In reaching to be relevant, are we quite possibly becoming irrelevant to ourselves?
In our current state of existence, we are unknowingly treading toward crisis. Driven by the vestibule of access to everything all the time from a tiny pocket device we carry with us at all periods of the day (always), our sense of reality is warped by ideas and philosophical products we do not necessarily need, governed by code and remote input.
It commences at the beginning of the day, from the moment we wake and ends only when we close our eyes. True currency is time, and smartphones are thieves. Their use is becoming increasingly difficult to circumvent, with its intuitive and almost robot-like biological circulatory systems itching to chip away autonomously at the behest of its human overlords.
One thing we all share is the behaviour of wishing to feel relevant and dissectable by society through a need to be loved and alone at the same time. As an example, in the past 5 years, the profiles of particular terms such as ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ are being excessively overused to the point it becomes purposeless and in turn – meaningless.
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator which catalysed its use, has become a popularised form of self-identification yet holds little significance within the scientific community due to its lack of evidence. The test was created and formulated by the same company that underwrote its research, raising questions about its validity and legitimacy. Though today the parameters of its findings are used in levity, it has gained traction as a way to identify oneself.
Independent of that, just like anyone, we are influenced by what society projects upon us through an excessive amount of mixed messaging via media, particularly social media. The archetypes of ‘introvert’ vs ‘extrovert are broadly misunderstood, their complexities cherry-picked to assimilate one’s identity and most assumably to belong to something if one feels abandoned, so as to belong to something.
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In the quest to feel applicable to a party without knowing which party that is, we forgo the nourishment of one’s own existence. This leads us astray by the peer pressure of investigation for pertinence. The accomplice of social media – ‘smartphones’ hammered out a baseline for who we are, nailing faux dispositions into ways of thinking without asking us to comprehend its outcomes. Like a parasitic wasp, we are unable to see the shortcomings of our choices, mostly because we are unaware we are within the grasp of something so nefariously unimportant, trapped within the midpoint of an algorithm searching for the breaches of an identity we did not need in order to feel needed.
We are so swept up in trying to pin a slice of importance to our bio, no matter what that is, that we neglect the necessity of importance in what we can do without our smartphones. Our true selves are dissident to the norms of society, a society that is constantly changing the parameters of normality, unhinged from the chambers of voracious intent and instead bound by the fluctuations of horde mentality. One that is destined for mental malnourishment.
Stanisland Magazine 