The Un-Social Network

The Un-Social Network

Why do people seek friendship? Moreover, what makes a friendship? St. Thomas Aquinas and Fr. James Martin offer insight into these ideas. An interesting phenomenon of the past decade has been the evolution of social networking mediums such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Children, teenagers and adults alike have flocked to the internet based community but what is it that is it that makes these sites so popular? Moreover, If you were to ask someone under the age of forty how many friends they have chances are they’d be able to respond with a specific number in mind – a number pulled from their personal homepage. It would seem however, that these levels of friendship certainly are not weighted equally – we obviously don’t love a new friend we just met at last weekend’s party as much as we love our best friend from high school. So, what distinguishes a “Facebook friend” from a “true friend?” In this paper I will discuss the elements that Aquinas uses to describe a true friendship and further discuss Martins explanation of them. After analyzing these ideas I will write about my feelings as to why people spend so much time concerning themselves with their status on Facebook and the dangers of it.

Thomas Aquinas uses the word love in 5 different ways. First, he writes about the structure of Love. The structure of love is defined by three elements – The lover, or the subject (soul) seeking (moving) towards an object, the beloved, or the object of desire and finally, the elemental relationship between the two. The second way Thomas uses love is written as basic love. Basic love, he writes, is the passion that moves the soul towards an object – our soul seeks that which we think is good on three levels: the natural, sensitive and rational nature. Aquinas says that we utilize our rational nature in relationships with friends and therefore friendships are limited to humans. The third type of love he uses is called unreciprocated love....