In reading Francis Bacon’s 16th century essay, Of Friendship, I was struck not only by the potential benefits of friendship he espouses, but by the lack of those benefits, due to the lack of real friendship, in our world today. While I – like most of us! – truly do enjoy the fruits of our technological world, where we can rapidly connect with others and capture information almost instantaneously, there is something to be said of the tight bonds between individuals we have lost.
Aside from our close family members, who do we connect with truly and deeply anymore? Friends have become, in the physical sense, folks we go out to dinner or a baseball game with, idle times with speckled, brief conversations. With few exceptions, we do not share our inner thoughts and feelings with friends. We send them Tweets, we “Friend” them on Facebook, we send moderately complete emails, but we don’t truly connect.
I agree with Bacon that “a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.” No doubt, many social media aficionados will proclaim that our Twitterverse and Facebook friendships are creating a larger sphere of social interactions than we ever had before. They’re correct, we can indeed communicate and interact with a very wide swath of humanity by these technological means. The numbers of people who can read my words quickly on this blog are far more than I could reach in the old days of mere written or printed words. I can send blurbs of my thoughts to hundreds on Twitter, and to “friends” and colleagues instantly by text messaging.
But really, what is the value of these rapid, trite interactions? Bacon almost seems to have foreseen the internet age when he wrote ”a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” No love. There is no love in a blog, in a Tweet. No love between two people.
Real friendship is a real connection, an opportunity to open the heart. “You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” Except for certain – often pleasantly verbose! – emails you don’t wish to read at work while your boss is in the room, our trite internet interactions are mere flitting flies compared to the conversations between real friends we very seldom have today and which no doubt were far more prevalent in Bacon’s day, or even in the pre-internet 20th century. I’m sure my parents know their college friends far better than I know mine, and I’ve no doubt exchanged way more emails and texts and Tweets than they have.
Bacon describes benefits of friendship, really benefits of honest conversations with true friends. “This communicating of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.” In the modern internet age, I don’t feel we ever communicate ourselves to the same extent as Bacon is describing, and this lessens the effects on our joys and sorrows. Proudly – and arrogantly – proclaiming to our myriad Facebook “Friends” that we ate dinner at some fancy Chicago restaurant or saw our beloved New York Mets win or got a promotion at our fancy Washington law firm is not a deep discussion of the real nature of our joys that increases them. Likewise, you seldom see Facebook posts proclaiming getting fired or divorced, and so these sorrows are merely kept inside, or imparted by too-brief soliloquys to uninterested listeners. The therapeutic effects of friendship which Bacon describes are sorely lacking in our modern communication.
The utility to our awareness of both ourselves and our surroundings is also lacking in perusing our Twitterfeed or sending 140-character texts. “For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness, and confusion of thoughts … he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour’s discourse, than by a day’s meditation.” While no doubt many of us have had such conversations with coworkers and thesis advisors, the ready and frequent benefit of such conversations with friends, that would enhance the cogency and relevance of our ideas, is sorely lacking in today’s world.
How can we remedy the loss of true friendship in our internet world? How can we capture at least some of the life lessons and benefits of friendship described by Sir Francis? I guess I’m not really sure. And I don’t think we can completely bring back such interactions in our rapid-fire, rat-race, text-happy, Twitter-crazed maelstrom of data and blurbs and angry, impersonal diatribes. Perhaps a commitment to spending more time with each other, outside of just office events and orchestrated reunions, is one way. Perhaps on our Facebook accounts, we should rely less on quick posts and “Liking” each other’s statements (which means nothing) and turn instead to the real message feature, where we can write as much as we like. Real, honest emails is a similar avenue. But have we lost some of our desire for these interactions? I fear we may have. We don’t want to message or email our friends, we seldom even want to talk to them (we’d rather text than talk). I find that sad, but perhaps it’s part of the path forward. Forward toward what, I’m not sure, and when we read Bacon’s essay, maybe we can harbor some nostalgia for the old ways that were, in the days before the nifty Twitter feed, in a way better.
Aside from our close family members, who do we connect with truly and deeply anymore? Friends have become, in the physical sense, folks we go out to dinner or a baseball game with, idle times with speckled, brief conversations. With few exceptions, we do not share our inner thoughts and feelings with friends. We send them Tweets, we “Friend” them on Facebook, we send moderately complete emails, but we don’t truly connect.
I agree with Bacon that “a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.” No doubt, many social media aficionados will proclaim that our Twitterverse and Facebook friendships are creating a larger sphere of social interactions than we ever had before. They’re correct, we can indeed communicate and interact with a very wide swath of humanity by these technological means. The numbers of people who can read my words quickly on this blog are far more than I could reach in the old days of mere written or printed words. I can send blurbs of my thoughts to hundreds on Twitter, and to “friends” and colleagues instantly by text messaging.
But really, what is the value of these rapid, trite interactions? Bacon almost seems to have foreseen the internet age when he wrote ”a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” No love. There is no love in a blog, in a Tweet. No love between two people.
Real friendship is a real connection, an opportunity to open the heart. “You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” Except for certain – often pleasantly verbose! – emails you don’t wish to read at work while your boss is in the room, our trite internet interactions are mere flitting flies compared to the conversations between real friends we very seldom have today and which no doubt were far more prevalent in Bacon’s day, or even in the pre-internet 20th century. I’m sure my parents know their college friends far better than I know mine, and I’ve no doubt exchanged way more emails and texts and Tweets than they have.
Bacon describes benefits of friendship, really benefits of honest conversations with true friends. “This communicating of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.” In the modern internet age, I don’t feel we ever communicate ourselves to the same extent as Bacon is describing, and this lessens the effects on our joys and sorrows. Proudly – and arrogantly – proclaiming to our myriad Facebook “Friends” that we ate dinner at some fancy Chicago restaurant or saw our beloved New York Mets win or got a promotion at our fancy Washington law firm is not a deep discussion of the real nature of our joys that increases them. Likewise, you seldom see Facebook posts proclaiming getting fired or divorced, and so these sorrows are merely kept inside, or imparted by too-brief soliloquys to uninterested listeners. The therapeutic effects of friendship which Bacon describes are sorely lacking in our modern communication.
The utility to our awareness of both ourselves and our surroundings is also lacking in perusing our Twitterfeed or sending 140-character texts. “For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness, and confusion of thoughts … he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour’s discourse, than by a day’s meditation.” While no doubt many of us have had such conversations with coworkers and thesis advisors, the ready and frequent benefit of such conversations with friends, that would enhance the cogency and relevance of our ideas, is sorely lacking in today’s world.
How can we remedy the loss of true friendship in our internet world? How can we capture at least some of the life lessons and benefits of friendship described by Sir Francis? I guess I’m not really sure. And I don’t think we can completely bring back such interactions in our rapid-fire, rat-race, text-happy, Twitter-crazed maelstrom of data and blurbs and angry, impersonal diatribes. Perhaps a commitment to spending more time with each other, outside of just office events and orchestrated reunions, is one way. Perhaps on our Facebook accounts, we should rely less on quick posts and “Liking” each other’s statements (which means nothing) and turn instead to the real message feature, where we can write as much as we like. Real, honest emails is a similar avenue. But have we lost some of our desire for these interactions? I fear we may have. We don’t want to message or email our friends, we seldom even want to talk to them (we’d rather text than talk). I find that sad, but perhaps it’s part of the path forward. Forward toward what, I’m not sure, and when we read Bacon’s essay, maybe we can harbor some nostalgia for the old ways that were, in the days before the nifty Twitter feed, in a way better.