…there’s a new kind of courage in town.
August 14th, 2009
I love this video. It illustrates something that Ben and I have been discussing for a while now. We often get e-mails and various other messages from people concerning different happenings in our church or in their lives and many times people say things that we are both quite sure they wouldn’t say to us in person. We have called this “cyber-courage”. A friend of ours mentioned to us a phrase from back in his “drinking days” called “liquid courage”. The sense is that if a man gets enough alcohol in him, he’ll do things he would never dream of doing while sober. The same is true of e-mail and facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. They provide a forum for people to speak their minds and never be held accountable. They don’t have to look at people, hear their voice or see their expressions, and there is always the joy of saying, “Well, if you thought I meant that in my post, that wasn’t what I intended. Ah, yes, the warm blanket of plausible deniability. You can read anything into an e-mail or instant message or facebook post when the author only intended good things when writing!
Now, you could say that I am engaging in the very thing I am being critical of, and maybe so. Maybe we need to ditch the idea of a blog at our church lest we be tempted to say things that we can’t be held accountable for. We’ll see. And if you were offended by this posting…I didn’t mean it. Really.
I think the written word has become so fouled up that people no longer know how to effectively communicate. Thats unfortunate, because prior to the internet and even telephone, writing was something everyone did (those who had the ability). It wasn’t just a means of conveying a thought or providing facts, but it was an art form that stemmed from the heart. People said what they meant and meant what they said. This whole social networking thing has made us stupid when it comes to human interaction. I’m a prime example.
Comment by Brian Mueller — August 20, 2009 @ 6:14 pm
I think you’re right, Brian. It seems interesting that while we are “communicating” at a break-neck pace, no one seems to be “connecting” with anyone else. Jennifer and I were eating out one night and saw a family sitting at a table texting without saying one word to each other until the food came and as soon as they finished eating, they grabbed their phones and started “communicating” again.
Comment by jeremy — August 21, 2009 @ 9:27 am