“Free at last, free at last. Thank God all mighty I am free at last.” While taking some time to reflect on life earlier today, I popped in MLK’s famous I Have a Dream. To this day, goose bumps run down my spine every time I hear Dr. King and his powerful rhetoric of peace preached on the doorstep of democracy. Yes, I know I’m two weeks late in addressing the influence of the Martin Luther King, and I’m sure what I’m saying is nothing that hasn’t already been conceived before, but sometimes, repetition is necessary to emphasize significance (See Keith Olbermann). What Dr. King did in the sixties through his non-violent protests epitomized the American democratic process at its best, and while there have been many imitators, there have been no emulators. While it’s shameful that as of 50 years ago our nation failed to grant equality through civil rights, the elections of our first African-American President shows an extreme amount or progress. This does not imply that prejudice does not exist in our nation, but that we are on the right track towards a more perfect union.
So what does it really mean to be free? Does it mean that everyone can do what they please? Does it mean that people are judged by content of their character and not based on the tone of their skin(“I don’t want a black president!” v.s. “Is Barack Black Enough”)? Does it mean that they will be free of persecution for being different? Everyone has their own definitions and interpretations of the concept of freedom and how it affects the fundamental purpose of a government. For myself, I feel like everyone has the rights to the implicit freedoms derived from the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as declared by our founding fathers. The government’s responsibility is to facilitate these freedoms and protect others from infringing upon them. I used the term implicit to try and make a blanket statement in order to avoid this turning into a discussion of 2nd amendment freedoms. These sorts of things have been argued for years – literally 230+ - and while it is a necessary discussion, everything has a proper time and place. That is not the objective of this post.
When the concept was formulated in my head more than 400 words ago, this post was to be on the subject of Internet being a means to pursue pseudo-freedom through the power of anonymity. On the Internet, people are truly able to create their own personal identity however they please. With the aid of limitless sources, individuals can fabricate their own unique instance of themselves and paint (or photoshop) their preferred image onto the minds of an audience. This is facilitated on the Internet as dating sites, social networks like facebook and twitter, blogs, games like Second Life, etc. give people get the chance to play god. By simply perusing the web and reading an assortment of blogs, I have found myself concocting images of individuals in my own head based on the contents of the information and its presentation. Already being someone who over analyzes everything and attempts to assess the psyche of others to understand what they’re thinking and how these processes work, this tendency of mine is amplified online because of mysterious nature anonymity of the web as well as the lack of physical social cues like rate, tone, and volume that help bring understanding and meaning to words. While these various figments of my imagination are beneficial for me in that they help me give value and voice to a post since I have created a human on the other side writing these things, I know that a single, predetermined post is a terrible judge of character.
This sort of thing can even be said by trying to analyze my character based on my first few posts. I would have to say that my constant discussion of the importance of the media and its portrayal of figures and information probably points to a general interests in this field sparked either by a love of the idealist view of journalism or simply because of a love of my country (forcing me to follow ‘politics’). If brevity is the soul of wit, then I might assume from my posts that I am not a very clever guy, but upon further inspection I would change that critique from witless to thorough but unorganized. Because of the multiple references to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, I can assume that I’m probably a liberal or moderate with an appreciation of clever critiques of culture through comedy. I can assume that I’m either impatient, sleep deprived, a bad typer, apathetic or a combination of these based on the numerous spelling typos (spelling mistake). The simple format of the site says that I’m either practical / efficient or that I’m just not familiar enough with html and coding. The point is that a lot of inferences can be extracted from blogs without any sort of explicit biographical information given. As I contribute more and more to this site, a more comprehensive character analysis can be completed, but this still doesn’t create a true correlation between my virtual persona and my actually qualities.
Can the Internet Identity be exploited for both good and bad? Can a connection to the World Wide Web potentially deteriorate someone own personal network? Are there sick individuals and predators lurking on the Internet waiting to take advantage of this opportunity at anonymity? The answers to these and many similar questions are yes, but is this not freedom? To be free from judgments based on uncontrollable genetic components might be very enticing to those who suffering from ‘real-world’ ridicule for being themselves. This may be the first time in someone’s life where they feel comfortable in their own skin. While there are certainly problems with this type of coping, it sure does sound a lot like the freedom from oppression preached by MLK…
So now I’ll go ahead and leave you with my song of the blog: Best Imitation of Myself by Ben Folds Five.
I hope this helps you understand TA Sattler a bit better. It is important to know the author so that you consider the biases and the perspectives I have and how those things might dictate my judgment.
By the way, I hate the game of politics. Even though it’s fascinating from a sociological and psychological perspective, it’s simply disheartening as an American at times seeing the ethics and morals of it all, especially in today’s government where bipartisanship may not be extinct, but is definitely an endangered species. However, you can’t say President Obama’s given up on working across the aisle…
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It truly is remarkable if compared to his predecessor that in President Obama we have someone who is able to speak to those across the aisle and actually have an open ear. They may choose to disagree with him, but their willingness to listen to him shows what a difference there is in the degree of polarization and expectation of potential bipartisanship attributable to Obama. Having a President who is respected on both sides may not make a difference in the health care debate going on now, but I strongly believe efforts such as this will not go unnoticed with future legislation that may not be as politically charged.
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