK Government giving £1 Billion to foreign aid but apparently doing nothing to help the UK flood victims.

 

I'm sure this is all very true

 

(At least £50 million was allocated when floods first hit a few weeks ago, I suspect more may be allocated with the extra floods hitting).

[Axismundi]

I've noticed there is a if it's on Facebook it's got to be true mentality among a lot of Facebookers. People posting pictures oof people and branding them pedophiles or child beaters is my personal gripe. Just the other day somebody had uploaded two photos spliced together.one was of a child with a bruise on the side of his face the other was of so!me guys Facebook profile photo. The poster was stating that he'd beaten his child quite severely. There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he'd actually caused the bruise on the child's face but everybody was sharing it and calling him scum

[Cyclone]

I like to post links to snopes when I see such rubbish.

But I don't tend to be friends with people who uncritically spread nonsense.

I see far more of that on this forum than on facebook.

[runningman1]

Nobody (on this thread) has claimed that you can make new friends through facebook.

Personally I've said multiple times that the only facebook friends I think it's reasonable to have, are ones who are friends first in real life.

 

Strawman - I didn't claim that Aristotle had little to tell us. I did however say that living 3000 miles apart was a very different scenario in ancient Greece when compared to today.

 

I have made new friends via social media, Facebook included. One of my good friends commented on a similar page to sheffield online for another town a few years ago. I found the post hilarious. We started posting on the same things and found we made each other laugh.

I found out he was a football fan and invited him to the pub along with a few of my "real life" friends and we all got on great. Now my orginal group of friends and his group of friends are all one, so from that one new friend I made perhaps 6 more.

 

I made a good few friends in my pof days, from dates that went well, but not well enough for romance. Two of them in particular are a fairly big part of my life now, I even set one of them up on a blind date.

 

To assume that you can't make proper friends on the internet is outdated.

[Axismundi]

The best one I ever read that hundreds of people were sharing which took me the whole of 50 seconds to disprove. Was the one that stated Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change it's name to KFC because legally they weren't allowed to use the word chicken as there products didn't contain any lol.

You click on the website in BIG BOLD LETTERS on there main page it stated "made with 100% chicken" lol..

[petemcewan]

I have made new friends via social media, Facebook included. One of my good friends commented on a similar page to sheffield online for another town a few years ago. I found the post hilarious. We started posting on the same things and found we made each other laugh.

I found out he was a football fan and invited him to the pub along with a few of my "real life" friends and we all got on great. Now my orginal group of friends and his group of friends are all one, so from that one new friend I made perhaps 6 more.

 

I made a good few friends in my pof days, from dates that went well, but not well enough for romance. Two of them in particular are a fairly big part of my life now, I even set one of them up on a blind date.

 

To assume that you can't make proper friends on the internet is outdated.

 

I don't assume anything. I think you don't get it. Ralph Waldo Emerson described friendship as a means of being more fully oneself.

 

"The soul environs itself with friends,that it may enter into grander self acquaintance or solitude. A friend,therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am,

 

I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being,in all its height,variety and curiosity,reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature..... Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy untamable , devoutly revered".( The Esoteric

Emerson). Substitute "her" for "him",if you like -and it stills works.

 

So you see "friendship" is a little more deep than having :a laugh down the pub, sharing a pint, having a kick about,going to the footie,playing games,chatting on the internet,being invited to weddings,funerals and christenings etc. So endeavour as much as you like on the internet. You will never develop a friendship that approaches anywhere near the depth and breadth of that described by :Emerson, Augustine, Cicero, Oakshott and Aristotle. As I've said before. To have a friendship requires that you Know what friendship is in the first place. So it goes. Happy New Year by the way.

PS. The internet may place you in contact with "potential " friends. The rest has to be worked at. A friendship unexamined is a friendship not worth having. (Someone said something like that about life-i forget who).

Edited December 29, 2015 by petemcewan