I believe it was Ezra Klein who posted a link to this article with the note that he’s read authors on the same themes, but that this was better written than any other similar piece. I agree. William Deresiewicz writes a truly conservative piece – by which I don’t refer to the right-wing community held together by ressentiment, but a political and social temperament that sees value in tradition – a conservatism that stands athwart history yelling, “Stop” as William F. Buckley wrote. Deresiewicz explains how Facebook is destroying friendship:
Facebook holds out a utopian possibility: What once was lost will now be found. But the heaven of the past is a promised land destroyed in the reaching. Facebook, here, becomes the anti-madeleine, an eraser of memory. Carlton Fisk has remarked that he’s watched the videotape of his famous World Series home run only a few times, lest it overwrite his own recollection of the event. Proust knew that memory is a skittish creature that peeks from its hole only when it isn’t being sought. Mementos, snapshots, reunions, and now this—all of them modes of amnesia, foes of true remembering. The past should stay in the heart, where it belongs. [my emphasis]
Even so, you should become a fan of 2parse.com on Facebook today!