Your Mind is Not Your Friend. A Monologue on Digital Reality

jujica

Where does our "Self" reside in the digital age? This monologue is an attempt to understand how social media and the internet are altering our psyche, memory, and self-identity. We've built a digital mirror, but what do we see in its reflection? And are we losing ourselves in the pursuit of approval and attention?  Exploring the central paradox of our time: we have never been more technologically connected yet more existentially disconnected. This video is not an answer, but an invitation to reflect. Turn off#monologue #philosophy #consciousness #psychology #digitalage #socialmedia #identity #attention #digitaldetox #reflection #loneliness #technology #future #mindfulness your notifications for a few minutes and dive into thought.

Transcript

00:00we begin with a simple almost childish question where is consciousness located where does this

00:20mysterious I reside the one that looks at the world from behind the curtains of the eyes the

00:25one that hears the inner voice reading these words right now neuroscience points to the brain soft

00:32gray matter three pounds of neural network 86 billion interconnected cells every thought every

00:40emotion every memory is merely a complex pattern of electrical impulses and chemical reactions

00:46beautiful elegant and inexpressibly empty because if the eye is just a product of

00:54neurochemistry then where am I where is that singular point of perception that feels pain

01:00sees dreams remembers the smell of rain in childhood we've reduced the soul to a synapse

01:07consciousness to an algorithm we've disassembled the clockwork into cogs and springs but never found

01:14the watchmaker inside and now against this backdrop of an existential vacuum like frightened children

01:21in a dark room we have begun to create our own sources of light we built a mirror a digital

01:28all-encompassing hyper-realistic one the network at first it was a tool then a habitat now it is a

01:39prosthesis for our identity we voluntarily insert a hose into our brains through which a continuous stream

01:45of someone else's consciousness flows the thoughts ideals and tragedies of others packaged into 32nd clips

01:53we no longer experience life we consume content we have delegated the most sacred intimate functions

02:01of our psyche to the mirror memory why remember when there's the cloud why know when you can google

02:09our biographical memory is atrophying replaced by an external hard drive communication why meet feel

02:18the uncertainty of a handshake hear the timber of a voice see the fleeting tremor at the corner of a lip

02:24when you can send an emoji we have replaced the richness of non-verbal communication with the meager

02:30vocabulary of emojis but the most terrible prosthesis is the prosthesis of self-esteem

02:37our eye depends more and more on how it is seen in the mirror the number of likes shares comments

02:44we have turned our identity into a product that requires constant market approval

02:49we've turned our soul inside out and put it on display for everyone trembling with fear that it won't

02:56be pretty funny or perfect enough we have created a brave new world where loneliness is an anachronism

03:03because you're always connected but this is the greatest illusion we have never been so technologically

03:10connected and so existentially disconnected we have gathered in digital agoras by the millions

03:16but each one is screaming into the void trying to prove their existence not by the meaning of their

03:21words but by the volume of their digital voice and now we come to the main paradox the black hole at

03:28the center of it all if our eye is formed in a continuous dialogue with the world through

03:34reflection in the eyes of other people through the reaction to our actions then what happens when

03:39this world becomes digital and these other people become algorithms tuned for maximum engagement

03:45who am i then the sum of my posts a collage of selfies a product of the recommendation system

03:54we are playing a game whose rules are written not by philosophers but by engineers from silicon valley

04:00a game where the prize is our attention and the stake is our soul we fragment our consciousness into so

04:08many streams that it loses its integrity we can no longer simply walk down the street without checking

04:14our phones we can't just watch a movie without simultaneously scrolling through a feed

04:19we live in a state of constant scattered partial attention we become multitasking and empty

04:28digital schizophrenics with dozens of accounts but no single whole eye perhaps the greatest battle

04:35of the 21st century is not taking place on battlefields or in political offices it is unfolding in the

04:42space of our skulls a battle for the right to be unified whole attentive bored lonely

04:49real for the right to sometimes pull the plug and finally hear the silence not the silence of an

04:57absence of sound but the silence of the presence of oneself because in that silence in that space

05:04between stimulus and response is where that mysterious eye we so desperately search for lives

05:09it is not in the likes not in the bites not in the gigahertz it is here in the ability to simply be

05:18not digitized not optimized not represented just to be the question is is there enough silence left

05:28within us to hear it or have we forever replaced it with the white noise of the endless scroll

05:34the wifi

05:35milky

05:36the

05:42milky

05:43milky

05:44milky

05:46milky

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended