The Desolation of Digital Anonymity

The amount of anger and hatred on Social Media is a growing concern.  Its seems that under cover of internet pseudonyms and often with a couple of glasses down their neck – normal mild mannered reasonable people can be turned into ranting nutters.  There is a law called ‘Godwins Law‘ named after an American Lawyer called Mike Godwin which goes something like this  ”As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”  this is otherwise known as Reductio ad Hitlerum. It seems that at times the relative anonymity of the internet is not conducive to rational debate.  A big news story in the UK is how the first paid ’Youth Police and Crime Commissioner’ career has ended before it began because of the hate filled comments she posted on Twitter.

 

As Pope Emeritus Benedict said ‘ Believers who bear witness to their most profound convictions greatly help prevent the web from becoming an instrument which depersonalizes people, attempts to manipulate them emotionally or allows those who are powerful to monopolize the opinions of others‘ (World CommunicationsDay 2011).  It is sad therefore to see how the Catholic presence on the internet seems to be dominated by shrill, inward looking and judgmental voices.  Many students have come to see me slightly bewildered by the attack made on Jesuits since Pope Francis’s election – sadly many of the most vicious attacks come from supposedly ‘orthodox’ voices.   Pope Emeritus Benedict was aware of this when he warned of a ‘parallel’ magisterium being set up on the internet   There also seems to be a correlation between the amount of posts per day some of these bloggers put up and how ‘detached’ from the real world they are. Simply put – if they could only spend more time meeting real people, then maybe they would become more compassionate, instead of being fixated on an distorted view of orthodoxy that they often use to hit their own bishops and the Pope with.

We need more moderate voices on the internet – otherwise those who shout the loudest – often from a cowardly or paranoid anonymity are over influencing the debate.

As today’s Gospel says

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light
and does not come toward the light,
so that his works might not be exposed.
But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,
so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Religion, Superstition and Exploitation

The headquarters of eBay in San Jose, California. Photographed on August 5, 2006 by user Coolcaesar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was fascinated to read that Ebay has recently banned the selling of spells, curses, hexes, magic, prayers, potions and healing sessions from its website.  Ebay – the virtual marketplace – is a capitalists dream.  Never has there been a market place with so many dimensions, with millions of items for sale worldwide.  The range of ‘ items are’grouped into more than 40,000 main and sub-categories, and cover everything for instance, a finger painting in real chocolate pudding by two-year-old Corbin, who is hoping to raise enough pocket money to visit Disney’s Magic Kingdom or a nifty black Ferrari 360 (starting at $150,000). Never before has there been a market with such abundant dimensions.  But it seems that even the free market has limits!

I think it is foolish to dismiss the paranormal, but also wise to protect the vulnerable from crass exploitation. There is a fine line between this type of exploitation and that of more reputable mainstream religions.  A slightly alarming development in Christianity over recent years has been the rise of the ‘Gospel of Prosperity’ mainly in Pentecostalist circles.  Something that impresses me about Pentecostalism is its ability to help people who are struggling ‘sort their lives out’ particularly in a poor urban context, and the creative ways many Pentecostalists put their faith into practical action and help transform communities and add to the common good. However what is a distortion of the Gospel is this idea that God will bless you financially if you donate generously to the pastor. Apart from obviously being open to corruption, it is this fusion of personal empowerment / self help which I think ultimately leads to a consumerist narcissism as opposed to the radical self-giving which is at the climax of the Gospels, and Jesus’s stress on servant leadership.  This distortion of Christianity is proving very popular in Asia, especially in South Korea which now has the biggest ‘church’ in the world in Seoul.

Interestingly eBay’s simple online system relies to an extent on the fact that most people are basically honest. But as the market grows in value, it inevitably attracts more rogues.  The first line of defence in online trading is eBay’s feedback profile, which is in effect the online reputation of both buyers and sellers. When any transaction is completed, both buyers and sellers are invited to rate how successful it has been, and leave a review. These reviews can be read by all users.  Many of the traders on eBay have come to value their reputations greatly, and those with enough positive-feedback scores are allowed to participate in buyer-protection schemes, which offer refunds. As far as religion goes – reputations are forged or destroyed at a much slower rate, over thousands of years.

Public Confessions

AMDG

The student paper here, The Mancunion, claims to be the biggest student paper in the country.  Generally speaking it is well produced and well written.  It is also invaluable for me to read at the moment as I am still getting my feet under the desk. A lot of student politics can tend to tiresome and the debates a bit shrill, but outside of that it is an enjoyable read.  I was fascinated to read an article last week about the popularity of a Manchester University Facebook page  which is ‘for students to write about the deepest secrets and most outrageous stories’ .  Called .‘University of Manchester Confessions’ it was started over a week ago and encourages students to anonymously write  “hilarious, embarrassing confessions,” to then be posted. Among the submissions are tales of sexual debacles, alcohol-infused blunders and halls of residence pranks. Evidently this is all the rage in uni’s up and down the country, tapping into a trend for public confessional culture which is generally for entertainment purposes and normally harmless. However we do know that occasionally vulnerable people are exploited, and do things for their 5 minute of fame which they regret for the rest of their lives – a la Gerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle (in the UK)

I was fascinated by this – partly because we are right across the road from the Union and the Mancunion’s offices.  And in the Holy Name church we have 120 confessions a week, many of them students.  The contrast is quite striking.  The healing that can go on in the confessional is very powerful, quite frequent and an honour to witness as a priest.  But that private sacred confessional is in contrast to the trend of public confessional. The generation of undergraduates spend a huge amount of time in a virtual road – where the private is being abolished.  As Google and Facebook have admitted we live a new world where Silicon Valley has given up on privacy. They see this abolition of privacy as a mission to change the world. As Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook said they are capitalising on three trends — First, a trend “from anonymity to authentic identity”. Secondly, a trend from “wisdom of crowds to wisdom of friends” and third, a trend “from being receivers of information to broadcasters of information”.  

I am concerned about this – as I am not sure that this is as healthy as these huge companies think it is.  Students are vulnerable and use social media unwisely at times.  I though it might be good to write a reflection for the Mancunion compare public and private confessional culture. I emailed the editor and offered this too him – as of yet – no response ………….

Digital Vertigo

AMDG

The Internet needs ‘saving’ from its current direction or we are heading into a digital nightmare of radical transparency and exhibitionism.  This was the basic theme presented at a fascinating discussion at the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday evening as Andrew Keen was promoting and discussing his new(ish) book ‘Digital Vertigo’ .  Keen, now in his early fifties, is one of the pioneering generation of digital entrepreneurs who is expressing alarm at the direction the internet is taking, with particular criticism for Facebook, he warns us that we are entering an age of unprecedented exhibitionism, which will be damaging for many. Most of us in the audience were Digital Immigrants (i.e. we remember life before the internet!) unlike the younger generation of Digital Natives who will feel the full force of the agenda to socialise the internet.  According to Keen, Silicon Valley  has written off privacy as being something archaic.  My experience in recent years of working as a chaplain and a teacher was how important it is to encourage my students to use Facebook / Twitter / You Tube prudently.   They need to realise that by putting, drunken, half-naked photos onto social network sites they are making themselves hostages to fortune.  The world is assessing our identity by what we leave online and the internet doesn’t forget!  Future employers will be very interested in finding out as much as they can about who they are about to invest in.

 

Andrew Keen – a weary wisdom

Reflecting on the stimulating evening, I couldn’t help thinking about the idea of ‘structural sin’.  Facebook / Google claim that they are providing a public good, they are trying to change the world and there is a lot of powerful evidence that there is some truth in that (Arab Spring, Charity Fundraising, Linking Isolated communities).  However there is a lie at  the heart of the agenda,  Facebook is making huge amounts of money at selling our private data to companies, it is a profit driven organisation not a public good.  It seems to me that this exploits the worst vulnerabilities of adolescents as they attempt to build a circle of friends,.  As we all know, as we are growing up we make mistakes, we experiment with who we are we, what we stand for.  My generation of Digital Natives are fortunate because those mistakes, the embarrassing things we did or said were done in private and are forgotten about.  The internet does not forget and therefore (as the point was made excellently yesterday) can’t forgive.  If the internet doesn’t learn to forgive it will be a dystopia – rather than the utopia that the first wave of internet entrepeneurs envisaged and hoped for.

Yes you can live without Facebook!

The final thing I have found myself reflecting on is what was said about ‘confessional’ culture.  Little did Andrew Keen know that sitting in the audience was a Catholic Priest who had spent nearly 2 hours in the confessional this weekend. It seems that as we are a city-centre church people come from all over Edinburgh to use the confessional here, I have found it a vibrant and very consoling ministry.  But that private confession, one to one, with the inviolability of the seal, has a profoundly healthy and healing dynamic. The confessional, ‘all out there’ culture, cheered (and jeered) on by reality TV, Jerry Springer, Jeremy Kyle, is damaging and exploitative, and as more of us live ‘on’ line there is a danger that we become more self-revelatory.  This pressure towards inappropriate self-disclosure must be resisted, otherwise we are ultimately being made fools of (like Scotty in Hitchcock’s Vertigo hence the title of the book). So thank you Andrew Keen –  I found him full of a weary wisdom, but feel his analysis is important, pragmatic, and he probably wouldn’t like this but redolent with a disguised and reluctant compassion.  I am going to buy his book!

 

 

Religion v2.0

AMDG

I remember doing my teacher training degree in the UK – and our course was being inspected by the government.  Part of the inspection was to observe us (the student-teachers) teaching in our placements.  I was observed teaching a religion lesson in a totally secular school in South London – where religion was at best a curiosity.  Of a student body of 1200 – the RE department had one teacher!!  Religious Education was tolerated – if not exactly encouraged. The student body generally matched the official apathy of the school – with one or two exceptions.  So my job was to win hearts and minds and stimulate interest.  I decided to teach a lesson on Religion on the Internet – asking the students to find out which ‘celebrity’ had the most listings on Google.  Beckham? No (159million).  Lady Gaga? No (500million). Obama (745million) – The answer was of course Jesus (847million).

I suppose the point is a serious one.  Religious believers (and fanatics! and bigots!) are very quick at adapting new technologies to promote their messages. It is easy to identify key moments in the development of communication technology.  Ancient writings moved from tablets – to scrolls – to books due to the invention of the Codex by Romans.  But it was the Early Christians spreading the Gospels and the Bible that made the Codex popular. Then of course came the Reformation and Gutenberg’s printing press – the innovation of movable type made mass printing of leaflets, pamphlets and of course the Gutenberg Bible feasible. Jump forward a few centuries and Marconi – the inventor of long distance radio – wanted to personally introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a Pope, Pius XI, announcing at the microphone: “With the help of God, who places so many mysterious forces of nature at man’s disposal, I have been able to prepare this instrument which will give to the faithful of the entire world the joy of listening to the voice of the Holy Father”  And then Thomas Doherty claimed in an oft repeated phrase that Golden Age Hollywood was “a Jewish-owned business selling Catholic theology to Protestant America.”

So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by the proliferation of religious content (of varying quality and accuracy) on the internet.  I particularly enjoy some of the creative video clips – which are great for use in schools / assemblies  / talks or even introducing prayer. One I was sent via twitter today:

See it without the water mark at this external link

You may well have seen this already by the excellent Igniter Media (also check out their Social Media Christmas)

And finally how about this for lapsed Catholics