Well, here it is, at long last.
The blog I’ve been promising.
Why in the world did I delete my Facebook account?
Am I a brash and fickle kid who is seeking attention and hopes to drum up a little drama among his friends? Maybe get my way by throwing a temper tantrum or two? Perhaps, maybe, if I delete my profile, people will take me seriously?
No, no, no!
The ironic fact of the matter is, I’m one of those pitiful souls who takes all this “Kinism” rhetoric seriously.
My dad is kicking himself right now. He hates the fact that he fed me a diet of Lewis and Tolkien (with side-dishes of Frank and Joe Hardy). Who would have thought that I’d take all that seriously? No one else does.
Contemporary society teaches people about right and wrong and then later, how to not-apply that particular knowledge.
Who takes Tolkien seriously, after all?
Well, damn it all, I do!
You know who else I take seriously? The Southern Agrarians. The British Distributists. Richard Weaver! John Ruskin, Edward Burke, and Chateaubriand!
Do the self-proclaimed “Kinists” take their own rhetoric seriously?
I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say, “probably not” or else their violent acts would make national news.
“Democracy,” afterall, has become a cuss-word among our ilk (we kinists.)
And yet, when disagreements arise among us, what do we do? We vote on it!
Really????
Yes, really.
We’re democrats to the core, all of us…we’re all rationalists. We damn ourselves.
Well, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t preach one thing and practice another.
If I’m to be a consistent “agrarian” “kinist” and all the other “isms” and “ists” that I’m to be… then so help me, I’ll be them.
I’ll be a knight and by God my armor will be shiny… (even though I have my doubts that there are any women out there looking for knights in shining armor. Do you know what it’s like for a knight to be ridiculed by the lady he’s come to rescue? It’s a nightmare.)
I’m not angry at my Kinist brethren, not at all.
I love you guys. Any of you reading this, please know, I love you…I do. And, I miss you.
But, our association and friendship through “Facebook” is a charade! A facade! It’s not real.
How can you know someone over a distance? You cannot! There are subtleties to a person that are missed in internet relationships! Small twists of the corners of one’s mouth, arched eyebrows, and slight changes in tones of voice. A person’s physique is, unfortunately for many, a part of who the person is and a striking physical appearance plays a role in how we respond to and interact with another person.
God made us that way! He made us with bodies…and we shouldn’t so callously abandon them, taking up an abstracted form of communication in their place!
Sorcerers and Satanists of old (among whom I count the alchemists) believed that they could reduce everything to some base-form of information. For the sorcerers, they believed everything could be reduced to complex combinations of vibrations. Utter the right vibration (IE: magic word) and you could manipulate reality.
In its modern form, this mindset is known as “industrialism.”
Everything is being reduced to mathematical information. Ones and Zeroes! Everything, even our food, is being “industrialized!.”
It’s being reduced to its most basic “information” so that it can be easily assembled and manipulated.
That damnable jew Zuckerberg (who invented Facebook) isn’t creative in and of himself. He merely had the foresight to apply his worldview of industrialization to society.
In Facebook now, you can form different “groups” where you sift and sort your friends into categories so that you can better keep up with different groups of them.
How disgusting!
We’re “industrializing” our friendships!
Of course, this is happening more and more with our sexual relationships as well. I remember growing up, if you engaged in an internet relationship with some girl, you did your best to hide the fact. You were considered a huge dork if your internet relationship was found out.
Not these days. In fact, more and more (women especially) are turning to websites like E-harmony, to find their dates.
Imagine that, you program in a few particulars and preferences and big-business finds you a husband!
We’re abstracting ourselves out of our own humanity!
We are the society of moon-men that Lewis wrote about in “That Hideous Strength.”
Nature is becoming obsolete.
I’ll not sift and sort my friends, sorry. I either know you in real life, or I do not. I’ll not participate in some abstract network.
Why?
In my particular “kinist” network on Facebook, there were some truly incredible individuals.
However, there was one very contentious female. (She knows who she is.)
Every chance she got, she defied me, usually in very un-lady-like manners. If we had known each other in real life, she wouldn’t ever dare to be as contentious or cruel as she was on Facebook. I’ve met women like her (and silenced them) multiple times, but due to the artificial environment in which we were associating, she was able to ramble on and continue in her contentiousness.
Not in real life. It wouldn’t have happened.
So, one by one, I went down my list, deleting those who I have come to love.
I hovered my mouse over CM, a guy in Canada whom I’ve come to appreciate and respect. But do I really know CM? Really? What does he sound like in real life? What sort of person is he really? What would it be like to go drinking at a pub on Saturday night with him?
I have no clue.
How about E or Ms. MN? Do I know them either? It was very, very hard to click on their names and hit the “remove friend” button. How can I remove dear M? Such a stalwart friend and confidant? I wouldn’t have learned about the novel “The Mouse that Roared” if not for her. Such a benefit to my life she’s been.
Nevertheless, do I really know her? Am I cheapening my relationship with M and E and Ms. L by not knowing them in real life, as God has created them?
To answer that rhetorical question, yes…I would be cheapening it.
It was G.K. Chesterton who brought all this to my attention. Even in his day, men were tempted to industrialize their friendships, and he rightly saw through the attempt.
“We can see this change, for instance, in the modern transformation of the thing called a club. When London was smaller, and the parts of London more self-contained and parochial, the club was what it still is in villages, the opposite of what it is now in great cities. Then the club was valued as a place where a man could be sociable. Now the club is valued as a place where a man can be unsociable. The more the enlargement and elaboration of our civilization goes on the more the club ceases to be a place where a man can have a noisy argument, and becomes more and more a place where a man can have what is somewhat fantastically called a quiet chop. Its aim is to make a man comfortable, and to make a man comfortable is to make him the opposite of sociable. Sociability, like all good things, is full of discomforts, dangers and renunciations. The club tends to produce the most degraded of all combinations — the luxurious anchorite, the man who combines the self-indulgence of the Lucullus with the insane loneliness of St. Simeon Stylites.”
I encourage everyone to read Chapter 14 of Chesterton’s “Heretics.”
He argues that we should associate with our families and neighbors as opposed to seeking out ideological compatriots in a “social club” (which is a wonderful analogy to today’s “Facebook.”)
We’ll become artificial, brittle ideologues.
The “Scott” known on Facebook wasn’t the real “Scott.” Now that the real Scott has divested himself of Facebook (and all its artificial relationships) he’s becoming so much more productive in his actual life.
“Kinism” is seeping into his daily associations, where before, it was confined to his Facebook.
In short, I’m describing a pragmatic benefit to axing my account: I’m focusing more on my life and as a result, I’m much more productive.
I’ll reiterate that I love all my kinist friends and cherish our online conversations. I miss you all terribly, even now.
But I have to face reality and live my life in the context God has placed me in.
I have a very small Facebook account as of now. It consists only of those people I’ve met in real life and have formed friendships with.
I think John Ruskin and Chesterton would approve of Facebook in that capacity.
I hope to meet you, dear friends, one day…
Posted by shotgunwildatheart 
