The Combine

It must have been back when we still had cable. 

How I had never seen it before  (and never read the original novel!) still eludes me, but a few years ago I was watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the first time. Like so many, I was riveted by it. I actually knew nothing about the storyline prior to seeing the movie, but after that I was fascinated by the metaphor of  "The Combine". 

It was serendipity, really, that made me watch that movie when I did. It was only a few days later than my Amazon book order arrived, which included the John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.  In the forward of the book, written by David Albert, it makes reference to "The Combine" starting on page xv. 

In actuality, writes Albert, John Taylor Gatto wrote the Monarch Notes for the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (Monarch Notes, from what I gather, are similar to what I knew as Coles Notes growing up), and it's "the only book of Gatto's likely read by students undergoing their slow death in what passes for 'educational institutions' these days". The notes, explains Albert, are a masterpiece in themselves. 

There is also an irony that Gatto's message to us after spending 25 years in the school system and winning "Teacher of the Year" not once, but twice, is essentially about the dangers of the The Combine that is the modern school system. 

Albert talks about how so much discussion about modern schools focuses on how schools are failing. I know that certainly is the case where I live, where we score in the bottom of the heap on standardized tests nationally. But, argues Albert, as we see from Gatto's work the system is in fact NOT failing us:

Central to this understanding is the fact that schools are not failing. On the contrary, they are spectacularly successful at doing precisely what they are intended to do, and what they have intended to do since their inception. The system [...] was explicitly set up to ensure a docile, malleable workforce to meet the growing, changing demands of corporate capitalism [...] The Combine ensures a workforce that will not rebel, that will be physically, intellectually, and emotionally dependent on corporate institutions for their incomes, self-esteem and stimulation, and that will learn to find social meaning in their lives solely in the production and consumption of material goods.

I found these statements, while radical and controversial, to be eye-opening. They rang true to me. We are a society of consumers, a reality that can noted by even the most casual observers of modern Western society, and no one is immune. We are socialized like that. 

From the United Church Archives

The more I dug into the history of compulsory education in Canada, where I live (surely we're different? I reasoned), the more it became clear to me that both Albert and Gatto had a point. The icing on the cake is when I read about Egerton Ryerson and his role is creating modern schooling in Canada based on the Prussian model, and the instrumental role he played in the development of Indian Residential Schools.

I knew I wanted different for my children. 

That was at the beginning of my homeschooling journey. I have tempered my views a bit over the years - take your tinfoil hat off, Carolyn! - but the fact remains that when people ask, "What about Socialization?", my answer is, "Excellent question!". What about socialization? Do you know what that means and the impact it's having on you, me and our children? 

People intuitively know the power of the conditioning and programming that occurs in school - it's the first thing the overwhelming majority question regarding NOT sending your children to school - yet it's not a conscious thought for most. It's therefore difficult to conceptualize "education" to be any other way, even when "education" in the sense we commonly use the word is a secondary consideration in the way the system is designed. I struggle with this conceptualization constantly. I am absolutely choosing a different socialization for my children. I do not wish for them to be eaten by The Combine. 

But it's not that simple, is it? I mean, The Combine is not just school. It's television, social media, even children's books. My experience has been that twaddle almost always has a not-so-subtle message that ties to that Combine socialization process. 

(I think that's a topic I will circle back to another day - I wrote the preceding paragraph without really thinking about it, which created an "ah ha!" moment. An idea that I've never had before, and something that merits discussion after I've had time to flesh it out better.)

Okay, back on track...

What brought all this talk of The Combine up anyway? Actually, it was a job interview. 

How much am I getting paid for this photo shoot anyway?

I recently applied for a temporary job with Statistics Canada. To be precise, I applied for a position doing the 2016 Census.  I passed the initial screening, I passed the written testing, and then was called for an interview for a supervisory position. 

Yay me! Not bad for a chick who hasn't had a paid gig in over eight years. 

But something funny happened in the job interview. As we're talking, and I'm finding out more about the job and the client groups and the processes, the more I realize I don't want anything to do with it. I mean, the job would be enormously difficult for me to do anyway with the sheer logistics of child care, office space and personal availability, but there was something deeper that was making a sense of panic rise up inside me at the thought of going back to doing that sort of work. 

I suddenly realized that I felt like I was trying to scramble back on board The Combine. 

That was such a disorientated feeling. I worked for the federal government from 1999 until 2006 when Abby was born, and went back to work briefly in 2007 before deciding to stay home full-time. I actually quite liked my job back then, even if there were aspects of it I strongly disliked or disagreed with. Discussing in the interview certain theoretical and actual scenarios, and linking those situations back to my previous job, I began to understand the role I played in the entire Combine structure. 

I can't talk too much about my old job, as I am perpetually bound by the terms of my employment to not reveal confidential information. But the kind of work I did - requiring people to fit in certain pigeonholes for the purposes of administering the Income Tax Act, and ensuring my fellow employees were following work instructions to administer the Act - has suddenly left me with an enduring sour taste in my mouth. 

A job with Census would mean much of the same. I would be required to compel people to fit in pigeonholes, under threat of prosecution if they don't. I understand, and agree with, the need for good Census data, or with the need for people to comply with the Income Tax Act to ensure fairness to all.  

Damn it, I agree with good laws and good governance. Why am I having such an issue with this? 

It was reflecting on that question that forced me to ask myself why I believed in good laws and good governance.  Certainly, I've been through The Combine and have been conditioned that we should obey the Government and all laws set out by them. That led me to the uncomfortable conclusion that I follow all laws set out by the government even when I vehemently disagree with some of them. Why did I do that? Why do I do that even when I acknowledge that some of these laws (or in the case of abortion, lack of laws) endangers others?


Well, there I had to stop thinking for a bit. It was disquieting to spend too much time meditating on that. 

Hmmmm.....

Disquieting things, however, have a way of oozing back into your consciousness whether you want them to or not. 

I was, in the end, forced to ask myself if I was being hypocritical. I embrace Catholicism after all, and I choose to pass that belief system to my children. Some people argue, validly I might add, that religion is in itself a system of social control. 

 
Now, I say that this argument is valid, because from a historical perspective it is. Using Christian Europe as an example, for many generations the Church did provide a social control mechanism by sharing common beliefs, mores, attitudes, culture and laws. These things were done largely for the benefit of our salvation (although there certainly were horrendous exceptions) and the stability of society. The shared culture and beliefs within a society has historically created strong, cohesive groups, such as what existed in the Middle Ages. 

But move forward to the Reformation, and that cohesiveness starts to come unglued. Europe is no longer united under the banner of Catholicism, but starts to fragment. This paves the way for the Enlightenment, which begins the large-scale abandonment of belief in general. 

Or does it? 

The more I pondered this, the more I can't help think that because of the human need for belief and ethnocentricity is literally hardwired into us (see a summary of this experiment where it can actually be turned off by disrupting electrical activity in the brain), we simply replaced one system for another. As humanity has become increasingly mobile and groups mingle more and more, cohesiveness is further lost as thousands of groups interact, each with their own beliefs (or lack of belief), traditions, and customs. 

We no longer have Christianity as a control mechanism in our Western society, so we replaced it with The Combine. Except instead of a system that has our interests at heart (which, in theory, Catholicism does...), we have a system that has fundamentally capitalist interests as it's foundational premise. 

Now, I'm not saying immigrants are bad (they're not), or that everyone should be Catholic (okay, I do think that, but I know that's not realistic), or whatever other weird ideas you've gotten about me at this point (some of which may or may not be true, we'll sort that out later... ha ha ha!), but I'm proffering the above simply as an explanation. The Combine is something I routinely struggle with, as it seems obvious by this post. I have guilt oftentimes too because I do choose to send Abby to school, but precisely because of the social control mechanism it provides. 

So back to Gatto. In his essay/speech "The Psychopathic School", which he presented when he won New York City Teacher of the Year, he gives a description of the grind his students are subjected to in terms of influence from the two primary activities children do: go to school, and watch TV: 

Here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with: 
Out of 168 hours each week, my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self. 

According to recent reports (1990), children watch 55 hours of television a week. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up. 

My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about eight hours getting ready for and traveling to and from school, and spend an average of about seven hours a week on homework - a total of 45 hours. During that time they are under constant surveillance. They have no private time or private space and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves them 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course my kids eat too, and that takes some time - not much because we've lost the tradition of family dining - but if we allot three hours a week on evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time of each child of nine hours per week. (Dumbing Us Down, pages 25-26)

That makes my heart ache. Our children have a scant nine hours a week alone with their thoughts. Of course, the above was written in 1990, before social media, smart phones, and the permeation of the Internet into our homes. The most recent statistics I could find stated that the average child spends 6.5 hours per day in front of screens.  Teenaged boys spend the most at eight hours a day, and many children will use multiple screens simultaneously. 

What does that mean?

Sometimes, I think it means we're doomed.

 

 

Thoughtful/Three Things

It's been a weird week. 

First Thing

We went to Winnipeg last weekend. I went to a Latin Mass. 

I never want to go back to an Ordinary Form Mass again. 

I made some notes about the experience that I want to share:

It was a Low Mass, which is what I expected. They had little missals to borrow, and it wasn't hard at all to follow as it had a clear explanation of what the priest was saying/doing even with little diagrams to make it easy to figure out where we were.

I can't believe the sense of peace I came away with.

The long stretches of contemplative silence while the priest faced the tabernacle, faced God(!) and did what he needed to do. Sometimes I followed the text of what the priest was saying (but I can't hear, it's not for my ears after all!), but sometimes I allowed myself to fall into prayer.

The way you need to pay close attention, as the priest will abruptly turn or speak or do something that requires a response that snaps you back to the moment.

The way we are all equals, there is no showman or readers or dancers or anything else. We all face God, even the priest. He is bridging the gap, not acting as the cork.

The way the Latin responses rolls off you tongue, it reminded me so much of speaking in tongues, me not understanding what is coming from my mouth but knowing God understands and that's what's important. It's not about me.

The cries of babies and little children, and no one seems to mind because they are part of the prayer, of the silence.

The knowing I was connected, for that brief moment, to the Church Triumphant in a way I never have been before. This was their Mass, of countless individuals before me stretching back across time.

So I've been worried all week about what will happen next Sunday when we go back to our regularly scheduled Ordinary Form Mass. Next Sunday is tomorrow. We'll see what happens, I'll keep you updated? 

Second Thing

Remembrance Day was November 11th. 

I felt it very deeply this year. Not many old-timers left. If my grandfathers were still alive, they would have been part of those "old-timers". One grandfather fueled planes for the Air Training Plan here in Canada. The other served overseas and came perilously close to losing his life. 

That leads me to... 

Third Thing

Paris. 

The terror attacks. 

ISIS. 

Pope Francis calling this a piecemeal Third World War. 

Fatima. 

A lot has happened this week. Considering how peaceful I felt at the beginning, I am disquieted now. 

Time for another rosary. 

Rituals

ritual: 

noun

1. an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite. 

2. observance of set forms in public worship.

3. any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.

It's become a weekend ritual of sorts. 

On Saturday, we buy both the Winnipeg Free Press and our local paper, without any hope of reading them that day. But on Sunday... ah, glorious Sunday!  

Once our Mass obligations are taken care of, the children have been fed, and everyone is more or less occupied doing what kids do on a lazy Sunday morning, that's when we pull them out. Armed with a cup of coffee, my husband and I spread out on the kitchen table for an hour or so catching up on the news.

The time is not uninterrupted. There are snotty noses to wipe, diapers that need changing (some more urgent than others), and boo-boos that need kissing during that hour. But in the hectic pace of a household with four busy children, those things are minor. 

We sit in a comfortable, companionable silence that can only be perfected in years of marriage, each engrossed in our respectful sections. My husband will scour the local paper, reading all the interesting tidbits in a small city where odds are you're going to know someone in the paper today (hopefully for good reasons). He also likes the opinion pieces, and has a few that he reads religiously. I tend to scan the obituaries, hoping there's no one I know in it. I realize that it might be somewhat macabre to be doing this, but it's been a habit of mine for as long as I can remember. Rachael will often come request the colour comic section, to which we will happily oblige. She will sometimes join us at the table, and other times she will spread out on the living room floor, reading Baby Blues to her brother.
 
We will, on occasion, break our silence by reading an interesting tidbit out loud for the other. I'll start in on the puzzles, only to end up ranting and needing my husband to talk me down from either scrunching up the entire page in frustration or purposely jabbing holes through the newsprint with my pencil and/or eraser. LONGFELLOW is my nemesis. And I apparently have a bit a temper when it comes to doing cryptoquotes and crosswords. 

It is the comfort of ritual. How it marks time, people, places, and presence. Rituals become a sort of placeholder in our busy while mundane lives. 

It was Father Patrick Peyton that said, "The family that prays together, stays together." We are terrible at this. By "we", I mean my household. I think it's symptomatic, in part, of my personal frustration at the Church. We did so for many, many years with the kids, especially in the evening. It was ingrained as part of the bedtime ritual. But we struggle with it now.  *I* struggle with it now. 

Why does my family's weekend ritual come so easily, yet our prayer-time ritual is so fraught with inner turmoil? 

Is it I don't believe? For awhile, I started to suspect that was it. But now I doubt that's it, because I recently took up praying a daily rosary. The veracity of my belief growing out of that simple devotion has increased in a very short time. If there was a glimmer of doubt, I think it has been effectively erased for the time being. 

Is it because I don't think I should transfer my beliefs onto my children, such is the popular notion these days that children should "decide for themselves" what they believe? I can say with certainty that it's not that. I firmly believe that as a parent, I have a duty to transfer my beliefs and values to my children. Indeed, the Church teaches that we are the first and primary teachers of our children. 

Is it because of my own inner turmoil about the state of the Church, her direction, and her current rituals?

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think we're on to something. 

About a year ago, I procured the book "The Latin Mass Explained" by Msgr. George Moorman. The book was originally published in 1920 under the title, "The Mass: The Eucharistic Service of the Catholic Church". The blurb at the back of the book promises that 

this easy-to-read book reveals the What, Why and How of the Traditional Latin Mass [...] Many will understand for the very first time the awesome dignity of the Catholic religion and the rich spiritual significance of every element of the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar.

I personally feel this was a bit of an understatement. 

I managed to get to page 23, then I had to put it down. Why? Because I was angry. What he describes is not the same thing that I see every Sunday down at my local parish. 

We often hear, in Catholic circles, of the idea of "hermeneutic of continuity". What does that mean exactly? Well, I'm still sort of vague on that, but it's generally accepted as being the idea that the pre-Conciliar Church and the post-Conciliar Church just kinda... flows. That the Church was the same before Vatican II as it was afterwards, in a fundamental sense. The opposite of hermeneutic of continuity is the "hermeneutic of rupture". 

I'm not sure how anyone can know anything about the Old rite vs. the New rite and say the words "hermeneutic of continuity" with a straight face.  

This?

or that?

Not only has the rituals of the Church changed in a fundamental way, but the meaning behind those rituals have been stripped out. In only 23 pages, it was very clear to me that the language, the actions, the postures, nearly everything about the New Mass either downplays or ignores what was central in the Old.  

So my inner conflict. I have no illusions that the Church was perfect prior to the change - it's not like we should go back to some 1950's time warp where everything was warm and rosy and fuzzy and good. But the discordance is staggering. 

What do I teach my children? Do I teach them the traditional faith, the faith that has sustained us for nearly 2000 years, with the traditional beliefs and practices, only to have them confused when we go to Church?  How do I navigate the difference in attitude and ritual? 

In the end, I don't have an answer, so I end up doing nothing. I shut down. I am doing my children a disservice, I know that, but I don't want them to experience the same gut-wretching conflict that I do. Or maybe they should. This is the reality of the faith. Is it any good to shelter them from it?

Post Script
This post has been difficult to write. Confronting my own doubts and questions and putting them out there has required a great deal of self-reflection. Why do I feel like this? Is this a heart issue or a head issue? Am I being too picky? Am I making things unnecessarily difficult? Or should I be a good Catholic and just carry on?

In the end, I have no answers. My only solution right now is to fumble through the best I can. 

Please pray for us. 

A Post About Nothing

I've been working on another post the past few days, but I'm finding it's been terribly difficult for me to write. The first half of it flowed brilliantly in a short span of time, but I've been struggling writing the second part. I hope to have it completed soon. 

In the meanwhile, we celebrated Halloween here a few nights ago. The kids went out trick or treating. Christina didn't have a costume because the box I had labelled "Halloween costumes" in fact had car seat parts in it. Drat! Much of what we had stored in the basement is still in a storage locker as we work on renovating, so I had no hope in finding them. 

The other kids dressed as... 

Bob the Builder

A fairy princess

and 

A cowgirl

It was super cold that night, and all the kids had parkas on over their costumes. But they got a good haul, and with the next day being Sunday and All Saints' Day (and with the time change overnight = one extra hour), we were STILL late for 9 a.m. Mass.

*sigh*

Christina has never been into baby toys. Siblings toys and the contents of our recycling bin have always been much, much more interesting. We recently purged some of the extra medicine droppers we had kicking around, and tossed them into the recycling bin. She helped herself to them, then pulled a mason jar out of the box on the floor (full of empty jars waiting to go downstairs to be put away). 

Those few items kept her occupied for hours, hearing the "clink" of the droppers go into the jar, fishing them out of the jar, putting the 2-part droppers together and then taking them apart again.  (I eventually had to put the jar away as she was making me nervous possessing a glass container)

Homeschooling is once again going along tickity-boo. We had to pause back in September/October for awhile as we were all sick, especially me. But we're getting back on track, today finishing our map of North America while learning about Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego. 

Meanwhile, Joseph worked with Play-doh, in his re-creation of a Play-doh house he saw on YouTube the other day. 

Joseph took this photo himself

Trial by Fire

We were late. Again. 

I have a love/hate thing with 9 a.m. Mass. On one hand, it's early and we're home by 10:30 and have the rest of the day gloriously stretched out in front of us, to fill at our leisure (I don't remember the last time we had a leisurely Sunday, but you get the idea). It's to-the-point, and less prone to funny stuff you can encounter at more popular Masses. It's before baby's nap, so less cranky there. The kids are relatively well-behaved because they haven't quite woken up yet, haven't gotten engrossed in other projects, haven't had a chance to turn on Netflix yet... 

But dude, it's 9 a.m. Which means we need to get everyone up, dressed, and out the door by 8:45. Easy for those of you who shuffle your gang off to school that time every day, which I don't.

And it was soooo not happening today. 

As we pulled out of the driveway at 9:02, we did manage to make it just as they were intoning the Psalm. Which I have to say, is pretty good. 

Speed limits are only suggestions on Sunday mornings anyways, right? 

So why did I publically admit we were atrociously late for church while probably bending the speed limit this morning? Because we had to sit at the back. 

This is will make sense in a moment, I promise. 

According to the Novus Ordo calendar, today's Gospel was from the book of St. Mark. I'm sure you're very familiar with the passage:

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' [...] Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

I don't touch on marriage very often in this blog. My husband and I are about to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary at the end of the month, something which seems to be rarer and rarer these days. I'm so thankful for every day that he's in my life, as I literally can't imagine it without him. My only regret was that we had such a late start together.

Even though we weren't that young when we got married, we did a lot of growing up in those first few years. Most people do, I assume. Having your first child, that accelerates the growing-up for most of us. There's nothing like being responsible for a tiny, helpless little person that simultaneously enthralls you and scares the living daylights out of you. 

Okay, so back to church. 

Theologian Scott Hahn famously said, 

 [...]in the marital covenant the two become one, and God has designed it so that when the two become one, they become so one that nine months later you might just have to give it a name. 

We were at the back of the church with our brood of covenantal manifestations, trying desperately to keep them relatively quiet. I think they were thrown a bit by our uncustomary degree of lateness (usually we're there by the Gloria at the latest) and the sitting at the back thing (we're usually at the front). The baby was determined to walk up and down the aisles. Abby kept repeating, "Hi! How are you!" to everyone around us, not always with her "indoor voice". Joseph was being Joseph, squirmy and incessantly whining telling us he couldn't see. Rachael was in the corner of the pew, having a mad-on about some infraction committed by her brother. 

I think with that description, we've established neither my husband or I were paying that much attention to Mass. 

But we both tuned in to the homily at the same moment. Father quoted a theologian (that I wish desperately I caught the name of!) that said that the best marriages have a little bit of trial in them. That a little bit of difficulty was a good thing to make them stronger. 

Wow. 

I remember my mom asked me once, a few years ago when several marriages of family members were in the process of imploding, what made our marriage different. At the time, I gave her a glib answer about how were were both too cheap to pay for two houses to live in. But in truth, it's because of the trial. It literally is a case of what didn't kill us made us stronger. 

If you grow up exponentially once you have a child, sometimes I think you grow up exponentially of an exponent when you have a special-needs child. And it literally either breaks you or cements you permanently. I was so mad at God during the long, dark days, and felt like I was abandoned ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!"), but every morning, my husband was there. When one of us couldn't handle it anymore, the other took over. When I cried myself to sleep at night, his arms were around me.

Abby is a life created out of our covenant with each other. Our responsibility not only to her, but to each other fundamentally changed our disposition. The trials we endured, especially at the beginning, set the tone for our lives together. This too shall pass. We shall not break. We will get through this, just as we always have. 

There is always a solution, imperfect as it might end up being. So help us, God.

Roads

I know. 



Don't say it. 


I've been a bad girl. 


I haven't posted in, literally, forever. 


Is this something I need to go to confession about? 

How has your journey been? 

Grand Valley

Mine's been interesting. Different. Divergent. I feel like I'm on the cusp of something wonderful, and large, and momentous.


Okay, I often feel like that. And maybe someday it will come true.


I guess I'm thinking about a road because of a couple of conversations I've had recently. About where we're going, not only as individuals, but as a people. As a society.

One block at a time

We build our futures one block at a time. Really, where we build them is totally up to us. Or is it? How much are we the products of our own choices, and how much are we the products of our socialization? Who would we be, really, if we could be anyone without that tearing down and building up that is our sociological upbringing? Without the blatant commercialization of everything in our day to day lives?

Negociation is key

Our lives are something that requires a great deal of navigation. Some of us, I suppose, navigate like we drive a car... by the seat of our pants, never stopping for directions, relying on instinct, intuition and just blind luck to arrive at our destination. Or just going for a leisurely cruise, seeing where we end up. 



Others need a map. A detailed map. Like a CAA Triptik, with all the rest stops preplanned, all the sight-seeing meticulously marked, and a detailed milage log kep. There is a specific destination in mind that must be arrived at by a specific date. 

Which one am I? I don't know, a little of both. I don't really know where my destination is anymore, and I'm mostly okay with that. 


I have more thoughts about this, but really need my destination to be bed right now. We'll chat more later. 

Consumed

My sporadic blogging is annoying. Yes, even to me it's annoying. I often have ideas rattling around inside my head (see, when I shake it you can hear them rolling around like marbles!), but never seem to commit to them. 



But this idea is compelling me. You see, I must write about Facebook again. 

I know. I hear your groans and I feel your pain. But bear with me. 



I've written previously about my departure from Facebook. And about coming back. Yes, I know, I'm obsessed. But this phenomenon of social media has long both intrigued me and worried me.


I remember years ago when Facebook was still "new" (Abby was a baby), a friend of mine told me that she had posted pictures of my child (and other friends' kids as well) on Facebook. I was livid. I tore her up one side and down another and made her swear she would never, ever do such a thing again. I swore I would never join such an insidious website, as I saw very clearly the apparent dangers without every truly understanding what either Facebook, nor the dangers, actually were. 

Eventually, after being bombarded with invitation after invitation, curiosity got the better of me and I joined. And I was hooked. 


My own feelings of malaise and mistrust was replaced by, "Wow, look at how cool this is!" I posted photos of my kids. I updated my status umpteen million times a day. I watered my imaginary garden and served meals at my virtual restaurant. 

But then, one day, I had to turn it off. But by then, it had become so deeply ingrained in our culture and our daily lives that leaving suddenly left a void that was not easily filled. But I also felt a sense of freedom that I never realized I lacked. 


However, in the end, I relented to the incessant pressure and rejoined. I missed finding out the nitty-gritty details of the lives of my sister-in-laws. I wanted to enter contests that you must have a Facebook account to be enterable. I needed to know when playgroup as cancelled. We have lived an uneasy coexistence for several months again. 


But then two things happened. 

Firstly, I realized that the majority of my status updates came not from friends and family, but from businesses. Products, newsletters, media outlets, etc. The information I was consuming was not about the personal details, but about mass consumption. That bothered me, because the whole point of me rejoining Facebook was to have personal connections that were getting hard to maintain any other way. I was obviously deluding myself. 



The second one, however, I must credit Dan Meisner, the CBC Radio tech columnist. His idea was not new, and it was something I think I had intuitively concluded on my own, but he expressed it very succinctly in an interview. 


We are users of Facebook as much as we're the product that Facebook sells to it's advertisers. 


I'll say it again. We are the commodity that Facebook sells. 

That idea startled me. I know we often trade data in exchange for benefits. Things like Airmiles, PC Points, Aeroplan, all use your data to develop marketing strategies. In exchange, you get free stuff. I admit, I love PC Points. I get free chequing and have cashed in literally hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of free groceries. 


If I was truly concerned about my privacy, I wouldn't participate in those types of merchant-reward programs. I would pay everything is cash instead of using credit or debit. But I don't. I accept the trade. 


But somehow Facebook is different. 


Facebook is slick. You like a page? Click on the "like" button. It follows you around as you browse and live your online life, even if you're signed out. I have seen examples of this, and it disturbed me. 

Yes, I like it!

Unlike something like, say, Airmiles, where you have to actively submit your information by handing over your Airmiles card, Facebook collects data on you without you even knowing. And I know they're not the only game in town that does it, but they are very, very good at it. 


Everyone is so excited about Social Media and how powerful it is. It helped power the Arab Spring, and is a driving force behind the Occupy movement. But at the end of the day, it's just something else to be consumed, and to consume us. 

I don't really know how to finish this post. I feel like I have this valuable insight, but not sure how to use it. I find myself on Facebook less and less since coming to these realizations, but can't seem to sever myself completely. It has me thinking, however, about my privacy and my consumption habits, and wondering whether or not I will be consumed. 


I am reminded of the story of Lot, when he is fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah. The angels tell him: "Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city." (Gen 19:15) Perhaps there is a lesson there. He did flee with this family, and avoided being consumed in the punishment, but his story did not end happily. His wife, disobeying the angel's command, turns to salt. His daughters conceive children fathered by Lot, who went on to found new nations who were the enemies of Israel, and the enemies of God who were ultimately destroyed.

 

I shudder at what the implications of our consumption may be.