Here are the ten most recent items in my Facebook feed:
1. Video of my friend's daughter playing on the slide at the park.
2. Link to a news story about the forming of a "Trump militia". My friend who posted it makes the usual snide references to Nazi Germany. I agree completely, of course.
3. Photos of Episode 3 of Hap & Leonard, which is based on a series of books that I absolutely love. I still haven't gotten around to watching the TV show, but I plan to do so. Not sure why I would need to look at photos though.
4. A link posted in a discussion group called Debate Me, of a video featuring a discussion between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders. Paul comes across as a smarmy, self-interested slimeball, and Sanders is eminently reasonable.
5. A link to a video of a Scandinavian guy happily dancing to accordion music throughout his day around town somewhere in the frozen north, and getting others to join in. Apparently an ad of some sort, but cheerful and innocuous.
6. Another Debate Me post about how Bernie Sanders has just been endorsed by a Wall St. economist. Preaching to the choir.
7. An animated short, posted in the group Folk Horror Revival (one of my favorite Facebook groups) and featuring a fight between death and an old woman who proves that she has more life in her than expected.
8. A video of a short interview with Jimmy Carter in which he states that there is no way he would be able to (or want to) run for president today. He mentions that our democracy has been replaced by an oligarchy. I think that this country has always been an oligarchy, but it's definitely more so now than it was then.
9. A video of Norwegian black metal band Carpathian Forest covering Discharge's "The Possibilities of Life's Destruction". I like the original better. The song doesn't really lend itself to the black metal style.
10. A check-in at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital Stanford for a genetics testing appointment.
I find myself agreeing with all of the political posts above, which isn't too surprising because most of my Facebook friends have similar views to my own. I do have a few people whose opinions are almost polar opposites of mine, and I keep them around because sometimes I like to argue. Plus I don't want to live in a political echo chamber. One of my few Republican friends (and old Junior High school friend, actually) gave me a shout-out in a post yesterday (the post was about another so-called "liberal" that he respected), saying that even though we disagree politically, I walked the talk. That was nice of him, and a reminder that there is common ground in amongst the differences. It's also refreshing to see that a lot of people on the right can't stand Trump. That said, the other Republican contenders are either equally bad, or worse. Trump gets the most press because he's loud and crude. The lowest common denominator can relate to him better. We live in an oligarchy which is aided and abetted by an idiocracy. Hopefully we never add "theocracy" to that description, like Ted Cruz wants to do.
It's a bit of an eye-opener to see grandfatherly Jimmy Carter talking about the current political climate. Maybe "eye-opener" is too strong a phrase. After all, I was around when he was president, and I'm around now. I've seen the changes. Carter remains my favorite ex-president though. He definitely walks the talk too.
The music and video links are just enjoyable distractions, many of which are almost immediately forgotten. For me, the compelling thing about social media (and to a lesser degree, e-mail), is that it is updated constantly, which sends little spurts of dopamine to my pleasure centers. Have a moment of indecision about what to do next? Let's see the latest posts! That said, most of the e-mails and Facebook updates aren't worth my time. None of the posts mentioned above really have any bearing on my day, other than to confirm that yes, there are other like-minded people out there in the world. But I already know that, don't I?
I worry that people in the current generation often don't have thoughts like the ones above. It's easy to mindlessly scroll through social media sites, mindlessly share links (without bothering to fact check them), mindlessly rely on autocorrect, and generally navigate the internet without any real thought. The current generation can't remember a time before (I even sometimes have trouble doing so, which is one of the reasons I've been focusing on this kind of thing lately) the internet. The virtual world has become the real world. People are forgetting how to do real world things.
It will have consequences.
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