I must confess: I am a daughter of Saturn and my nature is shy and reserved.
This does not mean being a savage or an unsociable person. I love the company of my fellow men and converse with them.
I love the closeness and direct confrontation with a limited group of people, with whom I can talk by looking them in the eye.
Don’t you like it too? I know we are millions, maybe billions.
But a phenomenon has spread for years as a daily practice of billions of individuals in our globalised society: uncontrolled voyeurism or “Big Brother Syndrome”.
A pathological form of “life by proxy”.
FORCED EXPOSURE
I’m curious, not afraid of news, and I like challenges if the stakes are interesting.
But I find nothing positive in this life experience ‘ by proxy ‘. I consider it an unpleasant and toxic experience, especially for those who do not yet have a mature, delineated personality.
Young people are psychologically immature. They are vulnerable.
Unfortunately, they are the most numerous technology consumers applied to communication: the Internet, social media, television and cinema.
Over the last decade, anyone who doesn’t showcase their life on social media is an inadequate person to live in that world. Anyone who doesn’t conform to this is not an integrated member in the virtual community.
Each reality has its laws, its rules. But even human nature jealously preserves all its prerogatives intact: it needs privacy and real contact. The clash between these two antagonistic realities can lead to incurable conflicts, often pathological, sometimes fatal, in the individual.
NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
The reality of the conflict I am discussing is nothing new ( private vs public ). But the scenario is different: a social network does not allow natural, genuine interaction between humans.
When you meet with colleagues in the workplace, with classmates at school or with friends from the bar, you do so in specific places for a limited time. When the leaving time arrives, you say ‘ Bye Bye! Good night everybody, see you tomorrow‘, and everyone goes home.
Now on the web (virtual) contact can occur with an unspecified number of people, 24 hours a day.
Today, privacy is limited to a few minutes a day for millions of individuals. The rest is in the public domain. They love to live like this.
But this life practice is quite dangerous. Living and working without being spied on every minute or feeling free to wander the streets of the world, knowing that I am like any other man in a crowd, it’s vital to all of us. Don’t you love the freedom of anonymity?
DO YOU SERIOUSLY WANT TO BECOME FAMOUS?
I feel you are giggling and that, as soon as you read the question, a sardonic smile appeared on your lips … What the heck! Of course, yes!
Fame is indisputably associated with positive values: fame = glory fame = money fame as a prerequisite for the happiness of this and the other world.
But someone can often become famous for events or characteristics that are anything but positive. Consider the fame of serial killers or big criminals over the centuries.
Consider the large number of personalities from the entertainment and art world who complain of psychological problems or drug addiction.
Among them, the number of suicides is not irrelevant …
But yes, let’s laugh!
IT’S TRUE WHAT YOU CAN SELL
The sentence that serves as the last paragraph’s title is not mine but of the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse who accurately prophesied what has been happening now.
The Marcusian “one-dimensional” man (i.e. the consumer of industrial society) has himself become a commodity (think of the QR code pass created to limit the COVID contagion).
This web 3.0 ‘ life in the showcase h24 a day ‘ already seems like goods on sale that it’s losing its value.
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