Can Cyber-Love Attain Genuinely and Divinity - Essay Example

Can Cyber-love attain genuinely and divinity? Love is a very ecstatic experience which not only the human being can claim but each and every living thing has the natural right to love. Without love, intimacy not a single living being can survive, bloom. Love or intimacy we are discussing here is the love between two genders which is quite natural and essential phenomenon for the survival of the living things on earth. In Symposium by Plato, while describing the nature of love the prophetess Diotima states, ‘It is immortality in a mortal creature.’ (“Symposium” page 49) According to her, ‘It is for begetting and birth in the beautiful.’ Love has always been criticized for being blind and stupid by some rational people. Of course it’s a question of debate that how many times these critics become stupid and blind in their lives. Love changed in course of time along with the human civilization. It changed but it existed with new forms but didn’t disappear. In ancient time the lover and beloved would indulge in love affairs in a very romantic way. Writing letters and expressing the intense passion for each other was the common process. These letters would be sent by some faithful friends or sometimes through the pigeons also. Sending love letters by the pigeons sounds funny but it would happen in ancient time. In one romantic Sanskrit drama written by the great poet and Indian Scholar Kalidas expresses a very uncommon romanticism in his drama called “Meghdoot.” ‘Meghdoot’ means the cloud as a messenger Here in this drama Kalidas has depicted a very beautiful picture of a lover who is yearning to meet his beloved. She is thousands kilometer away from him. He sends his deep and intense feelings for her and he conveys the message to the beloved through a cloud i.e. Megh. Here the Megh or the cloud is the messenger of the sad lover. A skillful lovers use different skills and tactics for fulfilling their love. Bauman Zymunt in his chapter, “Falling in and out of love” describes that love (falling in love, soliciting love) is a skill to be learned and the mastery of skill grows with the number of experiments and assiduity of exercise.” (p.g.5 ‘falling in love and out’) Internet is the most popular medium of expressing the love and getting the lover through just a machine. Keywords: Love, ancient romance and internet romance Introduction: Romance starts through machine: For fulfilling almost all of the needs modern generation rely on the machine. Love is also not an exception to that. The ultra modern generation uses internet for their love affair and thus the concept of cyber-love came into vogue. Online love affair has become the trend, fashion and passion among the new generation. Of course there are some strong points as well as weaknesses of such relationship. Before the birth of internet all the romantic imaginations seemed to be very dreamy and far away from reality. But after the invention of computer and the internet these imaginations manifested into reality. At last the cupid has brought the internet under his influence. Cyber love was once a very novel concept and not socially accepted. “We may better examine intransigent assumptions that underpin how distance-transcending technology is imagined and implemented- how network access for example, is still mediated by gender, nationality, or other forms of differential privilege.” (p.g. 351 McCallum. ‘Mapping the Real in Cyberfication’) But in these days the internet have broken all the barriers of gender, nationality religion etc. Here is an interesting story happened in China where the power of Internet made it easier for the two lovers to bring together who had otherwise very few opportunities to meet each other. Zhang Yan, a twenty years girl met Wang Ju online. Wang was a soldier from a poor rural family while Zhang belonged to a better-off family living in one of the most prosperous cities in China. They were meeting online for one year and then met each other face to face and decided to tie a knot. The financial status became the issue and Zhang’s parents opposed the relationship. After three years struggle they came together. "I found my soul mate online and I am the happiest that Ive ever been," thus Zhang gives the credit to the internet because it gave her the life partner. But such happy end in love doesn’t occur every time. The fantastic world of internet has captivated many novice chat users for its anonymity. For discussing what is cyber love it is essential to be acquainted with the two states of love, Online and offline. Impact of online affair to the offline relationship: Love shapes your life and at the same time it sometimes destroys the marital life also. The offline lover cannot share the third person in their life. Internet is a curse for some people as far as cyber love is concerned. If it happens it may create the hurricane in their lives. Sometimes it spoils the matrimonial relationship and breaks the happy family. This is a tragic story of the Musician David Bagg. It was a horrible shock for him when his wife left him for her online lover whom she had never seen before. “This was like a bolt from the blue.” He told. While describing the online affair of his wife Judy, David Bagg said that she used to communicate with her online friend Mr. Grice for few minutes every night with the full knowledge of David Bagg. She had a problem to her health and so Bagg thought that this would relax her from her physical sickness. But after some days the conversation between Judy and Grice became secret and prolong. This incident got a shocking twist when Judy took off to meet her online Romeo. The chapter didn’t end here but the second shock in this incident was more horrible. Like Judy Grice was in connection with Judy’s five friends also. Amazingly all these six highly educated ladies had fallen in love with this one man. Here online love proved to be superior to the offline partner. What compel Judy to leave her husband for the sake of that person whom she had never met, what made Judy to prefer online love to that of offline love? How her online partner did become superior to her offline husband? The tragic news arouses all these questions. It is very necessary to analyze this story from different point of views. Social barriers and online relationship: Judy’s cyber-love affair started from a mere conversation which later became intense. This might have happen due to insecurity in her real life and she might have found the same security in cyberspace and thus she tried to develop the multiple relationships. Many women live the life in very restricted and disciplined manners. They want to get rid of these social and family restrictions so they use email correspondence to get the foreign husbands. Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel conducted an interview with the middle class women from Guadalajara. During this interview she was told by many women that the streets and bars are not the safe places for romance while internet is quite secure place for them to enjoy their romantic life. Internet is a blessing for such women to develop their multiple romantic relationships. The search of women for foreign men online speaks to women’s desire to secure both their local and transnational movement. It is also found that the Latin American women’s purpose for searching the online partner is an enterprising activity which encourages their individual progress. Through the internet connection they learn to judge themselves and the world with a very different and wider angle. While comparing the online and offline love Ben Ze’ev Aaron in his chapter cyber love explains that the common phenomenon of offline love is “attractiveness halo” while online relationship is based on “personality halo.” (p.g.161 ‘cyberlove)The persons involved in online love affair don’t bother about the external appearance. In online love affairs the lovers are totally ignorant about the physical beauty of each other. They only share their thoughts with each other and thus establish the love relationship. Perhaps Judy’s angle towards looking at her online partner might be very different. She was sick and that might be the inferior thing for her and through the inferiority complex she might have taken support from her online lover who was not directly affected by her physical problem. While describing these two types of love we can separate them into two different categories, first is ‘love at first sight’ and second is ‘love at first chat.’ Of course the word first is not important at all but sight and chat are more important. Offline love starts with the outward appearance or your charming personality and thus the journey of offline love begins from external appearance to the personal characteristic. Unfortunately neither Judy nor her other scholar friends could think rationally and logically about this cyber flirt who played a game with all of these six women. In fact any logical person can quickly get an idea about the attitudes of their online partner through his or her writing. Felicity Schaeffer- Gabriel describes a journalist’s experience. Teresa, a forty two years old Journalist dedicated herself in searching for an online partner. She involved in intelligent and witty conversations and emails. In this process she wanted to check whether she was praised for these values by the online male partners. She then describes that the internet conversations, emails are sufficient to understand the intellectual capacity of the men. According to Aaron “Getting to know each other’s qualities is important in building a strong relationship.” He opines, “In cyber love verbal skills are more important than the physical attractiveness.” (p.g. 165 ‘cyberlove’) The quality of your writing and chatting matters a lot in developing the online relationship. Online love starts from logic to emotions. The online love from Aaron’s point of view is more matured and perpetual. In online romanticism the people interact with each other without seeing or touching each other. It helps them to establish a strong foundation of their love and facilitate their sexual activities. Thus online love is more conducive for developing a real relationship in a calm and intimate manner. But if the online love is matured why did Judy take such an illogical step of leaving her husband for the sake of a fraud person. So when we take into consideration the story of David Bagg and Judy we unfortunately have to say that Aaron opinion is not convincing and thoughtful in every circumstance. Aaron seems to be in favor of online love. While describing the aspects of both online and offline love Aaron describes the five major points which have been discussed by Deb Levin. They are Proximity, self presentation, similarity, reciprocity and expectations. (p.g.173,174, ‘Cyberlove’) Proximity: Proximity in offline relationship is based on physical level. The lovers are closed to each other and the experience the proximity through the body contacts. But the proximity in online relationship is totally mental. It is your intellectuality, conversation skill matters a lot and body contact is nowhere at all. It is purely based on the mental attachment. And many times this relationship is closer and more intense than the offline relationship. The online partners share their private life to each other than to their spouses. In Judy’s case the online proximity proved to be superior to the offline proximity. Self Presentation: Self presentation of course plays a significant role in both offline and online relationship but in a totally different manner. In offline love the lovers are facing each other so the outward appearance, physical attractiveness is very important. And enhancing the physical beauty especially the women take a lot of efforts. In the case of David Bagg and Judy as David had already declared that his wife was physically unwell. She couldn’t maintain her physical beauty and so through this nervousness she might have tried to search the online partner who is unaware of her physical beauty. How you look, How is your body language, How are your gesture? All these things are very important to attract your partner in offline love but the parameters for self presentation are totally different in online relationship. You are generally assessed by your conversation skill which includes your language which includes your ability of humor, the sympathetic, balanced and encouraging language. Your culture, upbringings, education and the depth of your thought are judged by your conversation and your words. Similarity: The partners who are involved in offline relationship are similar to the caste, religion, age, family background, education and also are bound in the political and social frame. On the other hand online relationship develops basically on the similarities in thoughts and attitudes. But was Judy right in judging her online lover as far as thoughts and attitudes are concerned? Reciprocity: In the life of David Bagg the reciprocity was very important and so when he lost his wife he was shocked from soul to crown. He didn’t expect the separation from his wife. In the great shock he stated “I still love her despite what the internet did to our relationship.” The foundation of offline love is built upon the expectation mainly. The lover wants to love and expects to be loved. He or she is always ready to commit to the partner but at the same time the lover expects the same commitment from the partner also. And if this expectation does not fulfill it affect their relationship and the love decreases. Reciprocity in cyber love includes a very long conversation and this is essentially reciprocal activity of the thoughts. The above expectations of offline love are less in cyber-love. But there were no reciprocity as far as Judy’s online love was concerned. She was constantly being betrayed by her lover. Jealousy and possessiveness are the main reasons for breaking your offline relationship but it doesn’t happen with online relationship. Here moral norms, partner’s attitude are not the important factors at all. So one can create several relationships with many people at the same time. Exactly the same thing happened with Judy. Her online partner was not interested in all these social ethics and norms Illusion and Rejection The women like Judy always prefer to live in the world of dream and deliberately keep themselves away from the reality and the internet is a very fantastic dreamlike world for such people. It is sometime used by the lovers to escape from the reality. A sociology professor Sherry Turkle in her book “Life on the Screen” defines the aspects of the self which are related to the internet culture. Sherry Turkle also raises the possibility of escaping social hierarchies on the internet to transform the self and play with fluid and multiple identities when she states, “anonymity of MUDs (multi-user domains…) gives people the chance to express multiple and often unexplored aspects of the self, to play with their identity and to try out new ones." (p.g.894, ‘Flexible Technologies of subjectivity and mobility across the America’)According to Turkle the internet users can experiment with their own identity. But this identity exploration sometimes is positive and sometimes it is negative. Some internet users feel much confident when they are in connection with their partners online but they are not like that in their real life so that can create danger to their relationship when actually they encounter with each other face to face. The cyber love develops in a very limited ways as the interaction occurs through the typed words. Emotions, tone, voice, appearance are restricted in the framework of words only. After all it is the body that matters a lot and we always rely on all our senses to interpret the situation. Machine cannot be the substitute to the body. “For instance, instead of eyes it has cameras, instead of ears antennae, or the whole body is replaced by a box or a uniform. But these changes are too functional with respect to human needs to generate excitement.”(p.g.29, ‘Philosophical Cybersex’). And the major part like body is missing then the mind becomes totally blank. As mentioned above the cyber lovers try to run away from reality and prefer to live in the illusion but you cannot cherish human relationship on such fragile foundation. When the time of face to face conversation take place, the illusion might shatter. In such cases online communication once has became the major tool of maintaining the romantic relationship can be the tool of ending the relationship also. Here Aaron gives us the example of a British solicitor Richard Holt who committed suicide after he got the message of ending the online relationship from his mistress. An obese lady had to end her online relationship just because she kept her online lover in illusion. She met an online partner and their cyber love began to flourish and this relationship became so intense that she had to encounter her lover face to face. First the lover demanded her photograph she got quite nervous of breaking the relationship because her weight was 150 pounds. In place of her own photographs she sent the photograph of a slimmer lady. He then came to meet the lady. She was hopeful that after confessing the guilt he will forgive and accept her. But when he came to know the reality he got furious and broke the relationship. One can easily imagine what frustration the lady might have got due to this incident. Aaron points out that there are many circumstances in which online love can become beyond sufferings. While creating the online relationship one must take into consideration the reality that even if it is the online love you cannot escape from reality. Because after all the person with whom you interact is not an illusive thing but he or she is the real person with flesh and bone and emotions and mind. You are not interacting with any ethereal figure or the characters from the fairy tale. In such cases if the online love terminates that causes a great pains for both the lovers. At the time of face to face meeting the chances of rejection are very high. Here Aaron quotes the thoughts of a lady who lost her online lover, “Boy that killed me. I didn’t know what to do. For a few days I was unable to eat or sleep. I cried for two days straight. I can never love anyone else; because I gave this man my heart and he crushed it. I have no heart to give to another human being.” (p.g. 193, ‘cyberlove’) In fact there are some examples in which the cyber love has been converted into offline successful love. But every time it doesn’t happen so to avoid extreme frustration and disappointment the online relationship must be conservative and moderate at least till the time of face to face relationship. To avoid the depression the online lovers has to follow some rules which are very important. Cyber love with sensibility In the tragic story of Judy and David Bagg Judy’s wrong attitude was the major cause for the wreck of their happy family life. She didn’t achieve anything from her online romanticism because her online lover was not worthy at all. In such cases to avoid the depression the cyber-lovers must follow some rules. You have to keep yourself on a secure position and at the very first of your meeting you should not disclose your real information like your name address, phone number. But at the same time you should not deceive the honest partner by hiding the reality which will disclose at the time of your face to face interview. Not all the cyber lovers are honest and respect your feelings. Some of them are just doing it for fun and take it casual. So how to involve in the relationship it should be decided by you. So it is not necessary to do those things which are uncomfortable for you. You should always be aware of this fact that what you experience online is not the whole and real picture. But the reality can be different. So don’t be over sentimental. If you follow all these rules you will be a quite balanced cyber lover. Cyber-love is not a negative concept at all. Dealing with this in a skillful manner is necessary. Every time the end is not tragic. Some good and positive aspects are also there. Sometimes the internet gives you the best partner. But you have the right vision, a logical thinking and rationalism. Sources: Cyber-love – A chapter written by Ben Ze’ev Aaron ‘Falling In and Out of Love’, Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Fragility of Human Bonds, Polity, Cambridge, 2003. Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, ‘Flexible Technologies pf Subjectivity and Mobility Across the Americas’ Marion Perniola, ‘Philosophical Cybersex,’ Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, (trans Massion Verdicchio), Continuum, New York, 2004.   Website: www.creativehat.com/cyber.htm “My wife left me for a cyber love-rat” an article by Mathew Chapman, Saturday 17th August, 2002 BBC News. Cyber Love:  What is Real & What is Virtual - Cindy Grant Cyber Love Can Bring Joy, Regret, Grief - China Daily, March 22, 2005. china.org.cn Symposium – Originally written by Plato; translated with an introduction and notes by Robin Waterfield. Oxford University Press, 1974. Reissued as an Oxford World’s Classic paperback in 1998. Read More