The purpose of coffee tables is to help you find your shins in the dark.
Let’s pretend for a few minutes that the human collective is going through a transformation, and that the world of tomorrow will be very different from today’s. What will we need to be aware of?
One useful thing, I suggest, would be to know more about our own reactions and how to manage them. Social media is filled with lies, fakery, ridiculous opinions, humans behaving at their most obnoxious. Algorithms feed and amplify the trolls. How useful is that?
I have come to the conclusion that social media are an invention of the Buddha, put there at this time so that we can learn about equanimity. Every time you have a reaction to some piece of nonsense, the latest algorithmic promotion to make Meta/X another cent, it’s a gift. It is an opportunity to learn about yourself.
Notice your response to what has been said. Did it make you angry? Does it it raise your anxiety levels and make you afraid? What’s in it for you? Does it make you feel that something is wrong with “them” and that they need to be fixed? Does it make you feel that all the power in the world is somewhere else, held by other? There’s no shortage of possibilities.
We know that our emotional reactions take us out of optimum function. The person in a bar brawl who has lost their temper has already lost the fight. The rugby player who has gone into the “red mist” is about to be sent off the field. At work, I am most likely to do something stupid when I am upset, because I am not responding from my centre. I am not dealing with the external situation because I am no longer aware of it. I am too consumed by my own reactions. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
If someone has asked you a question, in a meeting, in a relationship – it doesn’t matter where – and you have an emotional reaction, don’t respond. As soon as you respond from there, you give away your power. To all intents and purposes, you are no longer present – not the functional you, the effective you, a you that can make a difference to the situation. Allow yourself the time to re-centre.
It doesn’t serve us personally and therefore it doesn’t serve the human collective for us to be driven by our reactions. Every time we have one, we are given an opportunity to notice what has knocked us off centre and to choose something else. It doesn’t matter why the anger came up, why you feel threatened or why you have collapsed inside. No doubt there will be a reason somewhere in your past. So what? It’s not now. It was another you, not the one who is here now.
The purpose of trolls is to draw your attention to where you are losing your power. It’s not as if it actually matters what they think. You might as well ask the earthworms in your garden for their viewpoint. They’re trolls being trolls. Trolls are energy vampires who thrive on your responses; you can’t defeat them. It makes them feel good, feel alive, feel like they have been noticed, feel real, as if they have an identity. Poor things. It can’t be much of a life, living under a bridge.
So, the purpose of social media is to raise your awareness. The value of disinformation is that it pushes us back towards the only place where we have any real influence – our own values, our own thoughts and our own choices. What other people think of me is none of my business. What I think of me is my business. What I do with that awareness is my business. Social media is a rapid-learning system for our consciousness. It’s like those tennis machines firing balls at you so that you can practice your strokes. And when we have all had enough of disinformation and trolls, such that we can just see them all for what they are, maybe it will even be worth spending time on social media. More importantly, when we aren’t triggered any more, aren’t reactive, aren’t pushed around, then maybe we are equipped to deal with the reality of what is happening in the world because we can see it for what it is; the clarity of our perception finally no longer misted by our reactiveness. We have space to see what we truly know, to hear the promptings of our intuition, our intelligence, our true sensing and our wisdom.
You may not believe that the world is undergoing a transformation; that this was only a “let’s pretend” exercise, a thought experiment purely for the duration of this post. But maybe we need to transform it. After all, what have we got to lose?
So this is a healthy perspective, thanks Jon.
I'm currently wrestling in an article in progress with the idea of social media as a decentralizing tendency, as opposed to the utopian "global brain" idea of the Internet that I used to hold dear. Social media, like the Internet generally, is a place where we're all in there together. In there together with the people we love, but also with those we hate (or hate us). Not unlike Planet Earth. So it's an emergent phenomenon (maybe even on its way to a holistic stage - i'm an optimist) I think your framing may be overly generous to the trolls; the real power is the algorithm, and the hunger for eyeballs. So as you say, don't let them trigger you. Let the ones you love trigger your responses, and let the rest go.
Thank You Jon- this has been my practice for the last year. Ever since I chose GRACE as my word for 2024 and 2025. Creating kindness in my environment