We are living in an endless hall of mirrors in which the viewer holds up a camera to take a selfie.
The internet is not the bad guy, nor the bland instagram model holding the cellphone.
The bad guy is the one who, upon seeing this picture, responds “Look at me!”
Information: a tool to cut or bind knowledge. After we are fed and clothed, we seek more information for … ? In my opinion, it all boils down to the conception of self and conception of world. Once we know who we are, and once we know the world, we can act in the world. The trouble comes when we don’t know that we are looking for information to shape our conception of self.
It may be that all of our interactions on the internet equate to these four basic activities: to cut or bind knowledge of the world and the self. The internet is both the least expensive and most impactful location for this most important activity.
When we arm ourselves with the reality of the systems in which we participate, we are empowered to make wiser choices.
We bind information to our concept of self and world through biases: what we like because it agrees with us. We cut information to these same concepts based on the opinions of others (WHAT DO YOU THIHNK ABOUT??). These are not the only routes to these activities, but they are the most profitable in that they take the least effort and reap the fastest rewards.
It is through this implied insecurity of how to cut and bind self-conception that much content is created. Did you know Masterclass can teach you empathy?
I would argue a class of people implicitly recognize this and eschew with much of the advice or ideas proposed by systems and individuals on “how to live better” because they recognize it as faulty and insincere, because they are rooted in this intention of “look at me.”
Then we have the echoing comment “look at me” which has nothing attached to it except the statement.
My brother mentioned to me “People are limited by what they know.” So we look for knowledge, and we again come to the internet. The question is twofold: how to discern information so that it serves your best interests in the conception of self and world, and how is it that you contribute back into the well which feeds you? So, you know, we don’t just become of a world of “look at me”’s.
Once there was a man who was a chicken farmer. He treated his job casually, as if his eyes were set on the prize instead of the big city. Until one day, a witch warned him of his lackadaisical ways. “It doesn’t matter,” he scorned.
“It doesn’t matter, until you find you are feeding yourself,” she smiled, and then vanished in a cloud of smoke.
The next day the man woke as a chicken in the coop.
How does he escape this prison?
-- Provolone, il mago