An interesting thought crossed my mind today. Our parents didn’t have the social media as well as access to the technology we do today (I’m talking folks who were adolescents to early twenties anytime before the 1980s). There wasn’t any ability to share what you were doing with your life across a large audience. If anything the only people who could comment or remark on anything you were doing with your life were your close friends or your family. Thus, there wasn’t any head-patting going on. Which is what I think this culture has been (almost) diseased with.

The social media sphere will cause a user to engage in a manner where they are constantly asking themselves, “Should I share this moment on my social media account?”. Why? Validation. We all get our reward centers lit up when we notice that other people who have watched our moments with approval.. The same is probably true with blatant disapproval. Either way your perspective is validated. The point being is that now we have been conditioned to seek approval using these applications of technology.

It might not always be the case people are looking for approval. However, even if you are only sharing something that you saw as worth sharing there is still an element of ego involved. I’d say be wary of this.

Our parents grew up in a period where war had fueled the growth of the economy as well as the creativity of intellectuals who were in a position of being oppressed (i.e. the hippies and civil rights movement). Do you think Martin Luther King Jr. was posting to social media sites so his ideas and actions would get ‘Likes’? He wasn’t. Would he have? I can’t answer that. Nonetheless, there wasn’t any way for people who wanted to share their ideas, activities and creativity could as easily.

Why do I have a gripe with this? There is now a bridge between the thought and the output. If you were an artist and wanted to get your work out, what did you have to do? You had to go from gallery to gallery potentially being rejected every time without any recognition of your abilities. Now we can go to one of those “paint while you drink wine” classes and then take a photo and upload it and well look at that. Suddenly you are a modern fucking genius.

Those steps that it takes to go from an articulate thought to a final representation of your thought are what I would call hard work. No one knows the meaning of hard work anymore because we now have the ability to receive not only recognition, but approval from others, even if it’s a pitiful action from those who approve. So now you can be a giant, fat, piece of shit but because you went and took a photo of a delicious looking meal other people click their “Like” button and suddenly your life decision to be a giant, fat, piece of shit is validated. This is a very dangerous tool.

I’m not totally opposed to this because there are some novel features about this technology that can prove to be useful. The ability to connect now is key. We can transmit data across the world and also across cultures. You can probably now meet “the one” by breaking down what it is you want in a significant other. There is also the opportunity to spread your unique message.

So far as I can tell, one of the readily available purposes of being human is to be able to take in the world (input data), articulate the world (calculate and compute the data) and then be creative with your ideas (output the data in a meaningful/impactful/useful way). The human mind is the hardware for which we run our software on. The hardware itself probably won’t change all that much meaning your brain is wired a certain way. The software can change if you work on upgrading it meaning you can learn new things and learn how to change your interpretation of input data. Thus, every human has a unique set of hardware and software and from this the data we all take in can be processed and then spread out into the world – your own unique message. I take it this is what nature wants us to do. This is where we should focus on understanding and grow from this. We can now reach many other humans as sources of input. We can all share ideas on a much larger scale. It’s scary, exciting and fascinating. If properly used we can all become better humans. If we all become better humans then the world becomes a better place to take part in.