Wednesday, September 29, 2010

How much do we know?


Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says - latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/
Survey finds nonbelievers know more, on average, about religion than the most faithful. Jews and Mormons also score high in the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey by the Pew Forum. Evangelical Christian Protestants and white Catholics come next.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Are we full of ourselves?

We had a great Parents' Night on Sunday with many of our youth and their parents. The discussion topic of the evening was on Facebook. Many good thoughts and discussion was had by all. And for all of you who missed it you should be kicking yourself now!

Since our discussion the other night I have been thinking further on the topic of Facebook, Twitter and all the social media that is out there. Is our society really becoming more Narcissistic, "which is is the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness." According to Wikipedia. Which again is the online the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

So the quesion still remains, are we becoming more and more selfish? Or are we as selfish as we have always been (human nature) but it just is precieved to be growing worse because of all the tools and ways to be self published? Like this blog for instance. Lets look at history of selfishness. Adam and Even surely demonstrated there need to promote self when they wanted to be as smart as God they did exactly what they were told not to do, eat the fruit. What about their children they were not any better. Cain even was so jealous and wanted more attention he killed for it. I think if one would look all through history they would find that humans have been pretty selfish forever. That we have been about self preservation and looking to make others like us, or now friend us and tweet about us.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be alarmed. I think we should be careful of how our online behavior can cause narcissistic behavior and tendacies. If we find ourselves clicking over to Facebook before sleep because we just won't be able until we get our fix on being up-to-date on everyones status or who comment on our wall. Then we sould be concerned that we are leaning towards the selfish and selfabsorbed side of our humaness.

Maybe for some of us we need to take a break from the traps of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. We may need to leave our cell phone off or at home for a day and just enjoy being disconected for awhile. Maybe we just need to grab a cup of joe and have a face to face conversation with a friend, enjoy sometime with the family and just be ourselves.

Well these are just some thoughts, I could be wrong. Now onto other things like cleaning up my inbox on Facebook!