Our contemporary internet-driven society views truth in a way that is markedly different from societies that proceeded it. We distrust oral tradition on the basis of its seemingly subjective and personal nature. We distrust the written word in news and books because it can be so easily manipulated or spun to fit anyone’s end or agenda.
Yet, oddly enough, we seem to trust communication mediums (ie: the internet) that are made up exclusively of people writing things. The difference appears to be in how the internet seems to validate itself. By the very nature of the internet, any fact, idea, picture, or experience is uploaded and immediately consumed by hundreds of other people. The proof of a pudding exists, not in the memory of the people who ate it, but in that there are pictures of it on Facebook.
Someone’s experiential life has never before been conditional upon other people seeing it. If truth and “official” are exclusively determined by sensory data – that which we can see, touch, and hear – then we have to be prepared to accept the full ramifications of those beliefs.
Even beyond the internet’s experiential legitimization, there is a danger of reducing reality to biochemical building blocks. If we aren’t willing to entertain the idea of things beyond – or perhaps in lieu of – our immediate sensory data, so much of the richness and fullness of life is lost. Love is not a tremendous adventure, but a pre-programmed set of chemical processes. Courage, justice, and beauty are cheapened to instinct. Wisdom is not so much learned as “activated.” It is a tough conclusion to live out in its entirety.
Now, I certainly recognize that there is a complex interplay between our innate (even physical) makeup and the more conceptual points that I have elaborated above. But this complex interplay involves the recognition of both physical and metaphysical elements. We are temporal and quintessentially human things. But, somehow, the fact that we are bound by time and flesh does not mean that we are exclusively an advanced bio-machine running its routines and subroutines until it breaks. Neither are we some effervescent “Mind” attached or even constrained by a physical husk. We need to recognize the interplay … not unduly claim that our senses and thoughts are separate and ought to stay that way.
Life is more vibrant when it does not need to be validated by other’s observance of it. Life is more meaningful when you recognize the existence of more than sensory input. Life is more grounded when you do experience this physical world.
The point? Go outside. Smell the earth. Write a poem. And don’t take a picture … at least not today.
Thank you.
Absolutely. I hate it when I feel, after a great weekend away from school, as though the time I spent with them is lessened because I don’t have pictures to document the event. As if the reconstruction of the event for the eyes of my friends is more important than what I actually did, thought, said, experienced.
But anyway, what does it mean that we want other people to validate our experiences? There’s got to be the germ of a healthy, inter-personal tendency at the root of all this psychosis.