Friendship or Network?

We are in 2022, as connected as we can be. Yet, the quality of friendships is declining.

Hello there, you are reading Monday Map on The Busymind Project. Thank you for reading. I wrote this essay (more like a blurb) because I had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of “networking.” Something inside me reacted like “this is abnormal. This is an unhealthy way to approach life — as a marketing strategy — making friends in the bid to sell yourself when you can.” It does not make sense.

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We are in 2022, as connected as we can be. Yet, the quality of friendships is declining.

Today, let us talk about networking.

“Networking” as relating to human relationships is a fancy term that we use thanks to the pervasiveness of digital technology. I am not saying that people did not “network” before digitalisation. Or that people did not attempt to connect with others to achieve shared goals. I am saying that:

(1) it was not called networking; as the terminology is fairly recent; 

(2) people did not “network” in the manner with which I shall describe it going forward;

(3) it did not have its current superficial fad. 

I am simply saying that digitalisation altered and informed our current conception of networking. For instance, before social networks, you either hung out with people, made friends, or stayed in touch. But now things are different; there is a clear instruction to “go out and network.” It is a popular formula for success; almost a doctrine. Perhaps the people preaching it are the same successful people you admire. And it is a fruitful doctrine mostly because – and many people will deny this – it is good for your ambitions (you know, "your network is your net worth"). 

In this essay, I will address how the term "network" became common language for describing a specific type of relationship between humans. I also hope to show how the term and the behavior it describes snuck and blended into our current life neatly enough for us to think that “networking” is the norm. 

In its original sense, a network describes "net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc., anything formed in the manner of or presenting the appearance of a net or netting". So we have a network of roads, a rail network, a computer network. About socialisation, network means "to interact with others to exchange information and develop contacts." But how did we arrive from network as describing objects to network as describing a specific form of socialisation? Simple answer: computing technology. 

Although hard to grasp, Marshall McLuhan was right that the medium is the message. The phenomenon of technology altering thought, language, and behavior is a beautiful thing to look at. It is along those lines that I depict how the introduction of the computer network changed the pace, scale, and pattern of networking.

There is a difference between making friends and networking. On the surface, it feels the same; except it is not. The problem as I see it is that as we spend more time online and become intimate with computers, we adopt the computer’s behaviors and it also adopts ours, just as you may pick up behavioral traits from friends you spend time with. Then, networking – as influenced by how computers network – swallows up friendship whole, and networking (as influenced by how computers network) becomes the order of the day and disguises as friendship. We are in 2022; as connected as we can be. Yet, friendship quality is on the decline. Here is what I am trying to say: that we unknowingly obey computer commands when we tell people to “get off the computer and make friends.”

“The dream of having computers behave like humans is coming true, with the transformation, in a single generation, of humans into computers.”

N.N. Taleb Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Thanks to computer networks, we can access millions of people from our rooms yet we have never been lonelier. It is like the more connected we get, the more atomised we become. It is a sad paradox indeed that the person who earns a living from building computer tools for people to connect cannot himself find friends and love. Such a sad paradox! We must have missed it somewhere. It is either our minds are 'computerised' or computers are humanoid chaperones who tell us what our evening at prom should be like; what lines we must and must not cross. But first, let's retrace our steps.

Let us go back to when we were kids to take a look at our friendships – at least when they were friendships rather than networks. As kids, we didn't have goals. We were not these overthinking, overcalculating beings. All we wanted was to maximize pleasure. We chose our friends along those lines. We chose friends as they aligned with our interests, our infantile sense of humor, and sometimes, friends with whom we shared enemies. We didn't in the spirit of sick rationality seek to know what these friends would or could do for us. We lacked goals. We just realised what we had in common and went with the flow. We trusted that the benefits would flow without our asking; after all, we were friends. The tiniest spark was enough to know that you were safe and enjoyed a person’s company without trying to get something from them. There was no end in sight – your friend was the end in itself. 

The false homo oeconomicus conception of man that posits man as a walking cost-benefit analytical machine has misled us. We are not that kind of a machine, however, we have absorbed its motions – even poorly at that. The cost-benefit man – you know, that adult – leaves the child behind and begins to tabulate friendships based on goals. Not a bad thing in my opinion. But then, a little leaven makes the dough rise. The follow-up 'double-down' technique which states that you should take what works and apply it again and again until it stops working powers the cost-benefit man and sends him into overdrive. This cost-benefit attitude penetrates his entire being. He becomes concerned with ends and uses his friends as means. This is how friendships die and networking wears its desirable corpse: when goals supersede value.

The cost-benefit man lacks values. Or at least, his values do not come first; his goals do. He chooses his network according to his goals, not his values. And that is where friendship and network divide. A networker doesn't want to harm his goals; as he places them above everything else. While friends have their shared values that stand above everything else. To the unkeen eye, networks and friendships are the same. And I won't be surprised if anyone argues it to be true. After all, the motions look the same. But I know better, that genuine human relationships exist if and only if a friend is an end in himself; not a means to an end.

The network man is a victim of bait and switch: he selects friends online based on shared values and interests, and chooses his friends offline based on goals; because, who else to serve his goals if not a real moving person? And who better to soothe his interests than an avatar? Except again, both of these attributes mix up into one another and he doesn’t know what motivates his next pick of a friend. That is how network swallows up friendships.

The network-conscious man is not free and is always trying to not offend. This is predictable seeing that networks are made for optimization, not enjoyment. Meanwhile, friendship has its roots in enjoyment. The network-man walks carefully on runways made of glass shards lest he trips the powerful "friend" – a node on the network – and miss a chance to fulfill a goal. In network lingua, this is called "avoid burning bridges so that you won’t miss opportunities." In friendship terms, this is called “loyalty.” We can euphemise unhealthy traits to cloak their effects but the effects reveal themselves with time. Especially in the erosion of our souls. 

This is how I know my friends: I don’t tip-toe around them for fear that I offend them and miss a chance to tick one of the goals on my list. It is like truncating a node on a network. But we are not computers; we are friends. You can evaluate your friendship this way too: if you are scared of the richer, more successful person in your group (choose whatever metric you want – social media followers and likes), that person is not your friend; he is a node on your network. Accept it as that.

Let me resound this: you build friendships around intuitive interests and values. These are the kinds that last. You need less effort to maintain them — not because you won't put in the work but because the source of the strength to put in the work is a well that never runs dry — it is a natural wellspring of life. 

The network man is an "optimizing" man. And the widespread epidemic of optimization is a symptom of modernity. Call it excellence or decorate this soul-sucking attribute with whatever virtuous word you may find. But in the long run, we all feel its effect on our souls. These effects include fear (of making the wrong impression), fragility (compromising on your core values), envisioning net worth as human worth (is your ancestral name Forbes?), lack of leisure (hustle or productivity culture till death), inability to relax with your “friends”, selling every hobby you have, envy, comparison, and idolizing everything that shines. Networking is marketing branded as friendship.

The biggest problem with networking is the ease with which you can discard and replace your current network with a better network without remorse. Like really, would you stay with your 3G internet when you have cheap 5G? In the same vein, why would you remain with the network that gives you a four-digit net worth when you can hop on to the network that gives you 6-digit net worth? You can do this while adopting some rationales in the network playbook like "move with people who are better than you," "grind with people who motivate you to do better," and "when I meet the gang, we are always discussing moves," "there is no time to rest, we will rest when we are dead," "life is about who you know," and others.

When you see a man's life as consisting in the abundance of his possessions, then networking makes sense. It is the only thing that makes sense. You would only be thinking about how to make ‘moves.’ But if you divorce from the material superficial view of life, you will see networking among humans just as you see it among computers – an efficient electrical buzz. The idea is to keep the efficient at a safe distance from the delicate. One seeks to subsume the other.

In the end, we all agree that we live in a vastly connected world thanks to technology. That this offers immense opportunities to make the best of oneself. But I think we have a duty to keep our friendships real and separate from our networks just as we will separate the holy from the profane. We must move fluidly with life and not regard friendships as something we “schedule” to do or as something we do to meet an end such that snake-oil merchants sell networking to us as friendships. (We are a lonely generation; we will fall for anything that looks like good company). We also have a duty to our ethics; to fit our goals to our values and not let our goals determine our values. We should let good values select our friends rather than diminishing goals. We need the wisdom to know when to walk away and not look back – to terminate that node on a network. Above all, you need to keep your flame alive, away, and preserved from the claws of optimization mechanics.  You need to know what you are getting into: a network or friendship.

Vale.

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Here is a funny picture for the week:

Have a leisurely week.