I am staying on Facebook. It’s an imperfect decision made by an imperfect person in an imperfect world. As recently as yesterday, I was going to disengage, believing that my staying connected offered tacit support to Facebook’s role in the 2016 campaign and that its invasion of the right to privacy was a line I could not cross. But then I woke up this morning thinking about leaving behind my Facebook friends and family—including many with whom I would not be able to reconnect– and my stomach twisted into a knot.
As far as I’ve been able to suss it out, we fierce ones have an impossible choice to make. On one hand, we withdraw from Facebook and other untrustworthy platforms thereby becoming complicit in marginalizing and silencing ourselves at a time when our world needs its wise elders more than ever. On the other hand, we stay involved and risk colluding with collusion while simultaneously exposing our vulnerabilites to the possibility of the exploitation of that which we hold most dear for ends diametrically opposed to our own.
It is not easy to be old and awake in these times, wishing one had done, could or can do more. There are cogent arguments pro and con for staying on Facebook in the comment section of my blog “Time to Face(book) the Music” as well as on my Facebook Fierce with Age fan page that approach this moral, emotional and practical dilemma from multiple angles. I am so grateful for, moved by, impressed with (and in some cases chastised by) the depth of wisdom and empathy that so many of you shared. I’ve learned a lot this week—about myself, about you and about how it is I am choosing to move forward in these fractured and perilous times. That said, I am hoping against hope that my decision is not a rationalization. So, for the sake of transparency—and at risk of even more unwitting self-exposure—I’m going to share my thought process with you.
The seeds were sown immediately following the 2016 election results, the day I stopped assuming that when I see something that needs to be done, others more capable, energetic or self-sacrificing than I would step into the breach. I like myself better now for having answered the call of my own heart to do more. But I have also been painfully aware that it doesn’t seem to be enough. There is nothing I can do to protect Mueller. Nothing I can do to silence right wing media. Nothing I can do about Russia and our President. The list is endless and grows longer with every news cycle.
And then Facebook happened. Facebook was something I could do something about. I could disable my account and make as much noise about doing so as possible…start something big that could even go viral. Finally, a definitive moral line—drawn in black and white—I would not cross. But as I began looking more seriously into it, I realized that if I get off of Facebook, I will have simultaneously relinquished my most effective communication platform. No problem, I thought to myself. I’ll start from scratch—there’s still Instagram, Messenger and What’s App. And then, sharing this strategy with others, I learned the sad fact. They are all owned by Facebook. And as many of you informed me, Facebook and its minions are far from the only platforms that violate our privacy and our trust on a daily basis. There is a broad band of online tools we have come to depend upon that exploit that which is most intimate, most human, about each of us on a regular basis. As I asked in my blog that started this conversation, “Face(book) the Music”, has everything I’ve loved about my Facebook been little more than a Trojan Horse? The answer is yes, and here’s the worst of it. It’s become crystal clear that this is a Trojan horse that has already left the barn.
In “Face(book) the Music”, I asked what I believe to be the most important question we each need to ask of ourselves: How are we to live? The world is moving forward into the future, whether we like it or not. We Boomers have lived the changes every day, year after year. I used to write all my books on my beloved Selectric, using the white-out tab and carbon paper. Couldn’t imagine any other, better way. But eventually, I weaned myself off of typewriters and inched forward into the world of computers and 30 books later, never looked back. Over the span of our long lives, we’ve had to make difficult choices over and over again, to grow to accept, or shrink away-to refuse, the adoption of new technology. To choose to grow inevitably entails risk. And growth has been a risk I have always been willing to take.
It is true that bad people are using these powerful technological platforms for nefarious purposes. But does that mean that good people should abandon the field to them? One comment, from Older, Wiser, Fiercer subscriber Celia, hit me between the eyes. Your moral dilemma regarding Facebook) “brought to mind something I read in an interview with Joan Chittister about why she chose to stay in the church in spite of all its inherent problems…She viewed herself and her ministry to be the ‘sand’, the irritant that spurred the growth of the gel inside the oyster that led to the formation of the pearl…I admired her for being able to persevere all these years, although I left the Catholic Church many years ago. Perhaps her staying and being the irritant has contributed to changes in the church and will continue to lead to additional growth – back to what was intended before it lost its way. Perhaps by staying with FB, you can also be its irritant…Each of our choices is very personal and your choice, either way, will be the right one for you at this moment. It doesn’t mean you cannot revisit it as you grow deeper but we all do the best we can at each moment we have.”
Grappling with the Facebook dilemma, the essential question of morality How am I to live? cuts that much closer to the bone: pressing, immediate, unavoidable. I started to formulate my answer Wednesday by posting the following on my Fierce with Age Facebook page: “Speak up Zuckerberg! Time to face(book) the music. We the users of Facebook demand transparency and justice!” It went out to over 1500 people and shortly after I posted this, but one micro-bit of the general uproar, Zuckerberg finally took his first baby steps in the direction of taking responsibility. It’s not much, but it’s a beginning. I am also learning more about the Honest Ads Senate Bill, figuring out the best way to advance efforts to regulate not only Facebook but social media in general and taking steps to activate the privacy settings that my online communications networks already offer and, this is on me, of which I had been previously unaware.
So here’s the nub of it. While I am not as in control of as much as I wished I were, I am yet called to use whatever it is I can for the greater good. I have learned through this painfully public processing how many of you value my and our online community’s Facebook presence including my new Facebook friend Diana’s sentiment: “I think it’s a shame that we would need to lose connection with others at the time we need it most, when our country and very lives are endangered…”
I know continuing on Facebook is a risk. But life is a risk. I also know that this is not a perfect decision, but I am an imperfect person—a mere grain of sand—living in an imperfect world. I can mourn this new level of confrontation with my own degree of powerlessness, naivity even, but to intentionally marginalize myself with what for me could be an ego-soothing but ultimately undermining display of moral indignation would lead me to place not so much safe or revolutionary as fallow.
I wish this was as simple as black or white, darkness or light, but in both the realm of physics and spirituality, light it not the absence of color. Rather, it contains every primary possibility, which can then be mixed to produce every shade and hue. If we want to be the light, it is impingent upon us likewise to be willing to use everything we’ve got—our righteous anger, our disappointment, our love, our frustration, our courage, our impatience, our endurance, our compassion for ourselves and for human fallibility, our doubt and our faith: all that which goes into making us authentic and whole. And then we do what we can to rectify that to which we have been called.
And so it is that this imperfect person living in imperfect times has decided to stay on Facebook and do what I can to make Facebook, the world and myself, better than we otherwise would have been. That’s all anybody can do and it has to be enough.
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