Maragaret Atwood and Social Networking?

(Edited from original post of Oct 7, 2012)

The older I get, the more I find my inner musings mirrored in Margaret Atwood's writing. Here's an excerpt from her essay, "Deeper Into the Twungle" which echoes many of my own thoughts about the ever-expanding trend towards social networking:

Not long ago, I found myself having a Twitter conversation with a rotating skull. Its picture shows a skull turning around and around against a black background. Its handle is simply @rotatingskull. Its self-description is cryptic: “I am a skull that rotates.” When I asked it how I might make my own head rotate in this attractive manner—something I have always longed to do, as it would be a visual description of my state of mind in the mornings before caffeine—it told me I should view The Exorcist backwards while sprinkling holy water. Then it sent me a YouTube of itself in younger days, when it still had a skeleton, featuring as the prima ballerina—or ballerino—in the 1929 Disney Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance.

“Impressively nimble,” I replied. Then I hesitated. Wait a minute, I thought. You’re losing all perspective. You’re talking with a skull. You have no idea who this is. Would you let a skull pick you up at a bus stop?

Definitely not. But on Twitter you find yourself doing all sorts of things you wouldn’t otherwise do. And once you’ve entered the Enchanted E-Forest, lured in there by cute bunnies and playful kittens, you can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time. You might even find yourself climbing the odd tree—the very odd tree—or taking refuge in the odd hollow log—the very odd hollow log—because cute bunnies and playful kittens are not the only things alive in the mirkwoods of the Web. Or the webs of the mirkwoods. Paths can get tangled there. Plots can get thickened. Games are afoot.

Read the entire essay: Deeper into the Twungle, posted in the New York Review of Books

It's not that I don't like social media and networking.  Over the years, I've joined various sites which are now canopied under the all-inclusive term of social media.  In the early days of the web in the 90s, I participated in the free-for-all world of the bulletin board (or BB as it was called) where it was a no-holds-barred environment that often ended up nasty and bloody.  The back and forth banter of lively discussion devolving into slash, slice and slaughter of the innocents. Since then, I've tried to be selective about what I join.  Even so, I've managed to rack up a fair number of memberships.

Current site memberships:
- Blogger (two accounts)
- Classmates
- Facebook (two accounts)
- Flick'r
- Goodreads
- Google +
- Library Thing
- Photobucket
- Tumbl'r
- Twitter 
- Tripadvisor
- Wordpress 
- Hotmail (2 accounts)
- Google mail (2 accounts)

--> Plus numerous discussion forums - I suppose the equivalent of the oldtime BBs - where my participation varies widely from lurking to posting regularly.   

From time to time, I try and take a break from the above, only to find myself dragged back  sometimes out of curiousity, but oftimes out of necessity.  Because, guess what?  It's how people communicate these days.  

If I want to stay in touch with my sons who may be halfway across the globe, then I need to text, Twitter, email, chat or post online.  Now that I think about it, even blogging is becoming passe, giving way to quicker means of communication.  

I've learned the quickest way to get a response from my sons is to text because they let their phones go to voicemail, then don't answer for hours and even email messages tend to sit unanswered - sometimes for days.  And they certainly don't use conventional mail.  for them, snail mail is used under duress (e.g. for thank-you notes to elderly aunts) and much prefer texting to calling if they're in a hurry.

Well, I digress. The point is - and as the other Ellen always says - I do have one, is that all this social media stuff is here to stay and getting to be more necessity than toy in how we communicate with each other. 

. . . So what's this I hear about clouds?

Fair

I'm lazy,so I'm posting something I've done elsewhere. The following is a piece I wrote for an online forum group that was given the prompt, "Fair? You want fair?" It started out as a dialogue between characters having an argument about the fairness of life, but it sounded so full of cliches that I scrapped it. Then I read a piece by Margaret Atwood that got me thinking of trying it as an assertion rather than a question. This eventually led me to try writing it in the second person. I almost never write in the second person. But here it is.


Fair. You want fair? Of course you do. Everyone does.

All your life you’ve been told to be fair, play fair, act fair, and you expect fairness in return. You build your life around being fair. You speckle your speech with statements like “to be fair,” it’s only fair,” “in all fairness”.

You build a fairness cocoon around yourself. It envelops you and all those around you.

The cocoon is layered with all the fairness you’ve spun in careful, cobwebby threads over the course of a lifetime. It’s a glowing, shimmery fuzz ball of goodness and light. It must be good because in your mind, fair equals good.

Using an invisible scale, you balance how much love, goodwill, and self to allocate to friends, family, charities, causes good and maybe not so good. You take your cue from a friend who donates to charities that support all the major body organs – heart, lung, kidneys, liver, brain (it’s only fair).

You do your best - giving equal time to your children and spouse - but, in all fairness, the children do require more attention when they’re young and time can always be made up to your spouse later on. You tell yourself it balances out in the end. You give similar Christmas gifts to your friends, so none will feel slighted. But wait. They don’t want the same things. So you do the next best thing. Buy gifts of equal dollar value. But then, Sally thinks Jane’s gift is nicer and Jane wonders if you could please give her the receipt for the scarf so she can exchange it for a different colour. And of course, you tell her you’re happy with the souvenir T-shirt from Las Vegas. Who wouldn’t be? To say anything less would be rude, and it wouldn’t be fair to hurt her feelings.

You mete out fairness to the best of your ability. But like Halloween candy, you notice that a little extra always goes to your best friend’s son or the cute little boy next door. You find out Auntie Nina really didn’t want the same amount of turkey dressing as Uncle Joe, and Val will never be happy with what she gets because nothing is ever good enough.

There are times when people tell you that you’re unfair. This, you know, is incorrect. You know you are fair because you have rules that govern your fairness. You abide by the Golden Rule. Do unto others, et cetera. Nothing could be more fair.

You await fairness in return.

But fairness doesn’t always come your way. You wait patiently in line for your turn, but get shoved out of the way by a shouting complainer. You work hard and sacrifice time away from your family, but get laid off to make way for the boss’s son. You treat women with respect and kindness, but they go for the douche-bag who treats them with disdain.

You start to think that maybe life isn’t fair. At least, that’s what others tell you. Life isn’t fair. Get used to it. But maybe it’s not that life isn’t fair. It’s just that everyone plays by different rules. They don’t play by your golden rule. They have their own fairness rules. An eye for an eye, whoever wields the biggest stick wins, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, all’s fair in love and war – these are fairness rules too.

You don’t believe their rules. You can’t believe them. So you continue following your own rules; you continue wrapping yourself and those around you in your fairness cocoon because it makes you feel good. You bask, warm and cozy in your fairness cocoon. Perhaps, if it grows big enough and long enough, it will burst forth in a gigantic, multi-coloured butterfly; wings unfurling, beating back all the unfairness and inequity that still exists.

Meanwhile, you hope your cocoon will keep you safe against the cold, sharp barbs of unfairness flung from afar and not so far. It doesn’t always work. Occasionally, a dark lance will slice through, its point searching for your heart.

Maybe life isn’t fair. Maybe it’s not meant to be fair, but you keep trying to be fair anyways. What else can you do?

Quote:
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you. - Alan Alda

To play without the pain . . .

They seem to me amazingly carefree. They have saved up for this trip and they are damn well going to enjoy it, despite the arthritis of one, the swollen legs of the other. They're rambunctious, they're full of beans; they're tough as thirteen, they're innocent and dirty, they don't give a hoot. Responsibilities have fallen away from them, obligations, old hates and grievances; now for a short while they can play again like children, but this time without the pain.

- From Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye (1988)

I came across this passage while looking for another quote in Cat's Eye.

It embodies much of how I feel about getting older. I'm not sure exactly when the transition occurred; whether it was a definitive moment or a gradual loosening of binds, but the freedom to enjoy for the sake of enjoyment, to be who I am without worrying about how I look to others only came with my added years. It certainly wasn't evident in my youth.