What is a friend?

When I was growing up friendship was for a select few. Those special intimates that were distinct from the many Aussie mates.

Certainly that is the traditional model of friendship. However, is social networking changing that picture? Facebook may have intended to bring together close friends, however, we seem to be increasingly blurring what friendship means.

The online dating scene increasingly mirrors the offline persona of people, according to research

However, PhD candidate and lecturer in Cultural Sociology at Queensland’s Griffith University Brady Robards from has found that people are giving up their privacy to entertain their online friends.

While, the average person still uses Facebook primarily to engage with people with whom they share some standing relationship, claim researchers, what Facebook calls a friend is different: family, colleagues, clients, past and present lovers, and long lost school friends.

“Once you begin to treat friends as a sort of audience, the issue of privacy seems trivial” wrote Robards.”You’ll share content (pictures, updates, wall posts) based on what is appropriate in what context.”

“The problem is that there is no one context or singular audience we’re pursuing. Our audience is diverse, and what may interest (or amuse) one of our Friends might well offend another.”

This is demonstrated by a Canadian study reported in CyberPsychology & Behavior linked increased Facebook use and jealousy between partners.

They concluded Facebook “exposes people to often ambiguous information about their partner that they may not otherwise have access to.”

That harmless flirt from an online friend is seen out of context and may raised jealousy.

However, Robard’s  qualitative study found that young people “ are, contrary to popular discourse, extremely sensitive to this tension and the inherent risks involved.’

Robard’s describes how some people who began being very cautious about revealing personal details began to expand their friends list over time. Others just withhold personal details.

They are not ‘overly worried’ about Facebook because they believe they have it under control.

However, he points out that online privacy is far more complex than how we set up our Facebook privacy settings. It is intimately (no pun intended) linked to who we call, and how we define friendship, he says.

Could this result in an unconscious drift that potentially diminishes our sense of social intimacy?

I often hear predictions that today’s youth will revolutionize and liberate relationships – however as a student of history I wonder if we will swing back to our historical norms.

Do you think Facebook will revolutionize social intimacy? Will it result in the rise of polyamory in today’s youth?

Or are we revealing an un-integrated part of our social soul? Is this a short term manifestation of our tribal connectedness that challenges our yearning for spiritual monogamy – the ‘yin/yang’ ‘twin flame’ of our shadow self?

Sasha Alex Lessin points out that Helen Fishers research suggests that monogamy suited our biologically “monogamy insured at least two people stayed together and committed to
their child’s survival.”

“Staying together until he was “weaned” and somewhat self-sufficient before parting. Has its biological advantages.

He sees polyamory as an alternative that resonates with our cultural memory of tribal security, when in numbers the women and children could be defended.

He suggests that “in polyamory, one has many mirrors in which to reflect; many points of view in which to learn and grow. In a poly household, there are many hands to accomplish tasks, to pull resources together.’

Besides, the increased sexual variety, he suggest that polyamory may even stabilize relationships  claiming there are examples of twenty-three year long relationships.

In talking with some who tried it, they fell back to becoming closer to one partner. The few I know of are  failed to sustain a long term relationship. However, few monogamous relationships survive.

Do you think polyamory work in modern society? Will our greater social connectivity cause us to diminish intimacy?

Or will the biological pull to protect the species, described by Helen Fisher, win out?

Of course, polygamy has occasionally hit the news. Should a polygamous Muslim who moves to the West be forced to divorce a wife? Or should be we become more tolerant of differing social views?

Lessin seems to develop a view including reincarnation we “go from lifetime to lifetime experiencing being every religion, race, color and creed, we find within our soul group that
we have experienced being every imaginable configuration of friends, family and Lovers” he said.

He borrows from Hal and Sidra Stone’s “dance of the selves” as the path to awareness and wholeness in life.

Personally, I wonder if we could use this idea to express our cultural evolution of our collective soul.

“We do this dance time and again, hurting and being hurt, until one day we, find that we have completed all karma, our soul group reunites in bliss and we return home to “go out no more” he said.

I for one am all for monogamy. I believe, buttressed by my kabbalistic perspective, that monogamy mirrors a greater social and spiritual connectivity of our universal consciousness.

However, I also agree with Lessing that others are a mirror of our own soul that allows us to grow as individuals and collectively.

History tells us that societies rose and fell with the strengthening or demise of the family.The more intimately bound our individual families become the greater our collective social strength.

So will Facebook help us refine relationship and develop a stronger more universal humanity, or will we socially fragment?

While linking Facebook or other social networking sites may appear to stretch logical boundaries. I ask you to consider how societies increasing interconnectedness has changed our political life.

In the past a Tsunami or earthquake would have resulted in one kingdom invading a weakened neighbor. Now we realize there are benefits in helping people who are no longer seen as faceless.

What do you think? Will the family and intimacy be next to frontier conquered and dismantled by globalization?