Oh we love our freedoms, especially the ones that let us indulge in our least useful or potentially damaging impulses. We love it so much that we try to invest certain concepts with the power of a ‘right’ and start to behave accordingly. Specifically, the very wrong idea that internet anonymity is a right of every digital citizen. So, so wrong. Bad for the individual, and disastrous for society.

At the heart of the matter is a juvenile desire to not be held accountable for your own actions. The struggle between responsibility and indulgence plays out in every human psyche, and it of course makes its way into popular culture. Three examples: Internet anonymity, wild west fantasies, and the ‘no snitching’ slogans from rap culture.

The romantic version of the wild west has it as a land of limitless possibility and wide open space, where you can do what you want to and the government can’t tell you what to do. sure, you can watch the spaghetti westerns and dream of that freedom, but in reality you still had to get along with the people around you and play by the rules, or you’d get shot.

‘No snitching’ is the most direct and least sensible manifestation, since it advocates turning a blind eye to every crime and misdeed you see, as long as it doesn’t directly affect you. That’s bound to turn out well. Sure, there is a deeper and more complicated element of police brutality and distrust in the urban communities of America, but its usually good business to tell the police when you think your neighbor might be a serial killer.

When it comes to online interaction, the romanticism of creating a whole new you is the centre of argument in favour of anonymity. In reality, being unknown to the people you interact with online only leads to an increase of thick-headed, callous, stupid and sometimes inhuman behavior. If you haven’t heard of 4chan, look it up on wikipedia, but please do not go there.

Human society, the basic tribal connection we share, depends on accountability to each other. Though we struggle against this obligation, in the end we are stronger because of our peers and neighbors being able to watch us and hold us to a better standard of behavior.

It’s amazing how far behind I can get, just because of a couple of bad nights of sleep and a dash of procrastination.  If I get below a certain threshold of wakefulness, I can’t bring myself to tackle anything above and beyond mere survival, and nighttime has been crowded in the Loblaw bed. Max must have grown again, because when he crawls into the family bed at 11:30(ish) things get tricky with all the contorting, pushing and wiggling. Eventually, K or I end up on the floor, which is just as comfortable as you would think. I am no friend to the ascetic path: I like my fluffy comfy bed.

I know this is another sign of the impending arrival of the inevitable war to get Max sleeping in his own bed in his own room.  I wish I didn’t loath crying in the middle of the night so much. So, thanks to a kind wife and a statutory holiday, I slept in to the luxurious hour of 8:30AM and I’m good to go. It’s ironic that by the time I can finally wake up routinely at 8:30Am, which is my body’s preferred rousing time, I’ll probably be too old to sleep that long anymore. Sigh.

Other things to eventually talk about here: How Anonymity is Unnatural, what I thought about the new LCD Soundsystem and Band of Horses albums,  and one other thing that I can’t quite remember at the moment. Oh now I remember, The return of Rock’n’Roll to my heart.  Stay tuned, gentle reader.