One fine day my blender broke, I immediately bought another one on my cell phone with just a few taps; long live the practicality! In conversation with my mother about what happened, she rescued the old device, took it to the neighborhood technician and brought it in perfect condition, spending less than 1/3 of what I spent buying a new one. Not satisfied, she appropriated the appliance while admonishing: “what is broken is fixed”. I spent the week reflecting on how technology has changed our habits and automated our actions.
Welcome to the postmodern era! A world where we buy clothes with a click and solve bank issues using our digital. It is with this ease that the mind educates itself and responds in the same way when it comes to social interactions, affective relationships, the environment, religious faith and even the job market. Freelancers and outsourced services are much more viable for contractors who prefer to experience professionals who fill sporadic needs. In religious institutions it is no different, how many do you see begging for material goods? The fact is that when they are not met with what they want, they disbelieve in the divine power preached in that congregation.
All these concepts have already been studied and disseminated by the contemporary sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, who called the disease “liquid modernity”, in which nothing is made solid, because absolutely everything is fluid and flows in eternal motion. Everything is driven by our desires and their quick replacement. The philosophers of ancient Greece believed that vices and cravings that are never satisfied come from lack of virtue and attachment to the external world. For them, there is no way to live a full life if our time is filled with pleasures that are repeated and take our life autonomy.
Here's the question: is excess consumption the result of our emptiness or are we just too demanding? I vote for the first option. When we are on a path of personal evolution, we want to fulfill absolutely everything but the ego. Because we know that the ego is the great father of excesses, and excess, in turn, only fits in voids. Realize: the individuals who consume the most people, places, objects, food and status are the most emotionally sick.
“In a society of consumers, becoming a desirable and desired commodity is the stuff dreams and fairy tales are made of.” Zygmunt Bauman
Look around restaurant tables; when a child doesn't like the environment they are in, just offer the tablet in exchange for discipline. A short-term and very dangerous resolution. All of them grow up with the conviction that what doesn't please can be avoided by distractions, ignoring and rejecting the reality experienced there. How harmful is this for human maturation and development? If as a child I can discard what doesn't make me 100% satisfied and what doesn't suit me, would I replicate the same for all areas of my life in this continuous unfolding?
Also read: “Life is liquid”.
Have you seen the interactive mobile apps that promise to find your perfect match? These are rotating profiles with limited descriptions of who we are. Two clicks, one like, a combination between accounts and the possibility of an interaction. An online catalog where “products” are people. Like social networks, this would be a great interaction tool if it weren't for the culture of unbridled consumption. In this consumerist age, the interpersonal experience has become a marketing experience. Just as we have resources that are agile and that adapt to our routine through technology, we also seek this immediate satisfaction in the other, treating them as if they were an application.
A commodity that allows immediate use and easy disposal, supplying what I need and freeing me from any responsibility and hard work.
Even unconsciously, we know that modernity also puts us to the test of these uncertainties. They are what cause us fear when we are doomed by passions. And, dressed in armor, we only explore the surface, a limited territory that incites the repetitive desire linked to temporary enchantment and deceptive satiety.
How uncomfortable is it to enter uncharted and uncharted lands? Diving into uncertainties does not give us a guarantee of exchange, the invoice becomes invalid when soaked in water. All these dysfunctions caused by fear are the main causes of anxiety, irrationality, insecurity and emotional instability that contaminate the heart of relationships. Bauman explains that, taken by the illusion of modernity and the enticement of the ego, we tend to think that we love the loved one, when, in fact, we are practicing self-worship. If we are only projecting the aspects we love in ourselves onto the other, love is nothing more than the narcissus itself; as a reflex, I am loving myself. It will be frustrating when we remember that we are not just made of green grass, the one we expose in the hammocks. We are made of defective parts, some repairable and some irreparable. To return to our nature, it is necessary to remember every day of our essence in matter; we are human species. Our relationships don't work like APIs with perfect integrations and minimal margin of error.
“We don't fix human relationships anymore, we exchange them. And by exchanging shoes, computers and people we love for other people, we are replacing the pain of wear and tear with the vanity of novelty. When I change someone, I immediately become someone more interesting and I don't realize that that mirror is still the drama of my vanity." Leandro Karnal
Would we be used to digital services and projecting this in socializing with our friends, boyfriends, family and other people from our social core? Ah, but one thing is for sure: we will never reach the perfect state and we will not even be 100% compatible with each other. Being machines, perhaps; being human, never. Not only have we become a society pampered with the luxury of consumption, we are also fertilizing the same in the minds of our children, nephews and grandchildren. After a period, with the brain immersed in this social context, the determinations begin: what is not practical, he treats as disposable. And if he doesn't like it, he doesn't tolerate it. When it no longer benefits, it asks for a replacement. If there is imperfection, incompatibility and if it doesn't constantly supply our emotional needs, it doesn't serve us.
You might also like:
- Allow yourself to discover new versions of yourself
- Are you living the purpose of your true self?
- The Stoic Philosophy Survival Manual: Tranquility…
“To exempt desire is to respect matter as it is. Not by treating her worse, but by treating her infinitely better. Because you respect things for their own sake, not because they might one day serve you.” Lucia Helena Galvão
We have automated our lives like robots rationalized by electrical wiring and we have lost the great meaning of existence on Earth. We can't re-release 2.0 versions of ourselves until we admit our story. That we respect each one in its substance and function: the social network in order to maintain our ties; religion to host our beliefs; the work to edify us as professionals; and the human being as he is. May we consume all technologies as a privilege of this age, but may we not forget who we are, creatures of a biological nature. After all, our heart pumps blood, not electromagnetic waves.
“Know all theories, master all techniques, but when touching a human soul be just another human soul.” Carl Jung
