When I think of the honest use of the Socratic method, I think about the conversations that my friend Jeff and I have had throughout our lifetimes. We both come to each with a lot to say and, obviously, we come with a lot of beliefs and conclusions. But through the conversation our ideas change and adapt to one other through a process of implicit questioning and implicit answering. The method is honest in our usage because we engage each other on an equal level–we want to hear the other one because we believe that we can understand by understanding each other.

A part of one of our many conversations has been the idea of the soul. The idea that there is something behind the outward presentations and displays. If you want to see the completeness of life in a river, you have to look underneath the rocks and boulders. But unlike the river, when it comes to humans there are never obvious manifestation of what is really there.* And as I update my Linkdin profile, try and build my Twitter profile, and step up the privacy settings on my Facebook account, I can’t help but think is there a possibility for an electronic soul?

Twitter is designed to make sure that complex ideas and thoughts can’t be expressed but only can only be linked to. I saw how ‘important’ those links were when I was working for the Midwest Rural Assembly and although people would retweet the tweets containing links, when I went back to check the diagnostics I saw that no one actually clicked on the links. The content of twitter is limited to the 140 character posts regardless of whether or not those tweets try to allude to something more complicated.

Facebook, at first glance, seems to be more capable of developing complexities and going deeper than what appears on the surface. But in usage it by and large fails to do so. I don’t want to go into a diatribe against Facebook, it has its benefits, but simply I will ask rhetorically how do people actually use facebook? Do people use the fact that they have unlimited characters, or do they just post photos and clever comments to provide some context or some humor?

Linkedin is designed to help professionals get jobs and to build their contacts. I don’t think I need to say anymore.

The only possible refuge of the electronic soul that I can think of, has to be somewhere in the blogosphere. But I am still not very comfortable in admitting that blogs can be apart of or can develop an electronic version of the soul. Can someone’s blog provide that which lies underneath to someone’s social media sites? Does it matter if the blog is public, or if it is linked to or publicized on their social media sites?

I can’t help but think of my freshman political theory course. I took a course on modern western political theory that looked at Freud, Arendt, Marcuse, Foucault and so on. The course was taught by a great, young professor who was still fighting the man and encouraged us to look for the ‘incendiary’ value in the texts we read. I still remember the day in class that we talked about Marcuse’s theories of art and the commodification therein. I don’t totally remember the discussion of Marcuse, but I remember the question that we debated in great detail, “can an electronic version of some work of art like Picasso’s Guernica retain its incendiary value when it is redistributed in an electronic fashion?”

The question goes to the very heart of the electronic soul. Is it even possible for there to be something that is electronic in nature to help uncover that which lies beneath, or are electronic things, in their very nature, simply an appearance?

I don’t want to to answer the question in the negative. Our lives are becoming more and more dominated by social networks and electronic dialogue. I think that there needs to be the possibility for digital souls and I hope that the digital tools that allow for honest dialogue and debate encourage the use the Socratic method in the manner that allowed me to conceive of the electronic soul.

*The discussion of the soul goes a lot deeper and wider than I want to go on this post, but because I am still indebted to my poli theory adviser I have to make clear that I am intending to present this soul in a Straussian manner. I don’t think I am forcing myself to accept a dichotomy of reality and appearance. Rather, for practical understanding, there is clearly a difference between that appearance and the thing that gives off that appearance. The two or not one in the same nor are they completely separate from one another. They are caught up the discourse of intersubjectivity and for the present moment I need not say more.