The Problem with the Like Button

When I was driving to psychic house parties in Connecticut this August, I was grateful for Pandora on my Android. All I had to do was list some bands I like and Pandora kept me entertained with sweet tunes.

When I wasn’t driving, I would take the time to hit the thumbs up or thumbs down button on each song. Pandora learns from my likes and dislikes to play only the music I am most likely to enjoy.

That’s a good thing, right?

Maybe not; sometimes we learn to love a song after some repetition. Sometimes it’s a bit of a spiritual journey to make friends with a particular song. If I could just have hit the thumbs down on it, I would never have made the journey or heard the message.

Sometimes we find new meaning in the lyrics of the overplayed songs that bore us.  Sometimes we grow into a musical style we didn’t like before. The two bands who have brought me the most joy over the past thirty-five years were both bands I didn’t like at first.

The same thing is true with online friends. Most of us populate our social media accounts with friends who like what we like, and believe what we believe. If someone posts an opinion with which we don’t agree, it’s perfectly acceptable to simply unfriend them. We never have to deal with the fact that someone we know and respect feels differently about something than we do. One glance at our Facebook wall and we feel secure, knowing that we will never be confronted with an opinion different from our own.

The thing is, our opinions are supposed to change and evolve as we get older. It’s called “growth.”

The recent trend is that when we change the way we view a political, spiritual or societal issue, our evolution makes us a “flip-flopper,” or a “hypocrite” rather than a mature person who has consciously changed their way of thinking. When we reach out to compromise with others who have different views, others may see us as weak.
Exposure to people who have different ideas is what keeps us open and thinking.  Compromise is what keeps communities functioning.

Our various “like” buttons limit our exposure to anything that might challenge our current opinions or cause us to question ourselves, stretch or grow in any way. We may even wonder if it is actually possible to like and enjoy someone who holds beliefs that are different from our own!

I treasure my friends who are different than I am. I am interested in their opinions, even if they don’t match my own. It concerns me that this suddenly feels like a radical notion.

It’s good to try a food you think you don’t like, or listen to a band you’ve never cared for. It’s good to hear an opinion that differs from your own. It won’t kill you, and it might make you stretch you a little.

Getting Real

I’m fascinated by the way we use the word “real.” “Real” can mean “authentic.” We sometimes use the word “real” to describe people who seem honest and unpretentious.

“Real” can also mean “true” and “existent,” as in “Faeries are real.”

“Real” can also mean “exemplary” and “definitive,” as in this Facebook meme I found today.

“A real woman can do it all by herself, but a real man won’t let her.”

A recent blog post gone viral on the Derniere website by E. Mackey, entitled “An Open Letter to Women: What Men Really Want” spoke a great deal about “real men” and “real women.”

I let myself get sucked into the comment war on that post. Along with many, I needed to point out the fallacies E. Mackey was enthusiastically promoting.

The thing I wanted to say, but couldn’t figure out exactly how, was this.
We can’t suggest that a particular behavior or attitude makes a person “real.” When it comes to gender, we can’t even say that physiology reliably denotes reality.

The word “real’ is hurtful in blended families. “But she’s not your real daughter.” “You’re not my real father.”

People have been throwing around the word “real” as a way of creating division for a long time. In church you might be accused of not being a real Christian. The same could happen at a Pagan event; group members might decide that you are not a real Pagan.

I’ll bet this comes up in every community. He’s not a real philatelist. She’s not a real nudist. He’s not a real Republican. She’s not a real feminist.

"Real" and "not real" are categories we use to judge each other.

How do we decide who is real? How is it we are audacious enough to try to rob an individual of their very being, denying them their sense of identity?

Sometimes people ask me if tarot is real. Those are the words they use. “Is tarot real?”

As a joke I usually pick the deck up and examine it. “Yup, it’s real.”

I know that’s not what they are really asking, though. They want to know if the experience that comes from tarot is valuable.

And maybe there’s the problem with the word “real.” It also means “valuable.” “These earrings are real,” means they are highly valued. A “real man” is a man who is valuable.

The problem is, it’s all subjective because we value different things.

We are all real. We all have a right to own the identity that feels real to us. No one should be able to take that way. Real men do all sorts of different things. Real women do all sorts of different things.

We can choose the sorts of people we want in our lives. But we are not choosing between real and unreal. We are choosing what works for us. Everyone has a right to be considered “real,” whether we are behaving in a way that a particular person finds acceptable, or not.