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Dating : Social Media, Pornography and Purposelessness

h2>Dating : Social Media, Pornography and Purposelessness

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To ask “What is the meaning of life” is an age-old philosopher’s question, but perhaps few would disagree that the answer to living well is to live purposefully. Yet today, now more than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to live purposefully.

We probably work too much. Many hours are simply spent “goofing off”. Being expected to work a set number of hours each day sounds arbitrary, because it often is.

Global harmony of working hours doubtlessly helps to keep the world spinning in a predictable fashion, offering some semblance of order. Yet we have to acknowledge that many of the “rules” we seem to live by are to the benefit of the system, and at the expense of the individual.

We can rationalize playing by these rules, since there is probably some nobility in this. Personal sacrifice can be meaningful and even prudent. Saving for the future is prudent, for instance, or better yet investing in a better future. There is not only nobility but wisdom in sacrifice.

However, the world seems to be demanding increasingly more sacrifice from us. Many of us might now have the privilege of “working” in 72° fahrenheit offices, sitting before little screens in comfy chairs, but this comfortableness is probably part of the problem. The problem being, that an increasing number of us seem lost.

Lost in the sense that we have become disconnected from our own bodies. We have become amnesiac to what it means to connect to others in reality; the value of being with others. This applies both prior to the emergence of the pandemic this year, and to the future. We may lead generally comfier lives than those people that lived before us, but also more disconnected ones.

Our society now breeds observers, rather than participants. Voyeurs and lonely bodies. Children now seem to look past building with Legos, to opt instead for Minecraft on digital screens. The digital has novelty; the physical is merely real. And yet we ironically look down on the “unintelligent” fly that hopelessly chases the light.

New technology is constantly being developed to take more from us; more of what makes us human. Technologies provide surrogate experiences which replace the real. Forget friends; you have social media. Forget being introduced to a prospective partner; you have Tinder. Forget intimacy; you have pornography.

While it is possible to live with these “services” and still maintain some semblance of balance, it is worth digesting the fact that one is now considered “fringe” (or likely part of some sort of rebellious, underground and online community) if one chooses not to use social media, dating apps or pornography. There is a ‘crowd pressure’ to conform.

It is also worth remembering that these “services” are powered by for-profit companies, with shareholders that demand more and more profit. More clicks. More “follows”. More “likes”. The incentives are there; we have ceded much of our lives, including the most intimate parts, to large companies. Large companies that want nothing more than our total dependence.

The structure of the social universe has degenerated, much of it in the name of this incremental novelty and even “efficiency”. Life is easy, yet for many it feels more purposeless than ever.

These new online technologies that geeks have afforded us, have turned us into numbers; Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Great parts of our lives are now digital, and lonely. I believe, to some important degree, that these technologies strip us of a sense of personal significance; the feeling that who we are, and what we choose to do, actually matters.

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