Continuing a Thought
Do you ever get hit with an idea and it doesn’t let you go?
For me it’s like a seed has been implanted in my cerebral cortex and starts sprouting. As it does it knocks into a lot of more settled thoughts which then have to move around to accommodate this upstart. As this happens some thoughts blend with the newer one and a synthesis occurs.
My thought du jour was yesterday’s title: We are either significant or insignificant together.
You might look at this and see it as either obvious or crazy. As it occurred to me, I thought, “I wonder where this is leading and whether or not it will hold weight in the end?”
As I stated yesterday, we are taught to compete, and the implications from this are many. First, our significance as humans becomes connected to our performance. If we win the gold medal, get the staring role, become the CEO, win the beauty contest or the [fill-in-the-blank] prize, then we are important, have value, and the rest. Come up a little short and we are losers destined to live insignificant lives.
Now the initial pushback is that our world would be worse off if there was no competition.
I agree it would be sad to not strive to do and be our best and there are many valuable lessons that come with competing with others. Where I have a problem is in the mindset that who we are, our significance as individuals, is tied to performance.
When we tie our significance to our performance then we are stuck with toxic side effects.
For example, let’s say we achieve any of the outstanding accomplishments listed above.
Wonderful.
Congratulations.
However, if the achievements cost you your marriage, family, self esteem, or health, then I question its worth.
People who strive for significance because they were taught that this was important at all costs will often cheat to win. This means they have believed a lie that others will never see past the fraud and, even worse, that they will be able to pretend for the rest of their lives that they are really good honest people.
Teaching children to love and respect others, meaning teaching them that they are connected to others as brothers and sisters, is important. Unfortunately , it also goes against the hyped consumer narrative children are exposed to through digital forms of entertainment. This means teaching this fundamental principle is an uphill battle.
But the problem isn’t only with children. It just starts there. We adults are also desensitized to caring about real flesh and blood humans to the extent we are tied into digital forms of convenience and entertainment.
Proof in point. It is very different to play a game of cards or dominos around a table with friends and to play the same games virtually over the Internet.
My personal take on why this is so is because it is much more immersive to interact with real people because the computing power of human brains interacting is way beyond what any current or future artificial intelligence algorithms will be able to provide.
What do you think?
In my opinion people who live mainly in the digital universe eventually lose their sense of reality, morality, and integrity because they become desensitized to what it means to be a human being created in the image of their Creator.