People believe they are individuals, while seeking their relevance from a group.
This post isn't about the current political events or climate, but it is probably relevant to what is going on now and in the world in general. A world we have created to be an extreme polarization of all ideas, all positions, all people. The public discourse has descended into shouting matches where the winner is judged to be the one who has the loudest voice, as they will gather the most attention.
I believe that a lot of the issues stem from our own ego, the attachment to who we think we are, what groups we ascribe to, our identity. This is not a new idea, we have likely been struggling with identity for as long as we have existed, but the game has changed. Our struggle with "who we are", our weakness can be leveraged and weaponized at scale, it can be turned against us and turn us against each other - while thinking that we are making the choices, that it is we who feel this way about them.
It is a manipulation of culture, to change culture itself into a free-for-all battleground where each of us is fighting the other across an endless number of fronts, each taking on instant importance as it is driven into our eyeline, like the advertisement for a new diet cola. And, because it feels that it is our preference and choice, that it is our identity, we will defend it as if it is our own skin, as if it is us.
But, there is more to it than fighting for ideals, for as I have written about before, we are fighting for relevance - I believe that this is the real driver behind the polarization, the doubling-down, the lack of listening and the abundance of talk that inevitably leads to violence in a thousand forms.
We have built a world that encourages attention at any cost and have supported and rewarded it to the highest levels of society, while simultaneously undermining the security of who we are. The best of us is cherry-picked and pedestalled from around the globe and the rest of us are content machines paid in thumbs and stars with the content of our lives having the lifespan of moments, before being pushed down the feeds to oblivion. We are getting automated out of our jobs and the relationships of strength have been displaced by a swipe to the left or the right - we have made ourselves disposable and slaves to the attention of strangers with a fickle mind and desires that change direction in the wind.
Outrage is the fastest path to creating noise, getting a buzz - so we join groups that leverage our anger, target our energy toward an enemy - an enemy who is our neighbor, our friend - wrapped in a shroud of anonymity, fragmented across a hundred topics that come in and out of trend with the news cycles and the latest social panic. And because we feel that this is important, that this is something we truly feel strongly about, we ramp up the aggression until there is violence - but we are part of something, a movement, and one that is on the side of good - as the enemy must be the bad.
But, they are leveraged too, they are being driven into defending their identity also - by the same mechanisms, the same platforms, the same data, the same profiling, the same underlying desire - profit. It is incredible to think that the entire breakdown of society is going to be driven by a handful of companies who will profit from the process and they need do nothing - but keep feeding our desires, keep giving us what we want with an automated system, with no oversight.
We want attention, we want to be superheroes. And there is no way to be a superhero without a supervillain as a counterpoint - a partner in crime. This is how we create our relevance, by inventing enemies and doubling down until we are zealots, blind to the harm we do as we tear cities apart and justify the harm done to the innocent as collateral damage, an acceptable cost to vanquish the enemy. Having our opposite, means that we have purpose.
Purpose. The meaning of life.
We likely all feel some pull to purpose, some need to find reason for our existence, a meaning for why we are here and what we should do with our time. Maslow spoke of self-actualization and now, instead of discovering it for ourselves through experience and activity, we onboard the ideals presented us by an algorithm designed to extract as much attention and profit from us as possible - which in the world of identity importance, is inevitably driving what frames us as superior or inferior, above others or being held down by others - we are never diverse equals.
Entire platforms put us in competition with each other, with the ball to focus on being utterly unimportant, but the prize being the attention we crave to feel that we matter, that we are relevant to this world, that someone cares. The winner is the one with the loudest voice, the one who gets the most likes, the one who is able to gather the most people in support, to force the enemy into submission. An enemy that is doing the same.
While people die of cancer, poor nutrition and contract aids, while children die from mosquito bites and a billion have no access to clean water, while the air, sea and land become toxic to the point of uninhabitable - we think that the conversation we have about our identities is honest, that the violence we enact is justified, that we are agents of good.
What happened to the concept of social relevance being tied to solving a shared problem? With a redirection of all the resources spent on this bullshit - what else could we have done instead?
We want purpose and we have lost reason.
We want relevance and what we do is irrelevant.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]