EGO ADDICTION:Our Responsibility Re: The Google Issue

Maybe we needed this dust-up… maybe it’s part of what I call the Greater Blueprint.

We are motor-mouths!  Look at the effect of Twitter, for instance.  (disclaimer..I have not joined Twitter, so I am not an expert…but I have watched Twitter in action, and have seen people hitched by an umbilical to their smart phones as if fed by Twitter and dead without it.)  Our love of self has exploded into the cyber-world, and there is no putting it back.

Like Pandora’s box, everything inside of us is not scattered all over the earth in indelible nuggets of information.  I am hoping my bad habits are not being publicly posted, and that no one is interested in me at all!  (Judging from my “hit” record on this blog, no one is interested.)

However, I am looking at the issue I have been writing about for about three months:  i.e., the GOOGLE ISSUE.  And I am seeing it right now, today, from a much more distant viewpoint.

If God wanted us to watch our mouths (this is a way parents used to admonish their kids about sloppy language), how might he get the message across loud and clear while we are busy yapping our heads off about our personal details?

He would dump the contents of the words issuing out of our mouths (read fingertips, or thumbs), for all to see.  Are we blushing?

Yes.  We are blushing…and we are as angry as outed teens that our secret drawer has been discovered and uprooted by what we see as an intrusive parent.

Google, of course, is not God (see: http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/technology/internet/is-google-now-god-1.1250185)  and so does not have the welfare of humankind at heart; Google only has the welfare of Google at heart, like any other power-seeker in the ego-led world of humanity and corporate lust.

So Google is not out to reform us, but to exploit this great lust we have to be published.  Yes, we are all seeking immortality/stardom/fame even if it’s just to see our words in print.  Me too!

Ego has always been the pothole man steps into…a deep one, very difficult to climb out of before getting summarily knocked off.

So I have been huffing and puffing on these wordpress pages, and elsewhere, trying to get the nosy parent out of my secret drawer, when it is my own self who is responsible for leaking peeks at all the treasures I was wishing to keep secret.  I put them into that drawer, not remembering that the drawer has more than one key.  Lots of keys.  Google has one.  God has one.

Who unlocked my drawer?  Does it matter?  If God decided to open drawers to stop the incessant flapping of lips and wagging of chins, He would be delighted that Google could be put to some good use to accomplish this.

I have not a lot to hide, except perhaps some personal disclosures about angers at perceived injuries, and personal memories that are sweet only to my family, and of no interest to other people.  But what if I were responsible for keeping secrets of a more sensitive nature?  What if I were a priest, or a therapist?  What if I were a key person in an international sting that would save the world?  I had better watch my mouth.

There is a lot to be gained by looking at it like this.  Have we forgotten how to mete out our words with wisdom?  Have we any wisdom left at all?

I am not saying we are purposely gossiping (although some certainly are engaged in this.)  I am saying we are careless and sloppy in what we say.  We are like rude little kindergarteners who have no sense of what is appropriate to say.  We are still at a stage where we just say an uninhibited “Ha ha ha…Joe peed his pants”, rather than passing over that fact and letting life go on.  We are being all too often like those little uncivilized truth-tellers who just blab out truth in an unedited way that does a lot of harm, whether intentional or not.

The power of speaking truth that makes a stir and gets attention becomes addictive.  It takes on a life of its own and becomes an attention-getting device.  Then our ego is addicted to the strokes and cannot stop.  And then we are hooked to the device that enables us to continue…it forbids us to stop!

Nothing like an intervention to bring massive unpleasant attention to the ravages of addiction!  Is Google the instrument of intervention?

Might be.

I’m certainly responding:  I have started the complicated business needed to stop my interactions with Google…I am not telling everything to everyone by internet any more.  I’ve deserted programs that are called “social networks” because they turn out to be also subject to social diseases, as promiscuity does in other kinds of social intercourse.

We have mistaken liberty for undisciplined license!  Really, we have.  We demand the right to do the most private acts in public, and we sue if someone tries to stop us! (did you read about the guy suing Google for taking Google Earth pix of him urinating in his garden?)  We have forgotten that there are others in the world who have the right to decency, even if it’s not something we value. And what we choose to do will matter, evil or good or careless. (why didn’t he just go behind a tree? A skydiver or neighbor might see him as well.)

Social media?  It’s socially-sensitive media!  Used “nicely” it’s beautiful (like sex), but corrupted, it’s evil (like sex.)

That’s where my thinking is today.

Google is eventually going to die; it is not immortal.  But our words live on, even if Google dies.  We need to watch our mouths or suffer a social disease. There is a greater system than Google or cyber-space that takes in what we emit. Eventually the trail of responsibility all gets back to our own free will, and our own struggles with ego-addictions.

Old Swimmer

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GETTING OUTTA HERE (GOOGLE)..ARE YOU?

Finally I am untwining my various tentacles from dependency on Google.  What a shame that my favorite search engine has enticed me into some sort of marriage from which I must yank myself!  They say that I will still be able to use their search engine, while cutting off their logging of my preferences, but that if I delete my google account entirely (which is what I intend to eventually do) I will essentially lose all my data that was imported through google services, including pictures through Picasa and all my email from years past that is stored in their very generously offered and touted storage. 

Why didn’t I realize they were doing the bait and switch?  They figured out that the way to monopolize the internet was to get everyone to join and not let them go without their losing their happily set up infrastructure!  Now they own the world, and I’m trying to emigrate from their sticky “tar baby” and stop worrying about all my possessions being cheerfully used in any way they choose.

Did all you artists remember to put copyright notifications on your images on line?  If anyone grabbed them for further study, did they grab them through Picasa?  If so, Google has the image, and if it’s not watermarked or copyrighted, you are outta luck.  Want to sue Google?  Hope you have a money tree!  The best you can hope for is that a class action suit comes up and you sign on.  You might get a penny or two because EVERYONE is going to be suing. 

Anyway, if you comment on something and I reply, it will be from some other email address than a gmail one.   (NO WONDER it was easy to get my “real name” on my gmail address…they wanted to know everything about me. 

Tempting to play games with this concept, like hackers are doing all over the place…see if I can wiggle onto google with a pseudonym email address and see how long it will take them to disqualify and erase me.  If I did a lot of that, I could keep someone’s job for them there, I suppose.  Do you guess they have a humanoid verifying the name/address validity, or does a real person do that?  They say they will not accept pseudonyms. 

One I made a carving that I called Theo Aktree.  It was a pseudonym for The Oak Tree.  I think I’ll  try it next time I feel angry with Google and see if it works. 

Grr.  

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