Tag: empathy

I find I have a difficult relationship with [Facebook](https://wwwfacebookcom/josephottinger) I think Facebook has a lot of potential value, but with so many people using it so differently, it ends up taking almost as much as it gives. It not only gives me a neutral environment to interact with friends from my distant past – people from middle school whom I still remember fondly! It’s given me a chance to see old friends’ lives – as their careers and their children mature. It’s given me a chance to vicariously participate in the things that matter to them – graduations, successes, failures. I’ve had closure for things from years and years ago – conversations with people who had tried to bully me, whether ignorantly or not. It’s given us a chance to see each other as people, actual adults, as opposed to the caricatures created by first impressions of strangers. Facebook is excellent at fostering light connections, but such connections do a poor job of representing actual *people* – including me. On Facebook, an offhand statement, meant mildly and in context, appears as a core belief, a statement I am willing to defend to the death and because of the nature of first impressions, no amount of context changes that impression. Incidentally, I think libertarians who advocate anarchy are wrong, although I do think a society composed *solely* of people with decent rational self-interest could exist and prosper in pure anarchy. But Facebook readers *tend* to not recognize that continuum and its potential for growth and refinement. ) But at the same time, in America we advocate innocence until guilt is proven – and Facebook ignores the potential innocence. I’m tempted to filter Facebook quite a bit – spend a few days looking at who posts most often on my feed, and what they post.