I'm back again, after a few weeks, have had some time to mull over my thoughts and i've been bothered by something recently so figured, i'd dump it here since this place is pretty slick.
I see a lot of people engaging with certain things e.g. politics (this isn't about politics dw) on a very surface level manner, and i have a few problems with it, i'm not getting into the meta problems here since it's not about politics. But i will get into the more social problems i have with it.
The biggest problem that i have with it is that it promotes an unhealthy level of interaction with topics and concepts, it promotes focusing on the optics more so than the underlying mechanics which can lead to you having incredibly shallow beliefs (another topic i'll probably come back to in a later post) which can undermine your belief structure. As well as leading to you feeling or believing that you are accomplishing something, when in reality all you're doing is yelling at someone on the internet. Anger is an incredibly powerful emotion, that's why it's been commoditized so often.
Most of the time, when you end up engaging in this kind of rhetoric, it is intentional, not on your side ironically but on the side of social function of it's purpose. Let's take an example from history, the salem witch trials are a perfect example of this problem. From a social aspect, the purpose is to exert control over society. It's understood differently from a personal view, and that's intentional.
Try to be conscious of how you interact with people, especially those in group settings. Try to speak for a purposeful manner. It's important that the collective meaning of the words you convey primarily go towards improving things. Now i'm not saying that you shouldn't have fun with your friends, goof around, be silly and just generally have a good time, that's different we're humans and we're social creatures, it's important to do that as well. I'm just saying that it's important to be conscious of what you're consuming, how you're contemplating it, how you respond to it, and most importantly how you engage with other people.
Don't think too hard about the things you see online that irk you, ultimately in the grand scheme of things, they mean nothing and they will never amount to nothing. It's more important that you try and genuinely interact with other people, the most powerful force of change is human interaction. Oh and if you find yourself engaging in this, don't be hard on yourself, just be consciously aware of it and it's impacts.
yeah, the closing paragraphs are a newer thing i'm toying around with after being a little off-put by all the self help stuff that's out there now (not saying it isn't good) being almost entirely focused on the habitual and gamified aspects of things. It's a really good way for some people to pick up something, but i also think it's ironic that we try to be a good individual through the same mechanisms that got us working unhealthy hours, having an unhealthy mindset about productivity, and always pushing to do something.
it always turned me away from things like that. Same reason the "gurus" are often looked down upon, except it's a little more fundamental in this case. It also tails off of my last post about improving yourself first and foremost, so that way you can extend the healthy and happy version of yourself to other people in order to spread it effectively.
I think it's important to have the capacity to look at things through a neutral aspect ratio. Only once you fully comprehend it without any external factors, can you effectively utilize it, or use it to better yourself. That's the way i like to look at it, it helps promote contained thought which is often what i find to be most influential. It's really easy to latch onto things from outside influences while ignoring our own very acute ability to comprehend things.
At the very least i'm hoping that it works to plant an idea of something into someones head, rather than giving them a discipline or methodology to live by. I think that's one of the more potent ways things tend to spread, so i'm trying to utilize it productively here.