I'm Back: People in a Nut Shell and the Internet

          The looking glass self. I can see it at work everyday. When I walk through the halls at school, and receive an unusual amount of passing greetings I feel better. It would attribute to the fact that I feel much better while in agreement with someone, rather than dispute. In my personal opinion, I whole heartedly believe in the idea of a looking glass self that defines our social self, and an inner self that defines our antisocial self. By antisocial I don't mean a self that avoids social contact, but rather a self that is relatively uninfluenced by present circumstances and is more closely centered around past experiences, personal values, and genetic tendencies/temperaments.. It is what a lot of people who are not me, would call the soul, but I try not to use words that carry spiritual conotations when discerning items of secular origin. I believe that this antisocial self is primarily determined by biological dispositions, but is subject to minor change based on past experience, knowledge, and beliefs/values of the individual. It is the psychological or inner self and is the self we present to ourselves as us. While the social self is the is effectively the external self and is how we view ourselves and present ourself to others. The external or social self, is subject to nearly instantaneous change due to the immediate circumstances that we find ourselves in. It is the reason that people present themselves differently to different people. An adolescent does not present himself to his employer in the same way that he or she presents themself to a friendly aquaintance. The reason for this is that our sense of immediate self changes based on how we think others think about us, and how we want others to think about us. If one believes that, based on inference, others don't like them, then they will begin to view themselves in the same manner, presenting themselves to others in a reflective demeanor as a result, and vice versa. On an interesting side note, the two selves, social and antisocial, enter into conflicts with each other. When the way someone's antisocial self presents itself, and the way someones social self presents itself begin to differ by a large enough margin, social anxiety is created. It is the difference between the way in which we naturally act or want to act in a purely tensionless environment, and the way in which we act in a reality based environment.
          Growing up online was pretty interesting, but it was only everything I've heard before. I felt like I was watching an NBC coverage of new drug craze. My outlook? The internet is the most powerful tool that currently exists in the entire world of technology, and maybe even the world in general. The ability to have information at ones finger tips in a relative instant is the most incredible accomplishment of modern day society. Its invention has revolutionized everything. This isn't to advocate it as solely a good thing. Everything and anything can be subject to abuse, and every benefit has its detriment. Of course there will be people that use the internet to learn how to build bombs, or molest children, or any sort of unamed evil, but there are downsides to everything. There are countless morphine and heroin addicts around the world, but that doesn't mean that morphine and heroin are bad or have no practical purposes. When things are used properly, they can be use to accomplish any number of previous unthinkable feats, and when used improperly, they can be used to achieve any number of unknown indecencies. I love the internet. It's my greatest tool. If I am curious about anything, and I almost always am, the internet is there to provide me with all the information I could ever ask for. There's no trip to the library or a book store, there's no need to seek out some kind of expert, or struggle for countless hours trying to derive information for yourself. The internet has increase the pace of life by at least three fold since its invetion, and has given people the opportunity to become more knowledgeable in less time than was ever possible before. As a result of the internet, as well as the television and radio, information has become so widely available it's rediculous. When people use to say, "look it up" they were refering to a book, namely a dictionary. When people today tell someone to look something up, they are refering to the largest encyclopedia ever invented. One that encompases almost every peice of desirable information imaginable. That encyclopedia is the internet.
          (Considering that I did not get through much of the article, I plan to talk about it next week).
Funny Internet Cartoon (I don't necessarily agree, but found it funny nonetheless)