The Spiritual Power of Social

What's this?! A new post! Unbelievable! Amazeballs!

It's true folks, I'm back to blogging. Hopefully consistently. It's been tough getting motivated to write after a long day at work, but this is definitely I want to keep up for personal and professional reasons, so look for more posts in the future. Now, on to the meat.

I recently read an article on Mashable about the interplay between spirituality and social media. The article summarized an interview with Deepak Chopra, a personal well-being expert with a Yogi vibe and a sick sense of digital savvy. The discussion centered around human nature becoming increasingly about being connected to not only information but other people and this necessity we feel to share and comment on everything, and not always in a positive light. Being a lover of digital media as well as an almost minor in philosophy (B- whattup!) this article intrigued me, and I want to delve deeper into a few of the areas mentioned.

First, I really like the description of social as an extension of human consciousness in a very hive-mind sort of way. Think about it. Social is our existence on a totally separate plane from our daily physical lives. It makes us one step closer to omniscient, with information constantly flowing in from various channels and what one of us knows, all of our connections know. Now, it doesn't happen instantly obviously, and let's be real, many of us will misinterpret or fail to understand the information shared, and the participants are often scattered over various platforms, but with an app here or there, the social space becomes this sort of unified hub of sharing and learning and growing.

On that same line of thinking, we also see that one comment or one share can lead to these massive chain reactions that span all sorts of personal and geographic boundaries. Take the Arab Spring revolutions where we saw the powerful ideals of a few first spark support from their peers and then almost immediately rally the emotions of people all around the world. We see the same thing when a new song, movie, game, or gadget is announced and the world goes into a frenzy. Two very different examples obviously, but the fact is, when a topic gets some heat it isn't long before it catches fire and everyone knows about the hype. I like Chopra's vision of a kind act; a simple retweet spreading wildly through the Twitterverse effecting people far removed from the original user.

The sad truth to this though is that for every kind act there is hostility. I won't deny being a part of it. There's something cathartic about being harsh and hiding behind the anonymity of a a username or old school physical distance. There's nothing wrong with being honest, but many times people are brutally honest without restraint. And other times people say things that are just irrelevant and unnecessary. Realistically it won't change; that kind of behavior is an unfortunate part of our lives. What we need to make sure we do is make that a small portion of our digital behavior and make sure that the good we do in social is powerful and meaningful.

Now Mashable also asks Chopra how we can remain grounded in our present in a world of digital connectivity and his solution, is to create separate, dedicated time for the internet. That I disagree with. It's a nice ideal, but totally unrealistic for most everyday folk. "Social media time" just isn't the design of social media! It's meant to be integrated into each and every part of our lives; cataloging our experiences and sharing them as they happen. While it is true that social and technology often bring us out of the moment, they also help us experience the moments with those most important to us, even when they can't be there themselves. It may sound stupid or annoying but there isn't one of you reading that doesn't like to send a picture of yourself to a friend or tell your followers what your doing. Of course there's over-sharing and we all have our Facebook friends that we just don't really care about or who annoy us with their incessant activity, but the idea behind social and sharing is not a bad one. It does bring us closer and helps us maintain relationships.

In closing, there are things we can work on. My girlfriend hates it when I check emails late at night but we both geek out over who can check-in to a location first on FourSquare. We really just need to approach our two worlds, physical and digital, with awareness and self-control. As it becomes more integrated into more situations in our lives the lines will blur. Chopra is mostly right though, we should focus on the positive with social. Use it for fun and have fun using it. So go share an interesting article. Like someones status. Retweet a friend. Be digitally spiritual.