3:59:37 
2024-07-20 
267
While the individual may be responsible for their own behavior, and they may be the ones who must retreat to a kind of Walden of the mind to contemplate the practicality of an action or to ponder their own mortality, they are not alone in their day-to-day lives. One regularly relies on friends and family for advice, guidance, and validation. These are people with whom one feels comfortable “bouncing ideas off of” and speaking informally. People may not consult this inner circle before every decision they make, but most of us ask for some advice from this group before making major life choices because we trust their judgment and value their word. They stand as a kind of intermediary between ensimismarse and praxis.
In the past, this inner circle tended to be an intimate group of perhaps a few family members and friends from one’s immediate community. These relationships were forged over months or years, and they were galvanized not only by time but also by trust, loyalty, and shared experiences that included joys and sorrows. As the Roman philosopher Seneca advised, “Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship, but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul.”
Admission to this group was an honor. It was also closed off from most other people—i.e., it was private.
Within the last 20 years, advances in communications have made it far easier to expand who gets included within this once-distinguished group. What was necessarily a closed circle based on extensive relationship- and trust-building can now be reduced to a wide net that is cast indiscriminately into the abyss that is the internet. Whatever gets caught (family, friends, Facebook “friends,” acquaintances, LinkedIn “connections,” “followers”, trolls, or bots) ends up being your inner circle. More than just being superficial and, consequently, lacking in the capacity to provide intimacy or a rewarding friendship, these relations can become an individual’s source of identity and validation.
Expanding the circumference of one’s friend group to such an extent not only cheapens the value of the relationships; it also deprives the individual of the ability to have meaningful conversations about major life decisions or complicated topics. Instead, they ask “the fam” on social media and receive a blizzard of responses from people they may barely know. In addition to being overwhelming, most of these responses come in the form of a few hundred characters or emojis. Even if they are sincere, they lack the depth and lucidity of a serious discussion, which, in the past, would have happened at a pub or a café or in one’s home and strengthened the relationship between the two or three people engaged in private conversation.
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