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Liking Is for Cowards

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Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts

“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” is an essay by Jonathan Franzen.
It is based on his speech at Kenyon College, Ohio, USA. And the essay was published in The New York Times, May, 2011. “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” deals with the differences between peoples care and love for consumer technology and real life, such as love and nature.
Jonathan Franzen starts by talking about his relationship to his smartphone. He is impressed how far the technology had advanced over years.
Jonathan Franzen mentions that the social websites, like Facebook, has substituted the way to live the real life. It represents the obsession with the internet, smartphones and other things that contribute to the construction of our façades. People are afraid of their emotions and feelings and being hurt, scares them. Therefore they want to stay behind their computer screen, where they can be safe and keep a distance from the real world. He thinks that people have a desire for consumer technology, because this technology gives them other things which purpose is to make them happy without asking for anything, but instead gives them all they need. All the hating comes from love, it’s not the technology which is the problem, it’s the human reaction which is the real problem. We personify objects to make them likeable, they give us much without we’re giving back, as many see like a perfect relationship. As Jonathan Franzen mention, the primary purpose with technology is to replace the natural world: “is to replace a natural world that is indifferent to our wishes - a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance - with a world so responsive to our wished as to be effectively, a mere extension of the self.” (page 9, lines 55-61) many people are afraid of being hurt and mother earth and they see the technology as something that can protect them from all the things that can hurt them. But we are all way too busy to thinking what other people are thinking about us, we fear that.

To involve the audience, Jonathan Franzen is very creative and interesting in his methods. To keep his young audience engaged he uses some words like sexy, cool, techno and erotic. It helps him a lot to keep them engaged because these words are some they use in their everyday language. He also uses a lot of pathos to arouse some feelings and reactions in the audience. Because most of us today have heard about Facebook and we all have an opinion and attitude about this phenomenon. And all the young have a smartphone as they spend a lot of time to use. So when he describes his Blackberry as it was a girlfriend: “I was, in short, infatuated with my new device. I'd been similarly infatuated with my old device, of course; but over the years the bloom had faded from our relationship.”(page 8, lines 13-17) it makes it very catchy and relevant for the young people, because they have a connection to love. So when he speaks about his old and new relationship with the smartphone, he uses descriptions as he was speaking about a relationship to a girlfriend. He want to show that the technology for many give the same feeling to people, as a real relationship gives. For the young people, Facebook can be a really big problem to the social lives. Because if you don’t have an account, you will be unpopular and uncool. Facebook plays therefore a central role in the social lives for some people.
Jonathan Franzen’s message with his speech, is that he wants the younger people to let go the technology and get out and live a real life, without being afraid of what will happen.
Franzen mentions: ''We like the mirror and the mirror likes us.'' (page 10, lines 135-136) he means that everyone wants to be loved by everybody, but in real life it is not possible, everybody can’t like each other because we are different, so people are afraid of being rejected for who they are. People feel more safe of being behind the computer screen instead of being out in the real world. They build up a façade for who they really are and create different personalities. On the social websites as Facebook, you can create a perfect self and identity, and still sit behind the computer screen with a distance to the real life. And the social relationship are the worst, we can all argue or express our real opinion when we are sitting behind the screen, but when it comes down to real life, we are afraid of expressing our opinion, we put a fake façade up. He wants to motivate the young people so they don’t live behind this façade. Jonathan Franzen supports his message with a story from his own life. Jonathan Franzen started to love birds and everything that had something to do with birds. He decided to follow his passion, and whenever he saw a bird, he felt love. He gave way to the real life and real love, even though the love he felt was towards birds, and he turned away from the world of liking and disliking. Jonathan Franzen’s speech seems to be an attempt to motivate the young people. Because he doesn’t want them live their whole lives behind a façade, being swallowed by technology and its temptations.

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