What is Buddhism? And how does it fit into the modern world? Were the global conditions of the Buddha in any way reminiscent of where we are today?
In light of the global political predicament. In light of a world consumed with social media distraction and addiction, it is time we all come back to our senses. We can no longer fool ourselves that the progress of civilization is linear, always moving towards the salvation of the scientific religion. We ebb and flow in cycles with rising tides of novelty.
We must begin to deconstruct where we are and where we are going. Has civilization gotten the better of us? Were we fooled all along? How far have we strayed from reality. How much more can we abstract reality into the minute repetitive delineations of languages and symbology that has lead us farther away for ourselves with every iteration. How many of us are awake? How many of us asleep? We are all caught in a super system called civilization. At the end of the day we don't really have control. It has its own way. Its own agenda. We are like the cells in a larger organism.
Far too many of my generation believe in the lie of social media. The lie being that it was designed to bring us together. It is frustrating to see so many, including myself at times fall into this trap. What we don't realize is that social media was not designed to connect us.
It was designed to hold our attention spans for as long as possible. It steals from us the most important thing we have our time. Losing ourselves in the brightest moments of others we do not even have close to us. We are addicted. We have been convinced that mindlessly sharing bits and pieces of our brightest moments is connecting us. Bringing us closer. While they sell it to those who would profit off of it.
In this video I explore these ideas. Pondering the modern condition and where to go from here. The basic principles of Buddhism may offer us a way out of a collapsing world where all our paradigms and illusions are collapsing. Where the technology we have created has become out biggest enemy. Our symbols, deas and the systems we build around them have become our worst nightmare. In our hubris we let these things take us over.
