Social Network or Social Minefield?

Contributed the following article to the APRIL-MAY 'Combined' issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

Very early in my childhood, I learned that man is a ‘social animal’. I remember a teacher driving this indelibly into our minds in the morning assembly one day, “No man is an island”. I did not understand its full import then. Over time however, I have come to understand that we need one another and that communication is key to both express and fulfill this need.

 

Man has always had the urge to connect with dear ones. Before telephones became common place towards the close of the 20th century, all long-distance communication was through postal mail with a minimum turn-around of 6 working days. However, convergence of Information Technology and Telecommunication Systems over the last decade, have made it easier now for people using different forms of communication to interconnect. It was first the explosion of email and pagers. Slowly online chat replaced emails and increased comfort with SMS and the proliferation of mobile handsets and cheaper service plans made pagers altogether obsolete. Bottom line is that communication has become faster and cheaper.

 

It is true that modern communication technologies have reduced the wait time for responses. They have also helped loved ones stay in touch with each other anytime, anywhere and removed lot of anxiety about each other’s safety and well-being from their hearts. However it has also led to unnecessary communication that just fills time. Even without a need to communicate, people indulge in empty chatter to just kill time and avoid boredom. Time that could otherwise have been used in more profitable activities and boredom that could have been overcome in meaningful ways are now being handled through casual communication with acquaintances and even strangers. Modern technology has left more time at people’s disposal and Social Networking has attracted a great number of such folks.

 

Social Networking provides the power to easily locate, connect with and communicate ideas to like-minded people. A positive outcome has been collaborative learning. Students in some institutions submit assignments on a Social Networking platform. In some other, students are asked to post summaries of the classes they attended, so those who missed classes can update themselves by reading them. Alumni groups on Social Networking sites have helped students decide on Colleges, Careers, etc., based on inputs from students who had passed out earlier. Students have even got Question papers from previous years uploaded so that they are useful for future students when preparing for various examinations.

 

Social Minefield:

 

However it needs to be stated that it is a minefield that can destroy lives. A Research team in the U.S. had found students’ concentration to lapse within just 15 minutes of study, because of the urge to check their Facebook page almost every third minute. Spending too much time on Social Networking sites can lead one to “narcissistic tendencies” – excessive self-love and fascination with oneself. Analysts following cultural trends had said of Television half-a-century ago, that it was transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. This is even truer of Social Network with its potential to accommodate millions on stage compared to the hundreds or thousands that are accommodated on Television screens. It produces a vain behavior where one is trying to show off all the time. It has the potential to make users more prone to aggressive and anti-social behavior too. It can also cause in users bouts of anxiety, depression and sleeping problems.

 

Neil Postman had said in his 1985 book ‘Amusing ourselves to death’, “When I hear people talk about the information super highway, that it will become possible to shop at home, and bank at home, and get your texts at home, and get your entertainment at home, I often wonder if this doesn't signify the end of any community life.” This indeed has come true. It is removing all elements of community living and driving individuals into a closet, and this is happening from very young age. Youth are wasting time not using it to go out and play or interact with others.

 

Worse still, man's almost infinite appetite for distractions is hurtling him to his downfall today. Today’s world is controlling him by inflicting pleasure. If they are not wary, they could be drawn to inappropriate content on the internet and become slaves for live. Neil Postman had recalled how correctly Huxley had foreseen what was coming. Huxley had more than 50 years ago dismissed fears that people in power would ban books, deprive people of information, conceal truth and make the masses captive. He rather feared that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one; that people in power would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism; that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance; and that the masses would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some form of illicit pleasure. In short, he feared that what we love will ruin us. When one looks at the preoccupation of today’s world with Social Networking and how it is being used, Huxley’s words have chillingly become true.

 

In Closing:

 

“When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive”, says Proverbs 23:1-3. A popular Indian saying likewise advises us to emulate the proverbial goose that separates the milk from water before consuming. It would be wise to exercise such discretion and be extremely careful about what we consume on Social Networking sites. Let us follow the example of Daniel who resolved not to defile himself with wine from the King’s table and stay healthy with the vegetables from his kitchen.

World's Greatest LOVE story

Contributed the following article to the February 2012 issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

 

Romance has been fantasized across centuries.  Anyone who is in love feels that he has obtained the ultimate. He cares about nothing other than being with the one he is in love with.  He often forgoes food to be on time where his ‘love’ is expected to be, foregoes sleep thinking about all the ‘sweet little nothings’ that they exchanged over their last meeting and conjuring what he should speak when they meet again, and often forgoes a lot of his duties, be it at the workplace or school, and at home.  On the other hand, most people who have never fallen in love wonder if ever such a ‘love relationship’ will come their way.  That is one reason why masses throng to watch love stories in theatres, to vicariously experience ‘love’, although in the lives of a strange couple and that too fictitious.

Anyone who is bugged by romantic love forgets that he too had been born a baby someday, had longed for the loving attention of his parents and then wanted the joyful company of friends as he began to spend more time away from home since going to school.  Just as with romance, only some have got to experience the love of their parents and friends, while for others it had always been a ‘Mirage’ - a dream that never materialized.  Often children born to working couples, envy their friend who is received at home by his mom and entertained with an evening snack.

Most of us grow past our longings for love from parents, friends and even the romantic love and desire the mature love of a spouse.  Love of someone who is not always in awe of your charm and strength, but who loves you despite your shortcomings.  Someone who accepts you as you are and for who you are.  Experience is not the same in the marital landscape too.  Some come across as ideal couples, always proud of the other and always nice to the other.  However, most couples struggle to get along in their private lives, even when signs of strain do not show up outside.  There is a silent longing if this is what married life is all about.

LOVER PAR EXCELLENCE

Whatever your age is and your experience has been in your childhood, growing years, adolescence and adult life, you need to know that there is one who has always loved you.  He has loved you more dearly than a parent, longed to have a relationship more eager than a doting lover, and ever willing to support you several times over the most understanding spouse.

He is the God about whom it is said that he is LOVE personified.  Though we will not understand Trinity on this side of glory, we can see that there is love and community in the Godhead from eternity to eternity.  After the last supper on his way to Gethsemane Jesus makes these astounding statements while he prays.  He prays that “all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21).  He tells the Father, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22,23).  At the beginning, before He created earth and put man on it, we see that God said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26).  We see of the Son of God harking back to the creation time, “Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him” (Prov 8:30).  Jesus is spoken of as the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the father (John 1:18, KJV).

This God who is Love, Joy and self-sufficient, decided to create man and love him as a Father, as a doting lover, and as his Husband.  He has across time spoken to man in endearing terms.  In Moses’ time, about 15 centuries before Christ, we see him talking to the Israelites, “There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.”

During Hosea’s time, about 7 centuries before Christ, he said of his people, “I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. . . In that day, you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.”  During Ezekiel’s time, while Judah had walked away from God and was in captivity in Babylon, he reminisced, “I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, and you became mine. . . I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry” (Eze 16:8, 10, 11)

This love for man cost him everything.  We see that Jesus Christ who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Phil 2:6,7).  The Lord washed the feet of his disciples; the Master washed the feet of his servants.  As a matter of fact, He said that He no longer called them servants, “because a servant does not know his master’s business.” Instead, He called them friends, for everything that He learned from His Father He had made known to them. (John 17:14, 15).  We find that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich (II Cor 8:9).  To be reunited in fellowship with his Creation, he chose the path of humiliation on the cross.   Sin is real and a just God had to rightly deal with it.  Ahead of walking to the cross, He laid open his heart to show man the full extent of his love (John 13:1).  He declared his love, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit” (John 15:13, 16).  He cried at the thought of separation from God, and had to walk alone through that valley, so you and I do not have to be strangers to God and feel the pangs of separation.

CONSTANT COMPANION

The Lord who lives in unapproachable light whom no man can see (I Tim 6:16), who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens (Heb 7:26), had to himself make us holy so he can live inside us and make our bodies his temple.  The Lord who rent the heavens to come down to walk alongside man, yearns to live inside of us, even as much as anyone who understands the glory of having him on his side yearns for such fellowship.

On the eve of crucifixion, he told such men who were crest-fallen about his impending departure, “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. . .  I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him . . . we will come to him and make our home with him. . . The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 13:33; 14:16-21, 23, 26)

“I am going away and I am coming back to you. . . It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment . . . a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me. . . Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (John 14:28; 16:7,8, 16, 22)”

TODAY, HE LIVES THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT INSIDE ANYONE WHO IS WILLING TO ACCEPT HIS LOVE.  WILL YOU INVITE HIM TO COME INSIDE YOU AND BRING HIS JOY AND PEACE TO FILL YOUR HEART?

Social Networking: Youth's boon or bane

Contributed the following article to a Magazine's January 2012 issue . . .

thinking aloud what should be one's New Year resolution with regard to Social Networking,

particularly for someone in their budding years - in school or in college.

 

 

Man has always had the need to connect with dear ones.  Until less than a quarter of a century ago, people had to wait for atleast a week, for receiving a response from a loved one after writing to him or her, when one of them did not have a phone.  However in the last 15 years, communication has made rapid strides in the form of email and then mobile phone.   More recently, increased comfort with online chat and SMS have made communication using the newer forms cheaper too.  To add to that, convergence of Information Technology and Telecommunication Systems have also made it easier for people using different forms of communication to interconnect.

While reducing the wait time for responses and removing the anxiety when a loved one’s safety had to be confirmed, it has also given rise to a lot of superfluous communication.  Even without a great need to communicate, people have resorted to empty chatter to kill time and avoid boredom. Thus time that could otherwise have been used in more profitable activities and boredom that could have been overcome in meaningful ways are now being handled through casual communication with acquaintances and even strangers.  Social Networking has attracted a great number of folks who have the time and feel bored.

Before we see what good or evil has come out of Social Networking, let us first see in what form it exists today.  Blogs, Microblogs like Twitter and Social Sites like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut, all fill the Social networking landscape.  Blogs let people communicate their ideas with others over internet in the form of short essays or through pictures and video shots.  Microblogs are for those who want to communicate ideas but are either not comfortable penning essays or do not have the time to do so.   A microblog is a statement you make in a few sentences not exceeding 140 characters.  Sites like facebook do not restrict you and let you communicate through short status updates (similar to microblog), or links to essays or photographs on some site.

In the eighties, TV was the favourite pastime; in the late nineties, it was web-surfing and now in the twenty-first century, it is Social Networking.  Myspace that was launched in August 2003 has 30 million users.  Orkut that was launched in January 2004 by Google, currently has over 66 million active users worldwide.  The most successful of these is Facebook that has more than 800 million active users. It had opened to general public only in September 2006 after having been launched 2 years earlier for the student community in Boston, US.  Twitter has 300 million users today, having been launched in July 2006.

Social Networking indeed allows one to easily locate, connect with and communicate ideas to like-minded people.  Certainly, this has made collaborative learning a greater possibility.  For example, students in some institutions submit assignments on a Social Networking platform.  In some other, students are asked to post summaries of the classes they attended, so those who missed classes can update themselves by reading them.  Alumni groups on Social Networking sites have helped students decide on Colleges, Careers, etc., based on inputs from students who had passed out earlier.  Students have even got Question papers from previous years uploaded so that they are useful for future students when preparing for various examinations.  But the question is what proportion of time is spent on such useful stuff and how many young people restrict themselves to productive activities.

Psychology professor Larry Rosen of the California State University, in a speech titled “Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids” has warned of several negative outcome.  Her Research team had found the students’ concentration to lapse within just 15 minutes of study, because of the need to check their Facebook page almost every third minute.  Such students are also likely to have behavioural problems and “narcissistic tendencies” from spending too much time logged on to such sites.  The negative effects include making students more prone to vain, aggressive and anti-social behaviour.   According to their study, children under 13 who overuse social sites on a daily basis are also more likely to be prone to bouts of anxiety, depression, sleeping problems and stomach aches.

 “If you find honey, eat just enough --too much of it and you will vomit”, says Proverbs  25:15  We also have a Tamil saying that reads ‘In excess, even honey becomes poisonous’.   Even so, irrespective of all the good that can come out of Social Networking, it becomes a bane when it is used in addictive proportion.  On this New Year’s eve, let us resolve to live by guidelines about when we would get on to Social Networking sites and how long we would stay online.  Let us be wary about Social Networking being a good servant but a bad master.

Video & Online Gaming: Refresher or a Distraction?

Contributed the following article to the November 2011 issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

Entertainment is supposedly a leisure time activity, to provide some diversion from the monotony of work.  You will be familiar with the adage “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”  In fact, God gave man Sabbath so he is able to turn from six days of hard work and rest on the seventh day.  Sabbath was intended to be a renewing, rejuvenating experience for him, resting from hard labor and enjoying fellowship with his creator.  At thy right hand, there are pleasures for evermore, says the Psalmist (Psalms 16:11).

The good Lord who provided Adam and Eve with the fruits of the different trees that man could enjoy has also provided man with good diversions.  Reading is one and physical activity is another – one stimulating the mind and the other toning the body.  Pure pleasure brings one within the reach of God’s voice.  C.S.Lewis in his satire ‘The Screwtape Letters’, has Screwtape (senior devil) chastising Wormwood (junior devil) for failing to keep the patient (Christian) from crossing over to the Enemy’s (God’s) camp, as follows.  “You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends.  In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone.  In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures.  Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this?”

Pleasure is God’s gift to man.  We again have this insight in the following words put into the mouth of Screwtape. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on Enemy’s ground.  I know we have won many a soul through pleasure.  All the same, it is His invention, not ours.  He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.  All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence, we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.  An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”

For most folks, pleasure and entertainment go hand in hand.  People entertain themselves by catering to their senses. There are those that are outright recognized as evil and most people have no problem calling them so.  However, when it comes to modes of entertainment that appear to be harmless or that have both goodness and evil to offer, we are often not sure how to deal with them. Movies were a popular entertainment for the masses right from the turn of the 20th century until it was superseded by Television by the middle of the century. By 1962, 90% of U.S. households had a television set.  In India, television sales picked up in early eighties when Doordarshan introduced color telecasting and rapidly installed transmitters nationwide to coincide with the 1982 Asian Games.

The Television set came to be called the Idiot box, because people idled and idiotised themselves in front of it, for long hours.  Once entertainment was used to pass leisure time but slowly it became the default way to fill time so much so that it started eating into productive time.  While children before the eighties had good diversions like outdoor games, the TV got them glued indoors, making a fool of themselves in front of the box.  The latest to join this string of technological advancements to produce pleasure is the Electronic Game system. In 2000, Sony estimated that one out of every four households in the United States had a Sony PlayStation. Since then the numbers have only increased, with systems like the Nintendo Wii luring the casual gamer.

Electronic games have been around since the early 1970s.  Initially they were available on huge Coin-operated devices inside Game Arcades.  Some might remember the game ‘Space Invaders’.  Very soon their poor cousins comprising a hand-held console that could be plugged to Television, producing simple graphics and requiring custom plastic overlays to be taped on the TV screen, became available.  In mid-eighties, full-fledged Home Video Game consoles with high quality display and choice of games through pluggable cartridges, became available.  By mid-nineties, games became available on mobile phones.  All along, games that were originally developed for Arcade or Home Video Game system were also available for PCs through porting and subsequently they were also developed specifically for the computers.

Eminent neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield told attendees at a Dorset conference that although certain technologies can encourage creativity, overall the effects are negative stemming from an unhealthy addiction to technology.  She was the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain between 1998 and 2010 – the oldest independent Research body in the world.  In her speech ‘The Future of the Brain and The Brain of the Future’, she said “Screen technologies cause high arousal which in turn activates the brain system's underlying addiction. This results in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity.  Connections in the brain can be temporarily disabled by activities with a strong sensory content - effectively 'blowing the mind'. Or they can be inactivated permanently by degeneration - i.e. dementia. Other symptoms could include shortened attention span and a tendency for reckless behavior.”

Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist and Director of Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit, while disagreeing on overall effect being negative, acknowledges that when played to excess, video game playing can in some extreme cases be addictive, especially online video game playing where the game never pauses or ends, and has the potential to be a 24/7 activity.

With the turn of the twenty first century, advanced technologies such as online gaming over internet, use of motion as input, Infra Red tracking and support for wireless controllers, have come to be employed. This allows people to play virtual Tennis wielding wireless controllers strapped to wrist or held in the palm – not on real court outside but through a simulation indoor.  Susan Greenfield is worried that spending time online gaming could pose problems for millions of youngsters.  “There is a need to be outside, to climb trees and feel the grass under your feet and in your face.”  Experts opine that overuse injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, bursitis, and tendonitis once reserved for long-time computer users could impact these youngsters.  They also fail to develop socialization skills as long hours of being caught up with video games leave no desire for one-on-one human company.  This is normally accompanied by a decline in verbal memory performance.  In the case of children, loss of physical activity and excessive eating that accompanies gaming often lead to obesity and neglect of studies leads to drop in academic performance.

Most importantly, the Home Video Game consoles tend to suck individuals into addiction.  Such an addiction leads to gross wastage of precious time, distracting the individual from life’s greater purpose.  John Wesley’ mother Susanna Wesley had cautioned her young son against anything that took off his relish of spiritual things.  God asked Gideon who was leading an army of 10,000 for battling the Medianites to separate out folks who cupped water in their hands and lapped it up like a dog while stopping at a river for a drink, and send away the rest.  These were folks who kept an eye for potential approach of the enemy unlike those who were distracted from their purpose, being immersed in water literally while quenching their thirst.  Any pleasure to be legitimate must refresh us without distracting us from, diminishing or destroying our final goal.