Virtual relationship - Relationship in a virtual world

( Article published in The New Leader_August_2012)

Shadows of the  Virtual World

Joseph Shibin SJ

We live in a new world created by the latest development in the technology. The new world is the reality in which we live. The old generation is very much confused before the sudden changes in the technology and they feel jealous of the younger generation who are rather fast at computer. The reality of the virtual world is not something strange for us. A paradigm shift happended in the world during the last five years and that resulted in the formation of a new world called a virtual world. This virtual world is beyond the reach of our senses but it exists as a reality.  This new world is the result of the advancement in technology in the recent years. People aspire to own a little space in the virtual world and to have friendship and relationship in a virtual world. People find it more comfortable to express themselves in a better way in this new world where they need not meet the other person face to face. People are willing to live in this virtual world and to stay connected with the near and dear ones.

The recent developments in mobile technology, information technology and social networking sites led us gradually to a new life in a new world.  This world is simply amazing. Facebook and the other social networking sites are there to help us to connet with people and to share with them our precious momemts. Many youngsters expressed their joy that they are able to find their lost friends through facebook. The children of today find it easy to sit before facebook than to sit before their book. ‘Have you got a facebook account?’ This is the question asked by the people when they say bye to a person after a few minutes of interaction with him. A new kind of friendship also has emerged and that is called facebook friendship. What is the relevance of facebook friendhip?

And what is the depth of a facebook friendship? These are the questions before us remain unanswered.

I came across a mother  who  told that  her child is  an expert  in computer and she is not able to understand the  new language of technology spoken by her son.Later I heard that  the child is in the  world of facebookand find it difficult to focus on his studies. This is what happening to many of our children. Our children can easily create a facebook account and open up themselves to the mysterious world of social networking and new kind of emotional problems are arising as a result of the use of facebook. The happiness  of a  child is proportional to the  number of ‘likes’ he received on any photos he uploaded.Many children and  youth are addicted to facebook to the degree that  they become restless if nobody likes the images or videos uploaded. In a virtual world the feelings and emotions of people bounce and reach different places. We can make friends with somebody by a mouse click. Many people send reply to the friends requests without knowing many details about the other person.This results in the formation of a facebook friendship.One student from a major school in Kottayam shared that he has more than five hundred friends in facebook. But he is not sure that the virtual friends may come to help him when he is going through the difficult situations of life. He also shared that he doesn’t have any close friends from his own class. Even the concept of friendship has undergone a drastic change over the years.  Personal care and the loving care among friends are replaced by a few moments with facebook.

People hardly find time to talk with their friends when they meet each other and they leave the other by saying that they will keep in touch over phone or facebook. Greeting cards are replaced by SMS, e-mail or writing on our facebook wall. Then what about the warmth of a loving words on the memorable day in our friends life?

According to Emmanuel Levinas, we need to understand and affirm the otherness of the other and shold not limit the other to the same. He believed that the other may enjoy his or her own otherness.  Understanding the other happens in a deep friendship.  But in the era of social networking sites we tend to limit the other to the same. It will be the loneliness and the alienation experienced by present generation drag them to the world of friendship in a virtual world. The great German thinker Paul Tillich makes a clear distinction between loneliness and solitude. “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”

The present day generation lives in a world of deadlines, cut-throat competiotions, noise and the life becomes chaotic when they find difficult to do justice to the deadlines. As a result most of them are not in touch with the self and the reality which led to the disappearance of warm friendship and lack of commitments in relationships. Friendship has just become a facebook friendship and sharing became limited to the sharing of a video or an image in some social networking sites.

The more we go for a virtual world and the relationship in a virtual world the more we become alienated from our own immediate neighbours. Let us not be controlled by the virtual world we have created and its own emotions. Human feelings and friendship cannot be limited to mere facebook interactions or text messages. According to Jacques Derrida, we need to give warm friendship to all the people we meet in our day to day life. Let our lives be meaningful and let our love be genuine. We should not allow ourselves be guided and controlled by the technology we have developed. We need to transcend them that even in the world of technology today we may feel better and be more focused. There must be an attitudinal change that we are not lost in the virtual world.