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Technology helps easy access to information, but it cannot help with transformation. For example: the Taliban are collapsing those lego pieces built over the past two decades, while in New York, the Governor resigned – after 60- years worth of institutional course-correction (sociall mores ).
All on facebook, all on google.
Another example. People in Vietnam know Western societies put heavy emphasis on human capital (hence putting health and safety first ) via vaccines and economic support during the pandemic.
Au contraire, people in Vietnam are left to fend for themselves, leaving jobs and losing their economic foothold.
Luckily, the Vietnamese abroad to some extent continue to support Homebase, a Homebase that kicked them out at the end of the war.
The more we see (ads), the more we want. But we have yet built up sufficient infrastructure of the mind, the contextual backbone and intellectual arsenal that civil society counts on: rules of law, rights of privacy and private property (IP), rights to vote , fairness in competition and social responsibility. Those guardrails and inoculation via civic education help smooth the rough edges (while greed greases the wheel).
We are witnessing a tectonic shift in digital architecture (Moore’s Law) and in social demographic (White minority by 2047 in the US). Back in the late 60’s early 70’s, we all watched the hot war on a “cool” medium (TV). For Afghanistan, we have grown callous as the war dragged on, changed course and actors, theatres ( with Iraq interlaced) being and us, inundated by the proliferation of social media, google and the newsmax of the world.
Our appetite for fear, risks, costs and casualties have shifted, from B/W TV to colour digital version of the Kardashians.
We attack people, their characters and shortcoming, reducing public discourse to mere People magazine version ( the lowest common denominator, to be amplified via trolling and post re-distribution). We take pride in knowing more (facts or misinformation) being better informed than everyone else, a “priesthood of all digital subscribers” with license to self- elevate to the top of the food chain.
In short, we know a lot (knowledge) but not deep enough(wisdom),.
The cult of personalities and of amateurs, paid for by advertisers using AI who/which prey on us…till we fall to sleep on…My Pillow.
The cult of shallowness and of triviality.
Always skating on the tip of the iceberg. Always exhibiting the latest trend and fashion.
No sense of history, of meaning and of perspectives.
We exist. Not live.
Social media only fuel what’s already there: our propensity to miss the forest while racing to the bottom.
Meanwhile, take a good look at those faces in Kabul. Won’t be long before they all got covered up, if not by now.
Sadness is befalling the city. Choppers in and out. Ferrying luggages and employees whose jobs are no longer needed.
The shutting-down of a long war. The bookend to a proud-people history.
Being a winner is now equated to being right.
That’s false logic. Winners in history also were toppled by other winners (so who was right?).
Just the moral arc of the cosmos, righting itself out. Only by zooming out , with really long lenses that we can see the contour, the shape of time. Then we judge not, knowing that our vision and view are quite one-sided.
Social media enables, but it also restricts us. Our spheres of influence shrinks to just inside our echo chamber….our digital Green Zone, with spiritual foods from our digital PX’s and shorthand emoticons, LOL.
By seeing only inside the hall of mirrors, we are inadvertently full of illusion of grandeur, of self-promotion and self-projection. The manufactured optics (with no last chopper to come to the rescue).
There is a word for it. Narcissistic.
Narcissus looks at his reflection, self-praising and self-assuring that he, alone, is King of the World (even hiring his own paparazzis..his own memoir ghost writer, publishing his own tweets and snippets).
We are all DJT’s since our moms – out of love – said we were the only child who deserved the most attention and admiration. Then when time comes for reckoning, we are all Andrew Cuomos.
Thang Nguyen 555 