"i deleted them both, myspace and facebook. really, it was a vain and conceited way for me to feel special. normally, i would check it only to see if people left me a message."
~A friend, on why he quit Myspace and Facebook

I completely agree with you about the Facebook and Myspace, that's why I got out to Myspace. I'm really proud of you. In our tech-savvy society, it's truly difficult to break yourself from the shackles of internet community bondage. Maybe it's so hard because we're all seeking some place to belong and with names like: "MYspace" we can feel like we belong, but to whom? Ourselves? Is that why it's MYspace, and not OURspace?

And so we create these "communities" that really are nothing. They're mere simulacra of an actual community. That's why there's no structure to them. A true community (a healthy one, at least) DOES set up boundaries, and limitations, and restrictions on who can and cannot enter. There are regulations of moral and conduct that exist within a true community to dictate who does, indeed, BELONG.

After all, if we are in our search to belong, needn't we dictate who we belong to? And if we are looking to dictate that, must we not dictate why we belong to them? And, finally, if we must dictate that, must we not also dictate who does not belong? Otherwise, we're just belonging to any and everybody.

And while I will admit that this is where the Church ought to go out of its way to be a safe haven to all (as that is who Christ was) this does not negate the anthropological and psychological needs of human beings. In their book Boundaries, H. Cloud and J. Townsend, talk about how every healthy human relationship sets up boundaries out of necessity to dictate how deep each person ought to be let into their lives. Myspace, Facebook, and the likes seemingly obliterate these lines in an attempt to (or so it's advertised) allow people to enter into community with one another.

It almost seems that these sites are designed this way in order to get people to be broken and needy, and then spend money on the true advertisements posted on the page. And why not? Who owns myspace? News Corp: Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. What else do businesses strive for than the progression of their business? If not simply for the "hit" total that is received in order to charge advertisers more, wouldn't Rupert not also want to know how to advance the profits of those companies, especially if he were to control them? P.H.D.'s in psychology from top institutes work for advertising firms because they know this and more to what I'm posting. Could we not also get a P.H.D. to verify if we're manipulating the "spending masses" correctly in the first place?

And yet, what is this drivel that I am posting? Am I not, too, falling into the treacherous bounds of an Internet Blog? Is this not merely another outlet of myself that I might use in the purest attempts to "get people to like me?" It seems that one must draw a personal line as to how far into the depths of openly and unabashedly exposing oneself to the world that they ought to go. I cannot dictate the depth of this venture to you, reader, but I will admit that I do utilize the site facebook.com as well as the one that you are currently at.

What I am advocating, in essence, is that in all things we must be introspective and critical of our motives. If we are not, are we any better than the people who send millions into war blindly, or factories who build relentlessly without caring for the environment of which we all rely and are a part of? After all, neither of us is critically analyzing our motives; and both toll the road of consumerism. I advocate that we must inspect whom we belong to, who our mediators of reality are, and whom we are to receive validation and confirmation. If not, we are truly the generation to end all generations, as we continuously deteriorate into a generation of completely codependent beings that derive from others that which they need, without needing to engage in actual community: one where we truly belong, and where we have our needs met without search, so that we may, as Robert Keegan puts it: "progress to the next stage of human psychological development."