I don't know yet what to make of this:
Just as the Web has changed long-established rituals of romance and socializing, personal Web pages on social networking sites that include MySpace, Xanga.com and Facebook.com are altering the rituals of mourning. Such sites have enrolled millions of users in recent years, especially the young, who use them to expand their personal connections and to tell the wider world about their lives.
Inevitably, some of these young people have died — prematurely, in accidents, suicides, murders and from medical problems — and as a result, many of their personal Web pages have suddenly changed from lighthearted daily dairies about bands or last night's parties into online shrines where grief is shared in real time.
When I came across this last night I had one of those "what would Confucius do" moments (which I suspect not many of you have, but I do...).
On the one hand, I understand this completely, since I wrote here about Aidan's death and burial, and posted his eulogy. The web linked me to many people, friends and acquaintances, and increased the circle of remembrance of Aidan. And that had a lot of beauty in it. But my virtual mourning was embedded in a multi-layered and intensely direct human network of support and love. The internet side of things was a mere surface of a deeply experienced mourning.
My question is: will virtual mourning come to supplant some significant proportion of the human contact and activity that animates mourning. Will people feel that virtual expression is enough? Will that limit their active participation and physical involvement in mourning? Perhaps not. Perhaps the internet is nothing more than an elaborate telegraph, never to displace completely the tangible and personal aspects of human experience. But, if Confucius read this article, he might have a bit of a qualm that we could lose some of our virtue if we become too virtual.
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