The Filter
What you take and what you pass would make you last.
Do you think you’re ignorant? No, you aren’t. To be ignorant is a luxury in a century where the lack of noise is an expense that not too many people can afford to have.
Every second we are bombarded by a limitless amount of information. Compared to a time in the past where access to information used to be scarce and the lack of knowledge was mainly among the reasons for propaganda, wars, and general misunderstandings, due to limited awareness of the worldwide trends and topics of importance encircling the world.
Since not so long ago, the tide has turned, and we still face the same issues related to the proper distribution of information. We are often tirelessly blown by all kinds of mediums that provide unlimited, unfiltered, and frequently ambiguous context. A context that should aim to help attain the knowledge necessary to think on our own to develop a personal opinion or learn how to make our own decisions based on preferences and personal choices. To receive just the right amount of information, regardless of the general notion in this regard, is a form of luxury, a mild construct, which is not easily attainable.
The latest technological trends, even more, enforce the direction of our choices. The downgrading spiral of the generations has manifested itself even in the modern days of information technology. These tiny devices, living in your pocket, crying loud for your attention, with their alarming noises, quirks, and vibrations that you receive almost by the minute for most of the time while you’re awake. When you open your favorite social app, you lose a sense of the time and space around you. All you care about is to see more of what you just saw there. All of your time spent online agitates your brain with carefully curated content that aims at your emotional being. The time spent online subconsciously affects your belief system, thinking, and desires, along with the centers in your brain that make you submissive to the observed content towards forming a habit of desire. A desire that aims at your resources to satisfy a need that wouldn’t otherwise appear to have such significant importance over the things that might be more important at the moment of experiencing infoxication.
A specially crafted breed
Ever since childhood, we are tendentiously and well-conditioned to behave, think and act in a way that prepares us for a long life of conformity meant to serve the global economy. From a very young age, we are polished to become a small piece that perfectly fits the big mechanism. While we are growing up from nursery school, through elementary, and going through university, we’re conditioned and taught anything else but not related to what to do with our lives and how to approach the challenges it serves us.
And the problem remains. We left school struggling to find meaning. We want to think, but we are thinking of the wrong things. We have to be pushed to sign up for a degree that we do not need to have, just because someone told us that they think this should be our future, that they didn’t have.
And how do you think they know what might be the future since they didn’t manage to figure it out by themselves. Throughout a big part of our lives, we are exposed to a limited kind of thinking and bounded circle of individuals, mostly as brainwashed as we are, events and experiences filled with meaningless hedonism, which are non-fulfilling in the long run.
Regaining control
Like many first steps in everything, even limitations have beginnings, and they start with a desire to change something for the better to apply something more than a patch to the opened wound. A kind of intention against the bewildering ocean of information starts with the choice to begin shutting down some of the channels that deliver it, or most of them depending on the personal choice of preference and goals set in your life.
What are the usual channels that deliver information in our daily lives?
- Social apps feed, notifications
- Newspapers, Magazines
- Particular places on the web that target their audience by a relevant set of personal preferences
- Other people
- TV
Life has become so fast-paced that most young people nowadays don’t even find comforting the idea of venting out the daily hassle by binge-watching a few hours of their lives at night in front of the TV, YouTube, or whatever the Binge is.
Sometimes you need to remember that you’re controlling the remote, hence yourself, your feelings, ambitions, choices, and preferences in life.
Whether the remote is capable of silencing the most annoying character on that big colored wall of yours in the living room, through turning down the volume on your phone, to swiping right on that crippling notification but rather mute its broadcasting power, for your good.
Do you still feed off the over-confident opinions of others, regularly beyond their level of understanding or field of occupation? Me neither :)
To have an opinion, and to be able to hold on to it, is hard work. It leaves its mark on something which usually makes an impression during a conversation. The disappointing feeling sometimes leaves a trace of absurd incompetence in the face of absolute certainty.
Don’t be afraid to use the remote control and curate your surrounding content. Be gentle with yourself, and stop pleasing every piece of word floating in the air. You know how to listen, but you need to learn how to think.
