A Month without Facebook

I've been threatening to quit Facebook for years, but I finally got up the nerve to pull the plug on December 1. Not a Facebook diet. Not a Facebook fast. A no-turning-back, burn-your-bridges, lose-your-data Facebook abandonment. Why December 1? I really don't know. It seems like January 1 is the date to make a sweeping dramatic gesture. But as I mentioned at the beginning of my "month of blogging" in July, I am nothing if not arbitrary, and I fixed my gaze on the start of December.

So it's been a month since I've logged on to Facebook. How is life different?

Book Clubs and Theories of Time

A useful tool of thought that I learned in one of my college classes is first-order and second-order desires. A first-order desire is a want ("I want pie"). A second-order desire is a wanting to want ("I want to want to go running"--a second-order desire I've expressed many, many times). What we say are first-order desires are often second-order ones, especially when it comes to things we think would be good for us. This has been a constant source of frustration in leading book clubs in the past. A lot more people say they are interested in reading books than actually read them. Being part of a book club requires foresight, and what potential members often indicate is a first-order desire ("I want to be in a book club!") is actually a second-order one ("I want to want to be in a book club, because I know it's good for me to read more books; but I don't really want it more than I want _____").

Another useful tool of thought I gained in college from my friend Dave, who helped me administer a campus book club. When we would work to recruit, it was usually an exercise in futility, and the result was a good cop/bad cop situation. I'd handle the pleasant invitation, and when (inevitably) excuses were given why the person couldn't join, bad cop stepped in. Here's how a conversation would go: