Social media encourage people to believe that having hundreds of "friends" on their Facebook page means they are popular and have numerous genuine relationships. "Getting friended" is the exact opposite of having genuine friends or knowing how to be a true friend.

     Social media are creating mental and moral imbeciles, sub-humans incapable of understanding what's happening in the world and unable to have any genuine concern for others. We couldn't hope to create a genuine commonwealth until we've created persons who are capable of genuine reciprocity, cooperation, and consensus.

      Interaction and communication within genuine relationships evince an uncommon, supernormal openness, considerateness, and honesty which can be experienced in no other atmosphere. Once a person has experienced this kind of interaction, the "small talk" and inanity of ordinary interchange seems unrewarding and repugnant.

      Participants in dialectical interchange are better able to "see" and "listen to" others--in the interchange environment and otherwise. Ego distractions no longer blind and deafen us, and we suddenly discern deeper meanings within persons, events and objects, enabling new, more potent responses.

      Participants in dialectic are more capable of disclosing feelings and ideas, both those which they are aware of when the interchange begins and those newly realized elements which appear as the dialectical process proceeds.

      Persons in inauthentic relationships are incapable of participating in dialectical interchange because they lack the requisite autonomy, intelligence, and honesty. Until very recently, women were not considered "equal" to men, and relationships were male dominated. Misquoting the Bible's "a woman shall cleave to her husband," English law enshrined this inequality. English jurist William Blackstone, arbiter of English law pontificated: "in law a husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person."

      For two or more persons to engage in genuine dialectical interchange, it's necessary that they both possess mental and spiritual autonomy. Their stations in life do not necessarily need to be equal. All participants must be able to think for themselves and must possess the personal force to maintain their own ideas and sentiments. An interesting example of personal autonomy was that between Jane and Mr. Rochester in the novel Jane Eyre. Though Jane was Mr. Rochester's hired governess and he her "master," she possessed a completely autonomous mind which Mr. Rochester not just tolerated but admired and loved.