Marginal Christianity

I don’t have to say something just because everyone around me is. I don’t have to speak about things I know little or nothing about. I don’t have to speak about issues that will be totally forgotten in a few weeks or months by the people who at this moment are most strenuously demanding a response. I don’t have to spend my time in environments that press me to speak without knowledge. If I can bring to an issue heat, but no light, it is probably best that I remain silent. Private communication can be more valuable than public. Delayed communication, made when people have had time to think and to calm their emotions, is almost always more valuable than immediate reaction. Some conversations are be more meaningful and effective in living rooms, or at dinner tables, than in the middle of Main Street. Read more at http://blog.ayjay.org/uncategorized/my-year-in-tech/

By Joe Simmons, SJ on May 15, 2012 (http://thejesuitpost.org/site/2012/05/life-death-and-facebook/) Is Facebook dying?  If it died, would you miss it? I asked my students these questions a few weeks ago in class, after I read the piece “ Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? ” by Stephen Marche in the May issue of The Atlantic .  (Tim O’Brien beat me to the punch on it by writing this excellent piece a week or so ago.) The Leaders of Tomorrow who occupy the desks in my classroom responded that Facebook “is lame and no one uses it anymore.”  This surprised me, since I know most of them have active accounts, as do most of my contemporaries. But not all of my contemporaries. We all know those few outliers who never got pulled in by the Facebook tractor beam .  One such outlier is a college roommate of mine, Jordan.  Jordan is the kind of person who switches from a strict vegetarian diet to one best described as “flagrantly carnivorous” just to go against the grain...