TOWARDS A ‘CONSCIENTIOUS SELF’ IN THE TIMES OF INTERNET MANIA
The great sages of all times have called Mind ,’to be an excellent slave but a poor master’, undoubtedly the same can be said of the excessive dependence on social media with its innumerable range of websites and applications. I deeply ponder on how and what the constant addiction to facebook, whatsapp and many more have left us to become. Undeniably the whole fun and frolic attached to vacations have become more of an assignment today with us completely subsumed with the tedious labour of documenting every knitty gritty details of our trip, done to uphold one’s coolness factor in the virtual world. The result being that we have made ourselves so distant from the very physical reality of everyday existence that we seem to be enchained forever to a fetish of our virtual identities at the sad expense of our real selves.
Not to paint a negative scenario but I cannot stop raving about how through the magical wand of digitalization and social platforms, the world is one big family, however this is the other side of the same digital world which is disconcerting, the fact of ‘addiction’ which calls for good introspection from our sides. One of the ways could possibly be not a complete breakaway from our virtual selves but be conscious of how not to let this tech environment eat up our whole real existence, by making us succumb to its ways or rather the ways which the ever increasing appetites of profit driven corporate world is subconsciously making us to adhere to!
I still remember my best trips during childhood days during nineties and yet the memories are as afresh as if it was yesterday while what happened yesterday can be remembered by opening up photo galleries of our phone, tablets, laptops etc. After all, this nostalgia for the past is not so hollow either!