In the West, the “self” is considered to be the most fundamental aspect of our soul, personality, and even our sense of magic that we identify as being uniquely us. However, in today's world of curated social media feeds, this ideal sense of self has become a distorted caricature of what it once represented due to the reconstruction of society's modern depiction of the ideal male or female.
It's important to acknowledge that both males and females have suffered from unique societal pressures throughout history, and while it is important to note that society isn't perfect and that there are still issues of equality this blog post is not about debating which gender or political group has had a harder time or who has been more oppressed by the other. What we must recognise is that all genders, including those who don't conform to binary definitions, fall under the spell of societal pressures about who they should be and what they should look like.
The messages conveyed by advertisements and social media posts are essentially socialising us to believe that we are not perfect and that it's the fault of our counterparts that are preventing us from being everything we wish we could be. This leads us to throw stones at each other, with the misguided belief that if we can pull down the “group that rules over us” we can raise the position of our own “perfect” group up in order to reconstruct a well-functioning society neglecting the prominent biases of our own group. Rather than come together as a collective whole we're literally all trying to belong to a group that is winning, with a supporting conscious belief that we deserve to put down other groups for what they have previously or currently put us through.
Unfortunately, in our fight to improve the social standing of our own group's ideology and social positioning, we're often unaware that we're playing the role of entitled narcissistic victims, and we end up making enemies and starting fights with those it would be more important to educate so that they would rather support us. Furthermore, this also comes with an understanding that sometimes we must also compromise instead of forcing people to accept our perception of reality, we must learn to understand that everyone's views are equal, and no one is more equal than someone else.
We shouldn't view society as a hill to climb in order to be further and higher than everyone else. Rather, we should be running on a flat surface, focusing on ensuring that we as individuals and as groups are a step further than where we were yesterday, not necessarily comparing ourselves to where someone else is today.
Instead of resorting to attacking the beliefs and social positioning of the people and groups around us, it is significantly more important that we take a deeper look at the societal pressures and technologies that are causing division and distorting our sense of self for us all. By recognising the harmful impact of these factors, we can focus our energy on more productively understanding others and improving ourselves, rather than perpetuating harmful competition.
We must acknowledge that everyone's perspective is valid and valuable, and strive to create a more supportive and accepting world for everyone. This involves putting aside our differences and working towards a common goal of mutual respect and understanding. By doing so, we can move towards a more harmonious and connected society.
The Ideal Modern Individual
Each person has their own vision of their ideal self, which is unique to them. However, our culture has conditioned us to aspire to a common ideal, which is often characterized by qualities such as extroversion, beauty, individualism, optimism, hard work, social awareness, high self-esteem, global citizenship, entrepreneurial spirit, and self-promotion through social media. Although this ideal may seem narrow and limiting, it reflects the values of our society and can motivate individuals to strive for personal growth and success. It's important to remember that everyone's path to self-improvement is different, and there is no one "right" way to achieve our goals.
Everyone has their own slightly different vision of their ideal self. However, no matter which group we belong to or how unique of an individual we think we we are all susceptible to what our culture and society have conditioned us all to believe is ideal. This is seemingly most noticeable by the fact that no matter who we are we all seem to be possessed by the common idea that our ideal self is supposed to be some version of “an extroverted, beautiful, individualistic, optimistic, hard-working, socially aware yet high-self-steeming global citizen with entrepreneurial guile and a selfie camera’.
This ideal has directly contributed significantly to the alarming surge in perfectionism, narcissism, depression, and anxiety, largely due to its correlation with the rapid increase in modern technology and social media consumption. An analysis of Google trends reveals an unprecedented rise in searches for terms such as "meaning" and "depression," which can be attributed to the impact of human innovation and the prominence of the digital world. One could argue that the miracle of human innovation has propelled us into an era of unprecedented progress and technological advancement but we have moved so quickly that the biological and spiritual essence of the self has been left stranded in a sea of outdated without any means of navigating our way through. As a result, individuals are struggling to find ways to demonstrate they matter and have value.
To provide a little context on the challenges of modern living, men often measure themselves against a traditional masculine ideal that society now recognizes as the patriarchy, which has historically oppressed all those around them. However, if men fail to meet this ideal, they may experience shame and defeat, finding themselves caught between striving to become a better version of themselves and rejecting their masculinity altogether due to its association with oppression. This dynamic leaves many men struggling to navigate a complex and nuanced set of expectations surrounding their identity and behaviour.
Conversely, only 61% of young women in the UK report feeling content with their bodies, and an equivalent number of 11-21-year-olds feel that they must attain a state of perfection. This phenomenon can be linked to the widespread adoption of social media platforms, which have been associated with a 30% increase in cases of eating disorders and body dysmorphia in the US and the UK. In addition, spending on gym memberships in 2015 alone surged by 44%, suggesting that while fitness culture would traditionally be viewed as healthy and positive it has also attained a cult-like status where the influencer economy promotes unachievable ideals of perfection that have further perverted the ideal way to look and live within modern society.
Moreover, in a world dominated by the pursuit of perfectionism, fueled by the proliferation of social media, society is witnessing a generation of chronically dissatisfied individuals. Young people are inundated with images of smiling, happy people, and feel compelled to attain the same level of perfection in order to secure approval. However, with every passing year, the bar for success is raised higher, as the successful become even more successful, leaving those who lag behind feeling inadequate and unworthy. This creates an almost unattainable standard, whereby social media has laid the foundation that the new standard of success, happiness, and self-worth is to complete the modern-day bingo card of having the perfect body, career, and spouse, whilst constantly on luxurious travels sipping cocktails in a bikini provided for free from the latest hottest brand.
Our beliefs and personal qualities define us, but in the era of the 24-hour digital world, our sense of self is undergoing significant change and damage. The immersive and curated environment of social media, to which we are addictively dedicating our waking hours, has contributed to a rise in perfectionism and an increase in the number of people who feel like failures when comparing themselves to the idealized version of success, value, and happiness online. The universal metrics of success propagated by social media only exacerbate the problem, leading individuals to conclude that they fall short compared to their peers.
As humans, it seems we have always been inherently driven to seek self-improvement and strive for perfection, while simultaneously pursuing status, value, and meaning. However, the concept of "perfection" is defined by our culture, and in today's world, the rise of modernisation and surveillance capitalism has given big tech companies the tools to beautifully exploit these desires and condition us to willingly sacrifice our authenticity and values in pursuit of societal ideals. In essence, our innate aspirations for self-betterment have been co-opted by external forces that manipulate us into compromising our true selves for a digital ideal.
The Digital Self
Shoshana Zuboff defined two modernities within her book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” which she described as being the two technological innovations directly responsible for thrusting us forward into an age where today's big tech companies were able to thrive. The first modernity was when Henry Ford’s mass production of affordable cars which expanded the world and possibilities of the layman. The second was when Apple produced and released the first iPod which gave the Western individual the first taste of true individualisation.
These two key innovations are so important to the history of humankind only 200 years ago our life was given purpose and meaning by our blood and geography, sex and kin, rank and religion. However, the first modernity separated people from being determined by traditional norms, meanings, and rules, and they were let loose on the road of self-creation and exploration.
This laid the groundwork for the second modernity which opened the floodgates to the crisis of self and meaning that we swim in today. Communication, information, consumption, and travel stimulated individual self-consciousness and imaginative capabilities, informing perspectives, values, and attitudes in ways that could no longer be contained by predefined roles or group identity.
However, this absurd amount of freedom we were gifted with to freely live and decide the possibilities of our own lives created its own problems, we now suffer from not knowing what we should believe, who we should or might be or become, and instead of the issues our ancestors had of suffering from what prevented them from becoming what and who they thought they knew themselves to be.
This void that the freedom of becoming has created, where we are continually anxious about the disparity between who we currently are and who we could become, is what directly led the largest technology companies to swoop in and present us with the most alluring forms of entertainment that endlessly presents us with all the things that we could be, all the things that we could do, and also all the ways we are currently failing in comparison to everyone else. However, once we are hooked, these industries masterfully modify and enhance even the slightest of details of these tools to keep us coming back endlessly for more.
In our pursuit of success, value, and meaning, we have become addicted to metrics that indicate our worth and significance. We believe that our existence only has value if we accumulate thousands of likes, and brand deals, or gain a significant number of followers. But research has shown that those who have achieved what everyone else is striving for are no happier than those who haven't, and those same people who are idealised as the modern pinnacle of success often find themselves in a state of emptiness and disillusionment.
Although we believe we are being authentic and expressing our ideal self by telling our own stories in creative ways in reality we are addicted to the modern digital rat race where we are all trying to create the perfect and original digital representation of our lives by literally copying what others have done (that is why it is called trending). By definition, by living this way we are actually doing the opposite of living authentically, we are presenting an idealised digital self that displays us as conforming to the cultural ideal causing us to neglect our authentic self for we are seeking to live among the dead.
The reason these platforms are free is because your attention is the currency which sustains the platform. With everyone looking for meaning in the same place for ever-increasing periods of time, more ads are clicked funding the development of further addictive technologies and pumping more brand deals back towards the most successful influencers in order to get you to keep watching, to keep wanting, to keep buying, and to keep copying.
It is often difficult to shut off from the noise that surrounds us that is telling us who we should be, what we should believe, and what we need to buy in order to become what society tells us that we should be. However, it is your true self that keeps you up at night telling you that something isn't right something in your life that something isn't aligned correctly. But the only way to actually discover who it is YOU want to be is to put down the phone, to listen to what calls you, to do the necessary work of walking your own path to seek and rediscover depth, meaning, and fulfilment in your life.
Both depth and a life worth living start from the moment you put the cameras away. When you stop trying to curate a wonderful feed that displays the ideal version of your digital self. Depth comes from the beautiful and delicate moments that write our true story and internally clarify an authentic sense of self. The ups and downs. The friends who become family. Drinking a hot tea and being absorbed in a wonderful book as the rain touches the frosted window. The dreams we chase, and the dreams that fade. Watching winter become spring and spring become summer. Walking along the beach in a T-shirt at sunset. The way you dance to music as you cook alone or with your partner. The excitement of waiting for your plane to travel to other worlds. The joy of reuniting with your loved ones. And the time we had with those we loved and lost.
Ultimately, it is the depth to which we live our lives that gives us a true sense of self. It is not the superficial distractions, but the delicate and beautiful moments that we spend living intentionally that make life truly special. By putting down our phones and focusing on the people and experiences that matter most, we can cultivate deeper connections and a greater appreciation for the world around us. In doing so, we can create a more meaningful and fulfilling existence, one that is characterised by depth, intention, and purpose because that is what makes life truly special.
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