Real change to people will only happen through education, revolution, empowerment of the people, and knowledge. How to give this knowledge to everyone?
People are not willing to get educated.
They are willing up to a certain point, but the motive for that is entirely different. They are getting educated not to gain knowledge but due to the understanding that with a degree they have a certainty that they will be able to land a job and make money.
Gaining knowledge is not the motive behind education. Making money is the primary motive. So they just stop it once they land a job and the learning is limited only to what the job demands.
There’s an idea now that if you are doing something which cant be monetized, you are wasting your time. The good old capitalism. Everything should be a thing to be sold or purchased.
Even the hobbies of people are now commoditized. As a result, people can’t even enjoy the things they did for fun, because now they have to keep on creating and consuming. Even hobbies have become jobs.
Take the example of someone who loves to take videos. He does that and casually uploads to the social media of his choice and gains a few followers. His account keeps on growing and as a result, to keep the momentum, and retain the followers, he is forced to create the content not on his own terms, but on the terms of an algorithm that is controlled by a single multi-billion dollar company. What happens then? as a result of this, eventually he finds himself not enjoying something which he truly loved to do.
When we think about it, there’s already content about pretty much every topic online. When we search for a topic we can see hundreds or thousands o videos explaining the same thing.
Don’t be a part of it. Because we need to stay out of the system to understand the pitfalls of the system. Otherwise, it will suck you in. Then even your revolution will become yet another product that can be sold.
Just another thing people can consume mindlessly. There’s a good episode of the Netflix show called black mirror which depicts this very beautifully. The name of the episode is “Fifteen Million Merits”.
Why are people addicted to these different kinds of online platforms?
Why was I addicted to it? The mindless scrolling through insta reels, countless hours of watching random youtube videos, and before insta, scrolling endlessly through Facebook, reading entire random discussions in Facebook groups, Reddit, online forums, and so forth and so on.
It’s an easy thing. You don’t realize how time-consuming it is, or how mind-numbing this is. It makes you keep on scrolling and scrolling.
It’s designed to keep you hooked. They make you spend as much time on their platform so that they can serve that many ads. The more time you stay, the more ads they can serve and thus the more money they can make.
I am not going into further details on this. There are well-prepared documentaries on Netflix / youtube, scientific journals & thousands of articles published online on the addictive nature of social media. The digital drug.
I know this is addictive. I have experienced this.
One of the reasons for the countless hours spent on these platforms is the easy access I guess. It’s very entertaining and if it’s not, you can quickly swipe away into the next reels, next youtube videos, or another series or episode on Netflix.
All the activities which are useful to us are not like this. It takes effort.
For example, learning a skill. It requires hundreds of hours of dedication.
We can’t swipe away into something else at the first sign of discomfort.
It also doesn’t bring the instant dopamine hit we get from consuming byte-sized content on social media. It’s hard, and us being us, we don’t like hard things.
The entire human existence can be concluded as reducing hardship. Making everything simple. Solving problems. Inventing stuff to make our lives easier.
But what are we solving here by consuming endless content? Nothing. It’s not even quality entertainment. Like George Carlin said in one of his stand-up comedy shows, Garbage in, garbage out.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWrsEpWgrc)
It’s simply a new drug. A digital one and everybody are consuming it. Maybe that’s why nobody is so hard on this subject. Everyone is hooked. All of us are addicted to it in one way or another and don’t even realize this.
The idea of relaxation, rest, and free time is now synonymous with consuming content. Watching Netflix, youtube, reels or endless scrolling of social media is what people do after work or their studies. I know this because I also have spent quite some time on this path.
The question is what is the alternative way?
I guess people are getting lonelier and lonelier even though everyone they know is just a call away.
That’s why they have this much time to scroll endlessly through these different platforms which serve you content infinitely, rather than going out with someone and doing something. And even if people do this, they are doing it so they can share the video and photos of the activity they are doing with their online followers.
Rather than being fully in the moment, soaking in the experience fully, people are eager to capture the experience with their little phones and post it. People enjoy the likes and clout they get from posting this, more than the actual experience they had. So pathetic.
And another thing is that many people don’t have a passion or a dream that they are actively working towards. Once they get a job, the general mindset is that they are all set for their lives. No more learning new things, no more curious about anything, just be a cog in the machine and get paid. They just go to work and live life passively. These people are also relieved from the duty of making decisions that affect their own life. There are people who do that for them. Parents, bosses, relatives, neighbors, wives, girlfriends, etc.
But is that it? This is where all of it leads to eventually. Can’t we all just go above and beyond and see where it leads?
The human experience is the rarest of the rarest thing in the entire universe, and this is how we are supposed to spend it?!
Think about it. In the vast emptiness of space, it’s here, only here, on our little blue gem of a planet, life exists. Not just life. Intelligent life. Intelligent Beings capable of extraordinary things. The possibilities are limitless. The frontiers to explore are limitless. The knowledge to be gained is limitless. The question is what are we supposed to do with this rarest of the rarest gift?
Now think for a moment, Currently, What are we doing with such a precious gift? Sitting in a class mugging, sitting behind a desk and crunching numbers and whatnot, simply being a cog in a machine. I am pretty sure most of us are not doing anything significant which matches the worth of this precious gift called human existence.
The current cultural game says to make money, get married, have kids, and make them do the same. Keep on repeating this. Pretty much everyone is hooked on this game. Most people out there are playing only this game. They don’t even know that there are other games to be played and experienced.
Not only a single culturally sanctioned game, but multiple games can be played. simultaneously.
How should we determine which game to play at a particular time in our lives?
Are we reinventing culture by assigning a pre-determined game to a person at a pre-determined time? The person, by himself, should choose which games they want to play.
But it’s not that simple. The decision taken by them is actually not even their decision. They might think that this is 100% their decision. But it’s not.
Each and every decision we take is highly influenced by many many external factors.
It’s influenced by our parents, our financial, religious, and cultural situation, the environment in which we grew up, etc.
It also depends on the personal experiences, books we read, movies we watched, the online content we consumed, and stories and experiences we had and heard from our friends and family and so forth and so on Influenced by so many factors like these, all the decisions we make are entirely not our own decisions. it’s polluted by many factors.
And the thing to be remembered is that there are institutional structures in place that make sure that people are following their particular scripts. This script varies depending on the respective institutions. Mostly it can be religious, cultural, or both.
So how should we decide on something? even if decide on something, is it truly our decision? how can we know that we are not manipulated by all these factors? How can we be sure that this is what actually we want to do?
Is it even possible to make a particular decision without being influenced? No.
As we grow up, we set up multiple internal filters & every decision we take, and every thought we have will be going through these filters.
What we can do is, the possible practical solution to this problem is the thorough examination of the filters which we already have in place.
We should have the courage to remove and replace these old filters with truer ones. Thus we can get one step closer to our own true being. Our own life created by our own thoughts and feelings, rather than living according to scripts written by the various control mechanisms of society.
We shouldn’t get addicted & hold on to the filters which are already in place. Remember, this is one of the root causes of all the problems which we see today around us locally and globally.
What should we pass through these filters? The question of what should we do is to be passed on through these filters.
But the question still remains. What should we do?
The human existence. It’s a gift. The one which we always forget to be grateful for. It’s the rarest of the rarest thing in the entire universe. To be human, to exist, to be conscious.
And the question is, what should we do with this gift?
just exist?!
What would be the best way for a human being to spend his time? What problem should he be working on?
should he be working on a problem at all?
what should we be studying? obviously, we cant study everything.
Our interests and the things we choose to study and work on are also a result of the filters which I have mentioned earlier.
Some filters got installed at a particular time of our lives, and we started to pay attention to only the things coming through that. Thus naturally our interest in that particular subject grew and the things we do and the thoughts we have is limited to this particular area.
There are countless things to do. Countless things to study, yet we choose only very very few things. We have very limited capacity in a lifetime. A single person just can’t do it all. Then the next question will be, how do we know we are choosing the right thing to do with our lives?
This in fact is the same old question. what to do?!.
Should we just make enough money to exist and then forget about everything else? Reduce the vast possibility of human existence into just a money-making game for the sustenance of you and your family by serving your capitalistic overlords?
Is that what we are supposed to do in the current day and age?
Everywhere I look, this is what I am able to see pretty much.
But there’s this strong feeling that there’s something beyond this.
But we are not free to explore this curiosity. We are chained. Chained by the expectations of parents, gf, wives, husbands, societies, and so forth and so on!!! Also, the price to pay for exiting this game is also pretty huge. Unless you already have pretty good capital, it’s pretty much impossible to leave this game. You must have to play this just for your mere survival.
It’s kind of a very well-made trap. A trap that got enough time to perfect itself through hundreds and thousands of years.
So what will you do? keep on playing the game? Keep on playing until you feel like you can exit and live quietly without playing the game anymore or just exit and see what the universe has to show you?
Most likely it will show you Poverty and homelessness if you do that last one. It’s kinda brutal.
What an elaborate trap we humans have set up for ourselves.
