Is Technology Ruining Our Self-Preservation?
Over the years I have heard many activists from everywhere across the globe making everything a thing. They are vocal and opinionated about a variety of topics. They stand up for different perspectives and are very persuasive when it comes to the justification of actions. The one which has absolutely caught my attention has to be being protective over yourself. Protect your energy, protect your thoughts and protect your livelihood i.e. Self-Preservation.
Chapter 2 of The Roadtrip: A Self-guide to Success — Prepare for the Trip highlights different methods of how to achieve this state of euphoria as well as enhance your well-being. The chapter makes strong reference to the madras and various other methods that can be used during meditation. To some extent, especially with the involvement of technology, these methods alone may not be enough.
Culture, Tradition & Heritage
With the help of technology it is not difficult to find and discuss with other professionals about how they feel trends and technology destroy our self-preservation, culture, heritage and tradition. It is not easy to understand and to discuss these trends with experts but it is imperative that we identify our position within them and how advanced technology has an influence. To be more direct, we need to identify how our reaction, response and use of such technology destroys our self-preservation, culture, heritage and tradition.
Before we discuss this in detail let us first understand the concept of culture. Culture is the foundation of any society whereby its values and beliefs are ultimately determined by the people which then transcends to being the heritage and tradition of those specific people. In this new world, the first thing that can be said about us is our commonality and collective heritage. If a culture is centered on a number of cultural practices and beliefs and is shared by certain people who have a common value and standard, then that culture will be sustainable. Therefore, it is essential to ask how technology has an impact to our self-preservation, culture, tradition and heritage.
The answer to this, nothing, no impact whatsoever. We can rule out technology being a catalyst of our own demise. To a major extent, the existence of technology is not the problem, we are. We misunderstand, misuse and abuse technology.
Self-preservation vs Self-destructiveness
The reality is that human beings naturally have self-destructive behaviors. At times, happiness towards ourselves is a choice that we are incapable of accepting. This is also intensified by many years of being mistreated by others. Inevitably, we tend to mistrust the existence of anybody who has the ability to show us the true meaning of happiness. That’s the problem right there. We rely too much on others to feel good about ourselves. We rely too much on how others perceive us to identify even an ounce of our true worthiness.
Protect your energy, your thoughts and your livelihood because anything that happens externally is a mirror reflection of what is going on inside you. We are what we think we are and what we believe in. Therefore staying cleansed from negativity and getting rid of the negativity inside you is the first step towards pure happiness and self-preservation.
The next step is getting rid of toxic people in your circle and your surrounding. The toxicity of people brings your ENERGY down. You do not need to be in close physical proximity in order for such people to influence you. Social media, your contact list, the media, these are all exclusive access points that exist nowadays. The content that you read, the environment that you are exposed to, there are endless possibilities where you will encounter something that challenges your self-preservation because information is everything and the brain feeds off of it.
Trends
There are a lot of tools that contribute on how the use of technology ruins our self-preservation. What we call our future is a result of trends within modern-day society. First, with technological advancements, people cannot practice the customary and traditional values and beliefs as they were practiced before. It is impossible for a person to practice traditional beliefs when he/she is connects to the computer and a high speed internet connection.
Maybe in the near future, the indigenous tribes of South Africa will be able to Skype with the ancestors. Which too, to my opinion, would be a fantastic thing for technology to accomplish but it does not mean that we are supposed to disregard the traditional practices and follow suit with the new trend as it would also result in a loss of our self-preservation, our heritage, our culture and our tradition.
The concept of “cultural patterns” is another explanation of how our use of technology ruins our self-preservation and how it can destroy the self-identification of people. These patterns structure civilization; the modern-day trend of combining many trends and cultures together leads to deadlocks of various cultures which are difficult to distinguish and identify with a single culture. Thus, we believe that we cannot easily identify in modern-day society.
Tech & Identity politics
Another factor to consider in analyzing this modern-day society is its similarities and differences between different countries, continents and even cultures. This has led to the concept of “identity politics”. Defined as the formation of differences in every culture in order to identify the difference among the people.
Social groups form though the concept of identity politics. The social groups include political parties with different policies and the values that the modern-day society abide by.
Lastly, how our use of technology ruins our self-preservation the common sight that each country is divided into many communities and every community is having its own version of political ideologies, which has influenced many politicians and different groups in order to make a better and united government. This creates several political parties and groupings in a country or a different country of the same continent.
Notice how conflicting ideologies, perspectives and narratives introduced in an attempt to win the majority favor. Eventually this creates a cloud of negative energy that engulfs a person. Mind manipulation followed by a person’s distorted trust becomes the end result. Suddenly there is no room for inner peace. Everything becomes a delusion and nobody knows what is right and what is wrong anymore. The world becomes a place where an expression of an opinion is subject to scrutiny and ridicule through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and various other interactive platforms. In essence highlighting a notion of “you can not be different and you can not think different.”
The abuse of technology
Today, the use of technology ruins our self-preservation by differentiating our personal identity and the values and beliefs that we share to every aspect of our lives. We can not deny the fact that 5G technology is here. We also can not run away from the fact that artificial intelligence is on the rise. Soon both these forms of technological advancements will be a part of our regular daily lives.
There is a need for common ground. We need to find some sort of balance and understanding. We need a sense of responsibility when we use the privilege and power that we have at our disposal. By doing this, we can have a stable and harmonious society.
