Showing posts with label virtual friendships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virtual friendships. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

On Blood Donations

Banshee Arts

Blood and kinship. In some contexts, the two are synonymous. We say that we share blood with someone if we are familially related to them, if we are ‘blood kin’. Sharing blood is also understood as a way to establish kinship where it does not exist from birth: the old blood brotherhood or sisterhood. Why does this work (or to look at it another way), why is it believed to work? Because our blood is the essence of our life – it is the vehicle and condensed liquid form of life force. To share that is to be kin.
To share that is to be kin.  

A couple of hundred donations many shared with several patients in need.  Call it a thousand unknown kinfolk of mine out there.   Makes it hard to think badly of anyone.  Eh, brother or sister?

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Do Facebook Friends Work?

The Human Condition : Friends With Benefits: Do Facebook Friends Provide the Same Support as Those In Real Life?: "Numerous studies have shown that a strong network of friends can be crucial to getting through a crisis, and can help you be healthier in general. But could virtual friends, like the group of online buddies that reached out to Sue, be just as helpful as the flesh-and-blood versions? In other words, do Facebook friends—and the support we get from them—count? These questions are all the more intriguing as the number of online social-network users increase. Facebook attracted 67.5 million visitors in the U.S. in April (according to ComScore Inc.), and the fastest-growing demographic is people over 35. It’s clear that connecting to friends, both close and distant, via the computer will become more the norm than novelty."

A good intro to something I have been working on recently: For those of us with an unusual demographic, in my case highly intelligent, spiritual atheist, choral musician, cosmopolitan with friends and family scattered all over the US and classical music literate, will on-line social networking take the place of the village or parish that historically has been the source of our social support for all of the important crises in life. Whether it is a stubbed toe or the death of a loved one, seeing a butterfly or falling in love, we need a touch of a friend.

If my local parish or village is an unpleasant place where I feel totally outcast due to my demographic not fitting in with the rest of the village, must I give up hope of a touch, or can a virtual touch work just as well.

As a related issue, is a real "touch" a necessary condition for the virtual touch to work?
As a single data point, a beliefnet friend who I never met, and who I had no contact with outside of forum posts died. I grieved as if he was a face-friend, and created an appreciation thread as soon as his absence from the boards was noted as I knew he was terminally ill. An obit was found and posted and the threat turned into a virtual atheist celebration of the life of. A donation to the hospice with a copy of the thread, generated a beautiful post by his daughter filling in details we (the virtual group of friends) would have known had we had face contact.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

On the death of a friend.

A D Community Room - Beliefnet Forums: "So I too share in her legacy and will carry forward that memory. I was on the way to a visit to my son who asked about the visit, he is a part of our beliefnet atheist community, and so the ripples spread,"