♪ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

    Everyone is in an uproar about changes on Facebook..."an endless refrain of they want the old feed back / it's too much of a hassle/can't they just leave it alone???" has echoed on cyberspace for days now. I whined about it me-self. Facebook has a place in my quiet little life, a link to home, a landing place at the end of a day, a kitchen table visit with old chums. Cliché, perhaps, yet honest.
    I doubt that many on Facebook have a vested interest in it, certainly no one in my Friends list seems to or will divulge that information. Yet we each have a page, a drop in the pond, and so it seems that we might have some sort of territorial claim.
    Funny how we have the right to complain and kvetch, if you will, about a free service that does nothing for us but connect. Is it perhaps that we are so disconnected that social media is the only tie that binds? We have freedom of speech, and boy do we spew. One friend of mine noted, " Dear Facebook, A description of someone's sandwich does not deign it a Top Story, nor do the 30 hmmmms following. WTF?" Multiply that by a billion users... that's an ocean;s worth of kvetching. Oye.
    We are so quick to complain about changes in our individual lives, so fast to pass judgement on anything we disagree with. We no longer even allow the freedom of speech to be freedom of opinion. Friends of a different ideology are shrugged at -- or worse, dismissed.  The late great George Carlin observed, " Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac?" You know it's true...and it goes much deeper than that. We've incorporated loathing of borders and racial divides to random drivers on the street.
     Carlin uttered that highway observation within the last few decades.  In his own lifetime, history bore witness to Germans massing to crush Europe and exterminate the Jews, Koreans dividing the nation and turning on their own countrymen, followed closely by the Vietnamese repeating, Communism promoting socialism while applying oppression there and in the U.S.S.R. ... centuries after the Catholics killed off the Calvinists,  the Crusaders killed off the Muslims and other assorted infidels,after the Romans oppressed the Jews, after the successive kings and leaders of the ancient world sought out to slay anyone not of their kind.
     Suffice it to say that we are hardwired to reject unity with other 'species' -- and at once, quick to cast aspersions or even shun 'infidels' from our own families and social circles.I have a friend who had a pretty tight group of pals until the '08 election season...and then they literally gave him the boot because he exercised his Democratic right and leaned to the left, no pun intended. In my own family, persons have been 'prayed for'  because they sought a different faith, escaped a bad marriage, had kids outside of marriage. Gasp!  That certainly NEVER happened in the Bible.
       Think about it... you don't warm up to someone you meet at a social outing until you have something in common. Perhaps when you learn that they lived in your hometown or worked at the same company, share common religious or non-religious schools of thought is when you start to give them any type of acceptance. We are hardwired to seek similarities, "tribal marks', if you will, and wary of those who have no link to someone who does.
     Most of our connections on Facebook have a 'tribal mark' work, school, church, community, lifestyle, etc.,  that we recognize, or at least are connected to through a 'known Friend'. It's not a new condition, kids, just a variation on a theme.
     We all need to feel connected to the familiar, and  Normal isn't even a setting on the dryer any more. Apparently the only normalcy EVER was ON clothes dryers...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...
Turn and face the strain.. ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...
Where's your shame  • you've left us up in our necks to it






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