Today in his homily our pastor talked at length about the places where we are divided -- as a church, as a town, as a nation. Division, he reminded us, is the work of the devil. Although I love words and their histories, it wasn't until my late 40s that I learned (in the confessional, natch) that diabolical, etymologically, refers to separation or division.
It's a connection I've thought about often over the past 5 years, in which our polarization has become starker and more dangerous. Hell exults, I have to think, when we cannot see the humanity behind the slogans-- when a catchphrase causes us to think, "Nope, not listening to anything else that comes out of your mouth."
Facebook has a lot to answer for as an agent of that polarization, and I might have some ethical qualms about using the platform even if it were entirely a positive experience for me. But the 2016 election altered the ratio of Happy Facebook/Awful Facebook, and it does not seem to be shifting back. I keep thinking about it in an unhelpful loop: Facebook is mostly terrible / I should delete my account / what about all the people I'm only connected with on Facebook? / maybe I'll just peek in periodically / but even in small doses, Facebook is mostly terrible...
Tonight I had a thought: if I let people know that I'm planning to delete my account, maybe at the end of this calendar year, then I can round up missing contact information and download the stuff I'm going to want to save. Facebook is almost entirely bad for me, and it would be smart to pull the plug.
This post title sounds clickbait-y, I know. I would roll my eyes at a post called "Harry Potter and the Devil" or "Heavy Metal and the Devil." But Facebook has spurred me to think ill of my neighbor, to withhold the benefit of the doubt, to gossip and complain. Those things don't happen when I read Harry Potter or listen to AC/DC. It's probably time.
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