99) Initiation into Facebook (2023-05-14)
Two days ago, I finally signed up for a Facebook account. It felt like I was being put through the rigors of an initiation. Initiations often make one go through all kinds of hardships to enter a club, brother/sisterhood etc. In worldly associations these hardships often include hazing and other forms of abuse. In spiritual or religious associations, the hardships often include having to face one’s own “true” self, or true “self”. The challenge is to recognize the many layers of personas, or masks, we have acquired over our lifetime. There are many organizations that offer guidance on the way to one’s self, or in religions, to god.
Psycho-analysis may help one on the way to individuation with the help of an often 5 year “grind” with an analyst. Religious/spiritual/mystical paths may help one on the way to divination. These paths can be just as much of a grind as Psycho-analysis. Both ways are helping to untangle the layers of personas or masks we bear or wear. They help us to determine which of these personas can further, and which ones may hinder us.
In many courses and problem-solving workshops we learn how to “peel the onion”. However, for an in-depth approach to individuation, peeling onions will only leave us in tears, which makes it all the more difficult to see who we are. To make matters worse, such workshops often cost an arm and a leg, which makes getting anywhere even more difficult.
Under guidance of a good analyst or spiritual mentor, we do not just peel away layers, we also untangle them, sort them and learn to recognize how they interact with each other. This is usually a life’s work. As the late Irish mystic John O’Donohue remarked in an Interview on CBC, we will be ready to die, when we have learned what we can learn. Letting go is one of those things we have to learn. When we master this, dying might be less of a battle and more of a freeing of the last layers.
Now what on earth does this have to do with Facebook?
The first thing we have to do is to establish a personal profile. So which of the many personas that often compete for supremacy are we going to choose? What has caused some of these personas to come into being? As we grow up, we are told that we are good, bad, beautiful, lazy and many other things. These are “sentences” that can last for a lifetime. If the sentences are true, they can be helpful on our way; when they are not, they confuse us and shape us negatively. They often are the source of tangled up layers. Very often it is next to impossible to erase or delete such layers.
So I began with the pictures and had to give a User Name. Somehow, I followed the prompts for a business account, and when I got the message that my name is invalid (a sentence?) I eventually came up with a valid title: “Reflections and Musings”. This became the name of my account. But it ran under my Name. Once I realized that I am on the wrong track, I tried to back out and edit the name etc. But it was too late. So I tried a second, personal account. I flipped back and forth to try to follow the prompts and ended up with a third account. Both with my name, Tobias Jenny. Because I had to fill in the pictures again when I set up Facebook on my iPhone, and I was confused when one of the PC accounts had no picture, I put it in again.
The “very helpful” prompts showed me how to switch from one account to the other. This worked quite nicely, but I could never tell which one I was (in). Eventually I Wrote down OOPS on a piece of paper, took a picture and loaded this up as a new personal profile picture.
Within less than two days, I already have four layers of personas. One is a business, which I am not, and won’t use. One is blank (perhaps spiritually preferable?) but with an OOPS, which I won’t use either. One is useful to edit and work with on the laptop and the fourth one on the iPhone app works the best so far, but just appears slightly differently on the two tools.
I followed the instructions on how to permanently delete an account or page, but the layers are already tangled, and with the ones I want to delete, the delete button does not appear. A good techie could probably solve this problem if spending enough time, like a good analyst can clear an unwanted persona. The hassles I went through to date are equally annoying as the hazing to join a brotherhood. They are also equally trying as the personal discernment one has to go through when joining a religious or spiritual community. To leave Facebook appears to be about as difficult as leaving some religious communities.
So I am now part of the Meta universe. I suffered through the initiation, I have more personas than I need, and perhaps I should consider it a new religious community. After all, there are many members of this meta-physical community who twiddle their phones more than any devout Nun or Monk twiddles their rosaries.
Reflections 