Are we living in an era of collective neurosis? It's something I often wonder when I watch the news or scroll through social media... Are we suffering from hysteria? Sigmund Freud said we were. These are questions that keep me awake at night because it's clear that we live in sick societies, immersed in various pathologies that we don't even have time to explain.
Is the world crazy, or is it out of control?
It depends on how you look at it, but if you ask me, it's a bit of both. Because anarchy and economic interests reign supreme in the world. They are unavoidable; they are simply something that cannot be separated. But we cannot say that we live in an out-of-control world; we cannot express it, because God forbid, they will label you as exaggerated and intolerant, at the very least.
Because customs and our environment have conditioned us to believe that it is best to remain silent even though we know the reality of things. Social media control us, while remaining disguised as freedom, that's an undeniable truth too, and that is a sad thing. Now, speaking of social media, it is true that they open windows of opinion on whatever we can imagine; but how many of those voices are heard or say anything meaningful? Does anyone keep track of or statistics on this? Surely the owners of those social media platforms do.
Now, it is also true that on social media, things that are not liked, voices that are not convenient to hear, are hidden, banned, and ignored. And we should not be surprised by this. They control the narrative.
I study the great philosophers of all ages to better understand humanity
I tend to study all the great philosophers of all ages of humanity, not to copy their thoughts, but to learn from them and enrich my knowledge and personal judgment. Socrates said, “I know that I know nothing,” and if he had lived to see this era, I think he would have discovered that he could not even imagine the level of truth or the exact dimension of his words.
Because today, even educated, informed people with personal judgment are ignorant of so many things, even though we know more than any human being in any previous stage of history. And yes, philosophically speaking, it is true that we will always be ignorant, no matter what we do, because human life is too short to acquire even a tiny fraction of all the knowledge that exists; but beyond that, we don't need to know everything about everything; we just need to know whatever helps us live better, in a more functional and happy way.
Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum,” which means “I think, therefore I am.” And although he said it in a different sense and millennia before the emergence of the internet and social media, if we take it to the current context, it has another connotation. Because with social media, people have taken expressing what they feel to the extreme, and basically, if you're not on social media, you're not taken into account, since people think it's as if you don't exist.
But we do exist, of course we do, as a society; we did so millennia before social media, and we do so now, during the age of social media. Now, with the level of lack of common sense that is happening today around this, I couldn't say for sure that humanity will continue to exist after the age of social media, because that remains to be seen.
The fact is that yes, Descartes was right, we think and only after thinking do we exist, because we act, because we become aware of things. But how much of today's thinking arises from prudent, rational, and measured reflection with these social networks and their collective stupidity invading us? It's not that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and TikTok are exactly making us smarter, don't you think?
The social media bomb
In the 1940s, Oppenheimer and Einstein had to decide (on a personal and philosophical level) how appropriate it was to give the world the atomic bomb in order to end World War II and bring peace once and for all. Did they succeed? It is debatable, at least, but history shows that they did succeed in part, although not entirely.
But let's not stray from the topic; the point is that they had to decide that, they had to decide whether the weapon they scientifically could create for the world was desirable to achieve a greater end. Between two evils, they had to decide on what they believed to be the “lesser evil.” They had to make a decision in the midst of a dichotomous situation, and they did so believing that they were doing the best thing that could be done in such a case. But I believe that whoever invented social media as a concept did not imagine, think about, or make such philosophical and personal considerations; and that is why we have it the way it is today.
Because social media is a real problem that, in my opinion, is making most of humanity sick. On the one hand, there is misinformation (due to fake news circulating everywhere) and, on the other hand, there is the spread of ideologies that degrade, distort, or pervert humanity by distorting reality. Values have been lost, good is seen as bad and bad is seen as good.
And meanwhile, the owners of social media (such as Mark Zuckerberg, among many others) collect our personal information to sell it to the highest bidder and feed their AI systems. As if the problem of social media and its consequences were not enough, we now also have artificial intelligence, which is increasingly taking over our lives. The media and responsibles portrays AI as the savior of humanity, but then we realize that rather than helping, it will be business as usual, meaning it will be a tool used as a resource by the rich and powerful (the hands that pull the strings of power at all levels of the world) to dominate the masses.
It's not paranoia, it's reality; because it's one thing to use AI like anyone else for whatever purpose, and quite another to use it at the programmer level, since that will only be a privilege for wealthy people who will use it for their own selfish personal ends. Anyway, it's the same old story.
And whether we like it or not, that's how things are; the world is a ship we're all on and we can't get off, because there's no other one. But the truth is that I see more and more people on media such as YouTube throwing themselves into living in the woods and fields; and I suppose it's understandable, I can't blame them, because it seems like the only rational way to escape from all this chaos we call the modern world; but deep down, I don't think it's the solution either, because it's not possible to escape from reality or deny it for too long; we can only accept it and try to process and manage it as best we can.
What do you think about this topic? Please comment.
