5. Hypersensitivity makes us insensitive.
The dictionary says that a paradox is a fact that seems contrary to logic.
For example, “The craziest is the sanest,” “Internal changes are the most visible,” or “Go slow and you’ll finish sooner.”
I love collecting them.
Because it allows me to see that, in truth, the world is more complex than it seems at first glance, that it is not all black and white, and that there are delicate nuances that color our perception of reality.
Today, I share five I have recorded in the last 20 years. And that paradoxically, they are of a disturbing actuality.
1. Diversity of choice leaves you with no choice
We swim in a sea of possibilities, and they boggle our minds. It is as if the trees (an infinite number of options) prevent us from seeing the forest (the real problem).
What is the real problem?
The excess of possibilities leaves you with no choice— Paralysis by analysis is what some authors call it.
Ultimately, you give up and stop thinking for yourself because everything you can think of has already been invented.
And that turns you into a voter of realities and robs you of the freedom from being a creator of opportunity.
The search for individual identity is filled with so many possibilities that it is no longer possible to find time to be oneself or listen to oneself. One gets lost in the noise of those identities that one has to try out.
2. Social hyper-exposure allows you impunity and anonymity.
Today’s world seems to develop in glass houses, where everyone can see what everyone else is doing.
Paradoxically, this visibility of social networks and the hyper-connection that the Internet gives us also favors people to be mean without facing responsibilities.
And that favors impunity and anonymity.
On the one hand, when a social movement is outraged by the news, no one waits for the facts to be verified or judged, and everyone gives their opinion on social networks and even insults and cancels the person or situation that unleashes the fury of the rest.
The truth is not valid. And what matters is the narrative. The most popular history becomes the safest version of reality and establishes itself as the official canon of what is true.
If, after some time, it is discovered that this person was innocent or the situation was fake news, the thousands of people who defamed and insulted her publicly in her social networks (glass houses) go unpunished.
Because they are social profile accounts from different countries, and so many of them, it is impossible to hold all these people accountable.
Which is linked to the following paradox.
3. Faking perfection on social media allows you to be imperfect in the real world.
The other day, waiting in line at the bakery, a person cut in, and when I told him he had to wait his turn, she insulted and threatened me.
As she left the bakery, she kicked a dog out of his way.
Coincidentally, this person appeared on my social networks hours later because of the closeness function of some networks. Upon entering her profile, she said under her smiling selfie, “I am a good person, environmentalist, animalist, educated, positive, and patient. I only ask for what I give. Kisses.”
As I read it, I realized that today, what matters to people is the reality of the Internet, not the physical.
If someone recorded that person insulting me or kicking the dog out of her way, that would have mattered to her because her social media image would have crumbled.
However, she didn’t think it was terrible that everyone waiting in line at the bakery thought she was rude.
I want to highlight this, “People are starting not to care what people think of them in physical reality; they only care that in cyber reality they think they are perfect.” And that makes them unload their shadow on their real environment.
Before, we used to care what people who crossed our path thought of us. Now, we care what strangers think about us on social networks. And therefore, we behave worse in our real environment than in our virtual environment.
4. Words no longer define what they say.
We live in a society of love without commitment, and without obligation, there can be no love.
We live in a society of control, without control, where we seek to subdue, not to govern the subjugated (state or person), but to weaken and use it when it is convenient.
We live in a society of truth, without truth, where everything has infinite interpretations, and if you contradict any of them, a minority feels violated and cancels you.
Therefore, words no longer define abstract concepts such as Love, Domination, or truth.
All abstract concepts have become liquid and, therefore, cannot preserve form long enough to crystallize into words.
In the words of philosopher Leonidas Donskis, “The lexicon separates from concepts and ends up as meaningless language games.”
5. Hypersensitivity makes us insensitive.
In a world where everything outrages us, anger has become fashionable, and one has to be outraged by what is fashionable because the other misfortunes that happen are not news if they do not get the same number of likes as what enrages the majority.
It is more important to cancel a stupid comment from a politician than to protest the situation in which thousands of women live in Afghanistan.
If only it goes in fashion, one does not go to the street to state. However, we do this for other minor causes, which are given more visibility for various socio-economic reasons.
The telereality added to social networks determines which issues irritate us and polarize us in opposing positions.
We don’t care about the rest of the things that happen daily.
We have been made idiotic by hypersensitizing us by exposing us to dramas that often have no direct relation to our lives but that, when we give our opinion about them, make us feel part of the tribe.
Because our greatest fear is to feel excluded from that fictitious virtual tribe to which we believe we belong.
Acceptance has become a drug. And everyone is willing to pay the price of looking the other way to get their fix. It’s made us insensitive and unempathetic.
A virtual hug
AG
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