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This really grabbed me: "The main benefit of taking a break from social media is that you stop living in a fictional world and finally start dealing with your

• mistermann 5y ago
  > "The main benefit of taking a break from social media is that you stop living in a fictional world and finally start dealing with your own reality." > There is lots of quantifiable information showing that social media is bad for you. This seems much harder to quantify, but seems like the elephant in the room. This is perfectly reasonable, but I am personally very skeptical. Also from the article: >> “As painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?” Plato's Allegory of the Cave precedes social media by a substantial margin: >> Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” appears in Book 7 of his masterwork, “The Republic.” Plato wrote “The Republic,” a sustained disquisition on a utopian society, sometime between 380 and 360 B.C., during a period of Greek history known as the Classical Age. What if the elephant in the room that is social media is actually more like a red herring, a diversion from the actual elephant in the room: human consciousness? There are recurring themes and patterns that can be found in the comments every time this sort of article (and other sorts) pop up, the most common ones I always pick up on: - many/most individuals speaking as if they understand The Problem, and know The Solution - the most common solution people propose is legislation (aka: Democracy) - there tends to be a very small set of....general thinking styles on display - it's a very slippery concept to nail down, I think of it as the complexity that falls under the general header of culture My question is: what if everyone is wrong[1], and that is the reason that these problems never go away? What if the problem is something other than what it seems to be, and humanity never discovers it because they never thought to look for it, perhaps because they were fooled/distracted by the illusory The Problem that appeared before them (...from where - nobody asks.....as if it is has root access and is completely off the radar)? [1] A theme or pattern that one will rarely encounter on social media: individuals wondering if their theory (ideology, whatever) is actually correct. The lack of curiosity in modern times would be shocking, if we had the counter-intuitive ability to see things that are not there.
  • xrd 5y ago
    This is a brilliant answer and I learned a lot from it. Thank you. I plan on sharing this with my kids and wife. Wonderful.
    • mistermann 5y ago
      Thank you for the kind words! Now that you mention sharing with your kids, it brings to mind another idea that pops up now and then when thinking about such ideas: it seems to me that once people start to get older and more knowledgeable, it's like they lose the ability to even conceptualize ideas like this, let alone take them seriously. It seems like with age and experience, it's as if people get "locked in" to reality, eventually perceiving it as a kind of immutable, bounded system that is forced upon us, as opposed to an open, mysterious environment full of hidden tricks and tools that we can us to shape the environment to our will. If there is some truth to this, my armchair theory is that it is in part due to physical changes in the brain, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_pruning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_pruning Anyways, I think humanity would be well advised to put some effort into seriously listening to the perspective that younger minds can bring to this old problem, maybe your kids could come up with some novel ideas to contribute if they set their minds to it.