Though Cowards Flinch

Let me tell you a story. A newspaper correspondent was sitting at his desk one day. He couldn’t think of what to write. Flicking through the internet, he came across the story of the Bridgend suicides. “Young people committing suicide?” he thought, “Who was to blame?” So the newspaper hack diligently compiled a list of things the children of ages 13-17 had in common, to see if he could solve the mystery of why these kids killed themselves.

“They’re all Welsh!” he exclaimed. But the sub-editor thought that sort of racism too obvious. “They’re all poor and probably claim benefits!” But the editor told him answers like that get sent to the Sun. Finally the newspaper correspondent hit upon it as he sat wasting his day, dejected from his failure. Placing a winning Scrabble-tile in his Facebook game, he yelled “Eureka!” Between brain and mouth the exclamation translated, “We’ll blame social networking sites!”

Thus a cultural meme was born.

This probably isn’t the story of how MySpace and Facebook began getting blamed for the ills of the world, but it’s certainly believable. The credibility of the media on the subject isn’t exactly helped by publishing interviews like this scaremongering bucket of filth from Vincent Nichols, recently installed Archbishop of Westminster. In the Telegraph, naturally, because what middle England really needs right now is an injection of more ignorance.

Nichols touches on the risk of suicide as a result of decreased social cohesion and losing face-to-face skills. Dr Himanshu Tyagi did a similar stand-up number to the Royal College of Psychiatrists last year, for which the RCP sent out in a panic stricken press release. Except there’s no evidence for any of this. There are studies to show that social capital can be built up by using social networking sites and that the sites reaffirm existing friendship.

The worst that can be said is that negative feedback on social networking sites can lower self-esteem. Which is just as true of real life, and probably more prevalent there given that on the internet, you can choose to hang out with those of similar interests, status and needs. I am no expert but surely that decreases the chances of bullying due to difference and increases the chances of integration? (H/t: Mind Hack).

I have no wish to go off on a rant about the Catholic Church, but I’m going to anyway.  In his inaugural address, Nichols promptly attacked secularism and secularists, though that was positively tame compared to what I heard the man say in an interview he gave to Radio 4 shortly before he was inaugurated. His point was that we atheists and secularists undermine social cohesion. Now he is blaming Facebook as well.

Surely Nichols is playing directly into the hands of people like Richard Dawkins, whom he affects to despise so? In his Enemies of Reason programme (which I didn’t watch – why listen to smug academics get preachy when I can do so myself?) Dawkins pointed out that reason and evidence-based ideas are needed, not religion. Turns out Dawkins isn’t too far off the mark, at least with the new Archbishop of Westminster.

In his interview the man doesn’t even cite any evidence to suggest why he thinks that Facebook and Myspace are to blame for failing social cohesion. Never mind that falling social capital can be traced to the 1950s, when there weren’t social networking sites to trouble simple religious consciences.

To be fair to Nichols, Facebook isn’t the only subject of the interview. It ranges over the mercenary behaviour of professional footballers, the problems of assisted suicide and the need for the government to support the family. The media narrative has ignored these – and that might seem a mistake, because it gives Nichols’ interview a less rounded character – but the conclusions to be drawn from Nichols’ comments aren’t pleasant.

Blaming failing social cohesion on Facebook and MySpace excuses the rest of us from doing anything about it. Much like demanding tax breaks and financial support for the traditional family, it’s an opiate on which the judgmental can get high and forget that they have a responsibility to society beyond being nodding donkeys. It’s telling that Nichols’ dwells rather on criticizing than suggesting schemes that will get kids out of their houses.

This attitude is typical of the Catholic Church: attack, attack, attack but forget that actually the Church is an organisation that can call on millions of pounds that could be put to use solving problems instead of complaining about them, and with congregants who could be doing more than turning up to a comfortable mass one day a week in their Sunday best. But it doesn’t seem like faith can exist without being preposterously ostentatious.

If Slavoj Zizek is right, and there is a salvageable, radical core to Christianity, then I don’t think it lies within the Catholic Church. Pandering to an innate conservatism rather than representing and organising the four million Catholics in Britain to fight against poverty, hunger, disease and ignorance falls far short of what could be achieved but never will: people like Vincent Nichols are not possessed of a deep enough critique of modernity.

Not when in an age of increasing inequity, increasing exploitation and the disappearance of leisure centres and urban common spaces, the Archbishop of Westminster wants to blame a declining commonality on Facebook.