Okay, so I feel I have a better grasp on the whole "anti-facebook" sentiment I have felt as of late... I deliberated on this the other night as I felt my drive to break myself away wane - a sure sign of addiction, don't you think? I mean, it's bad enough I don't just walk away and leave it, cold turkey... but that I was thinking of extending my deadline for exeunt just helps me solidify my theory.

That being said, it is just a theory... but a well supported one - if there are scientific studies on being addicted to porn, surely one can be addicted to all things electronic... I mean, hell, look at Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ... the incessant need to dominate over life... or something like it.

Anyway, what snapped me out of it, really, was the Wikipedia article on Jean-Paul Sartre's (famed French philosopher of the existentialist tract) On Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, or rather the study of being. Heavy stuff which is WAY above my head... but reading just the article made me want to start reading Sartre. I mean, not just this one book, but perhaps some of his plays as well; No Exit or Huis Clos as it was called in French sounds quite interesting... rather anti-fatalist as it discusses people "existing" eternally in hell, but hey, there you go. I know that it will take me forever, as that is just how I roll, but I feel that his existentialism would help me balance the encroaching fatalism I feel inside... whoa...

Anyway, this totally relates to the whole facebook thing... how? Well I'll tell you how; the idea behind this opus gripped me from the very description of the introduction in which the subjects of being in itself versus being for itself are portrayed as rather oppositional; "in" implies a lack of consciousness that, in our limited capacity, can only be approximated, and "for" implies that consciousness of something for the validation of the self comes into play. Blows... my... mind.

The first chapter is basically a page from the book of any one's life, whether or not they choose to recognize it, and practically verifies my theory that the road to "happiness" (or at least a path of little resistance) is one most certainly NOT paved in expectation; the Origin of Negation comes from the disappointment or resentment we feel when something expected does not come to pass, or the negation of expectation, at which point Sartre states "it is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of human expectation". From there, he describes the existence of "bad faith", or rather this expectation that we are all generally something that we are not. Now, this sounds initially rather pessimistic, but reading on (in the article, mind you) changed my opinion.

Sartre implies that one can escape bad faith by recognizing that the actual self and the projected self are not the same thing, and that basically, in that you are an existent being, you are not "no thing", you are anything. Anything at all... through effort of course, but abounding in endless possibilities and whatnot. We must realize we are beings who exist and not just some social position or aspect. He qualifies this, though, by saying that the "authentic" being is one who balances the existence, the bad faith in various conditions we must take on, and the nothingness in between. Like... whoa...

Facebook, yes, right... facebook is a condition on which I have taken willingly that I cannot shake. I am not my facebook. My facebook - in a perfect world - should be me, but it is not. I am my own being, endlessly capable, and not defined by online critiques of my e-personality. Therefore, it is my personal theory that the resultant no-thingness that exists between who I actually am and what my facebook portrays me to be (in all its "electric sheep" glory) is the barrier I must pass through (or perhaps through which I must return) in order to be more personally actualized.

Why am I making such a big, (poorly) philosophical fuss about something as trivial as a facebook page? Because I know what it is like to be addicted to something that is only harmless on the surface... addicted the candy from the wolf in sheep's clothing... addicted to routines that are endlessly self-destructive regardless of how we justify them; they may be harmless to the condition which consumes us, but they are poison (POISON!) to the existent being.

It is in this spirit that my faith in my decision to drop facebook is reaffirmed and renewed. July 31st, 11:59 AM... die, vampire... die...