The Word “Friend”

“Community” is a diluted word, but that might be downstream of the terrible fate that has befallen the word “friend.”

Friendship is a reciprocal responsibility. You can’t just go around saying “So-and-So is my best friend” like a five-year-old without putting up some stake.

The way powerful words get diluted — see also: “weird,” “awesome” — is a collective cultural process, but it’s suspicious to me when it turns conceptions of mutual responsibility into one-way consumer choices.

Who benefits from “friend” being free to assign and withdraw at will?

As with any concept of a spiritual truth, pointing to “friendship” with words is only relevant after the presence of the truth has been demonstrated.

And when it hasn’t, the pointing can be used to create the reassuring sense of that truth’s presence even in its total absence.

There’s a downward spiral here. Strong cultural and community ties sustain a rich complexity of relations that nearly obviate the need for binary descriptive statuses such as “friend.” Those kick in as ties weaken. Making them easier to assign is like a last-ditch defense.

It’s like putting a band-aid on the Titanic, though. Saying nice words without demonstrating anything in relationship is worse than doing nothing, because it creates a false sense that something’s being done.

What kind of friend considers status before acting in service?