Once upon a time, there was a „Most effective weapons in history” gallery exposition… A myriad of complicated and expensive guns and bombs, blades and spades, poisons and diseases were proudly displayed, labelled with their death-quota. At the end of it all there was this old thing, so used that it was barely recognizable. The Devil was standing proudly next to it, smiling knowingly. The label read simply: “FEAR”.
Of course, it’s a story, but the truth is that no matter how we look at it, it’s fear running and ruining our lives. It’s the most powerful factor in every single decision we make every second of every day. We act out of fear to starve, to be lonely, to be mocked, to be marginalized, and the most powerful of all fears: fear of being exposed as someone less that we want the others to see. It is also a very useful tool, as it was and always will be, the best way to manipulate the masses. It only takes one person to say something that seems threatening to the “society’s well-being”, no matter how unsubstantiated or stupid, there will always be at least a hand-full of “followers” to act on it, without investigating, without thinking. We’re all afraid, fear is the leading factor of most of our actions, we are scared as soon as we are born, we live scared and anxious and it only ends with our last breath. That’s a given. Even the Evel Knievel daredevils of this world actually act driven by fear, they just know that if they don’t fight fire with fire, the fear will take over.
Now, if this fear would go all the way up on Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs, it wouldn’t even be such a terrible thing. We would still be developing obsessions, but at least we would also be concerned with the quality of our life, not just with the appearance if it and just the basic level of existing. So, how did it all get so out of hand? What happened that the whole world decided to turn to obsessing over perfection, rather than actually experiencing real life? Yes, a lot of the bad out there is very real. The world is crazier by the minute and meaner too. It seems determined to self-destroy any day. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care about the big bad stuff, none of us ever want or choose to suffer, but, also, none of us can ever escape pain. These are facts. People have always tried to run away from getting hurt, but in the last few decades it’s gotten to a point where they stopped acting human, slowly moving away from real issues or real life, because it could hurt. No more deep looks, because we might see the soul in the other person’s eyes. We might see pain there and feel the need to help. No more private, deep and intense experiences, but instead, compulsive posting on social media of carefully doctored images, in a desperate and never ending search for spectators (followers), rooted in the fear of ever being alone. A sunset, a flower or the rain can’t simply be beautiful unless we post about them online and the others bring us the LIKES. It’s become an addiction. Very rarely we still see spontaneous pictures of people or things. Our life has to be posed, directed, filtered, photoshopped, cropped, improved, all and any imperfections removed. It has become clinically beautiful but oh, so fake and so empty…
The issue that bothers me in all this is the hypocrisy of our attitude. At the surface, publicly and especially on social media, we seem to be very health oriented, very organic obsessed when it comes to food and the things we buy. I see people googling ingredients while doing their weekly shopping, angry and determined to make someone accountable for all the GMOs, angry about the artificial things that corporations put in food or medication, but we are all ok with all the artificial things we put in our life, in our person, in our image, to created the illusion of pretty, or rich or popular. An obsessive race to look successful, to appear more than happy, more than perfect. All the lovely role models of YouTube and Instagram, the “influencers”, teaching everyone how to live better, self-centered, raw, vegan, with no artificial sweeteners, non-GMO, all this modern type of hippie, and all the while, fake eyelashes, artificial hair, boobs, nails, eyebrows, to the point that the person you see at the beginning of these videos, doesn’t even resemble the person you see at the end of it. And apparently, that’s ok. No panic there. Nobody is alarmed and marching in protest of the fact that relationships have become superficial, that we are desperately lacking in compassion or kindness, nobody is revolted about the society disintegrating at its very core…
Just a few years back, a decade ago, calling someone meant spending money, we all had to pay for our cell phone plans, compete and race for the number of minutes and free text messages we could have monthly, and now all that is FREE, yet, calls are rare and messages are short, impersonal and grammatically handicapped. Most people are not interested, they call each other only when they need something or when something big happens, and sometimes, not even then. Somehow we don’t forget to post an empty cliché about Mondays every week, but it’s acceptable to forget a friend’s birthday… The spirit of community is dying. It’s baffling to me that people are satisfied to count the number of followers they have on their social media accounts, without ever questioning how many of them are even real people, let alone FRIENDS… What is going on these days? Is it really worth living in an emotionally-constipated state, keeping the only part of ourselves that matters, to ourselves only? Feelings hidden away, no sharing or communion, no real deep connection, no communication, but filled with the anxiety or being imperfect? Is it really enough to fight about plastics but not care that we are plastic? That our relationships are like the one-use bags we get at the store? It’s not bad that we started to have an attitude about all that, but why this apathy and lack of stand when it comes to the cancer of our society, why is no one worried about this „generation of sad people with happy pictures”?
Where is the love?
Luly- 2022
