Nowadays whenever I visit my Facebook account and start reading various posts by my family, friends or acquaintances, it makes me wonder whether I have gotten out of touch with them.  People who I thought barely have any remote interest in each other’s life would exchange pleasant comments and share details about their life in general.

I wonder whether a massive social meet up is happening behind my back where I am not invited.  But the great thing about Facebook is that nobody writes even remotely controversial or derogatory thing about others.  To think about it, isn’t it the ultimate society where everyone is nice and helpful to all of their friends and family? In other words Facebook has established a social norm in five years which traditional religion has not been able to do in 2500 years.

Now you may argue that it is all virtual and not real. However if we are to spend five hours on social media and two hours actually interacting with people in the real world, can we positively say which part of our life is real and which part is fake?. That brings us to the moot point, is Facebook a religion?

To answer that let’s go back to the basics of evolution. As living organism we are destined to do three things; survive, procreate and evolve to adjust to our physical environment. This process follows Darwin’s “Natural Selection” theory. As human beings we also have an added aspect of evolution; that is intellectual evolution.

We all know, as also many other living creatures that our chances of survival and procreation go up significantly when we are united or are in a group.  And hence we have formed many such groups throughout our history in the form of religion, country, color, language etc. In the social behavior scale, the role of religion has been very prominent, since most religion professes a way of living to its followers.

If we look back at the history, the role of religion into our process of intellectual evolution has been limited. It is mostly the philosophers and the scientific minds such as Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Galileo, Archimedes, Newton, and Darwin who provided our evolutionary kick. Most of them in fact were in loggerhead with religion in their life because they provided advance theory in the static world of religion. To be fair to religion, it provided the basic civility that helped maintain order in the society where philosophers could have a captive audience. (Though hostile at times). However, no religion professed evolution because it would have been contradictory to the fixed beliefs that most religions are based on.

In the 21^st century, all sources of unity that is based on physical attributes have lost its sanctity. Literally everyone speaks English and hence language is no longer helps in group identity. Globalization has enhanced mobility and consequently geographical parameters such as country are not the biggest unifying factor.  Religion, because of its strict guidelines has lost its context in the developed world.

However, as human beings we still need to feel part of a group because it is our natural instinct of survival. Facebook is providing a platform which makes us dynamically become part of group. This is the new reality of the 21^st century. The role that Facebook has played in the Arab spring proves that beyond doubt.

Just to add to this thought, while Facebook is providing the factor of unity and group behavior, blogosphere is providing perfect foil where philosophy can prosper. However the relationship between Blogosphere and Facebook has been highly synergistic unlike that between religion and philosophy which were mostly confrontational.  That is because Facebook’s new identity ideas are driven by thoughts that are generated from the blogosphere.

Does that make Facebook a religion or a platform for thousand religions? To my mind it is not a religion. It is a new way of feeling part of a group just like religion, language or country.  It is part of our survival instinct that motivates us to become part of a group. However it differs from traditional religious characteristics in too many ways. Someday, somebody will give it a new name. Till then we will call it just Facebook.