“Anything in excess is poison”
I’ve been reflecting on this popular quote by Buddha, and its implications in daily life. If you’re aware about the negative impacts of overindulgence, you may or may not have attempted to strike a balance in your life.
We live in a time where we have access to a lot of information, the world is flooded with a plethora of options and the demand-supply gap has been bridged for a lot of things.
The free-advice industry has been booming and the more people think that they know, the more readily they are willing to extend this information to others. Especially if you live in India, you’ve experienced this more often than others. The power to send good morning texts issued in public interest alone, slowed down servers to such an extent, that Google had to create a new software to address the issue.
Again, how much is too much can be extremely subjective. Meeting someone more than once a year might be too much for an introvert, some people can eat gigantic portions of food without it being too much for them, some can chatter till your ears bleed and some people bombard Facebook or Twitter with posts in moderation, apparently.
Humans are the products of years of complex evolutionary and biological processes, our ancestors have struggled to survive, reform and philosophise life only to be succeeded by cyborgs who feed off the number of Instagram followers they have and do something called the Kiki challenge. Rest in peace Socrates, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
I’m astonished at the fact that We, members of the most intellectually superior species to have inhabited this planet, capable of traveling into space and studying the nature of existence run along with cars while recording it and manage to kill ourselves while trying to click selfies.
All this may seem trivial till you actually study the potential effects of technological-driven behaviour on personality. The word ‘person’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘persona‘ which meant a mask used by actors in Greco-Roman drama. You adorn a mask or role that you think is you, due to your ability to recognise patterns, behaviour and the feedback you receive from people around you and a few other factors which you then collectively view as your personality. This is extremely helpful to interact with people around you, make changes if needed and function effectively as a social being.
The catastrophe arises when we try integrate information from social media and unrealistic standards of living into our personality. The access into micro-information of other people’s lives and then standardising ourselves to fit into a square of information has lead to a surge in depression, self-esteem, anxiety and personality disorders. Butts are getting bigger, brains smaller. And the influence that information has on our lives is rising exponentially with increased accessibility.
It’s really easy to blame progress for the trouble our perceptions are creating but hell no, scientists, researchers, aren’t just working their lives away so that you can reach a million followers or add dog-filters to your face. We literally use scraps of technology to decorate our lives and are so easily entertained by anything.
We’re constantly surrounded by distractions and chaos, but consciousness and adaptability gives us an upper-hand at understanding and effective problem-solving. I suggest instead of the constant pursuit of things or being only technologically relevant we shift our focus to understanding the dichotomy between the real and virtual world and take a moment to think about the long-term consequences of our actions as a collective.
A selective intake of information from the media and questioning the relevance and credibility of the information you are passing on to others is essential. Inaccurate socially-constructed images of the ideal life or body type should not be promoted.
The need is to raise a generation that understands the difference between facts and fiction, so that we could focus on better things like enhancing creativity, sustainability and productivity through these mediums instead of promoting superficiality. What we lack is the ability to handle information that is handed over to us and all we need is to be aware and take responsibility for our role in this mayhem.
Feel free to share your views in the comments. Have a good day y’all!
solaceworks 