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Technology is developing at an alarming rate. Ads can be wired into our phones within minutes based on our conversations. Algorithms affect the way we interact online. Our phones can tell us who we are just by converting statistics & data into qualitative info
That’s why it’s so important to occasionally unplug and spend time with our own thoughts. I’m not saying that our hyper intelligent phones having the ability to read us is necessarily a bad thing. It can connect us to associates and leaders within our professional fields, (con..)
Provide us inspiration for our next creative project, or just show us really cute accounts to follow. But it also has the potential to influence us to remain stagnant. We become locked in this collection of interests, ideas, and causes that has been curated for us.
It’s a re-affirming belief. I know I am a person who likes poetry, but my feed also reminds me every day. However, it doesn’t reveal as much about my interest in Yoga, my love for drawing, or my predilection for hugs. And that’s because those are things ingrained within me.
I don’t feel the need to research those things, because they’re just activities I do. I could follow accounts on Yoga and drawing; I might after tweeting this. But that’s not the point. What I am trying to say is that our phones/laptops/tablets only know as much as we feed them.
We are the muses for our technology. We are three dimensional human beings, interpreted two dimensionally by man made products. There is, doubtless, going to be details about ourselves that we can’t find in a Google Search, or on our Instagram feed.
The only way we can uncover and engage with these different levels to ourselves, is if we take the time to meditate on our thoughts, actions, past, desires, dislikes, etc. There are things about myself I have only discovered gazing at my bedroom ceiling late at night in bed.
If we were to all take a bit of time each day to consciously reflect, think about how much more at peace we would be with ourselves. How even more confident and inspired we could be.
As people who are privileged enough to be at the “Self-Actualization” point of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we have a moral obligation to ourselves (and to those who can’t afford to think past “Physiological Neeeds”) to fully realize ourselves as complex, interesting people.
“Generation Why” by #zadiesmith in @nybooks has entranced me since I read it my first semester of college. It is a wonderfully written essay I unconsciously echo within this thread, which intelligently expounds on the concept of complex human psyches vs flat online personalities.
