Discomfort of Aloneness
Photo Credit Delphina Raven, at Tobin Island, Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, Canada, Aug 2016
Social media has, instead of bringing people together, brought us the following:
It has made us into keyboard Warriors with a cause and in the process of that, our social and debate skills, if there were any to begin with regarding the matter. That devolvement of social and debate skills have now spilled out of cyberspace into in-person interactions in real life.
We are wired to look for purpose. It seems as if social media has become a chief source and resource of a sense of purpose. However, to effect real change, it has to come from the individual rather than riding under the umbrella or mob groupthink, enacted in real life with congruence amongst thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behaviours, but only in alliance with actual, impartial, solid facts and evidence, not assumptions backed by cherry-picked, manipulated, misrepresented, misinterpreted, and manufactured “facts” and “evidence”. Anytime an important decision is to be made, such as doing the right or moral thing, it has to come from our logical, rational brain and reasons, carefully thought-out, not driven and governed by feelings or rationalization, and finally put to the test of actual debates. Emotions and feelings are like signal lights to turn your attention to it. Egos and expectations or how you want the result of the truth-seeking debate to be would be best checked out before entering the debate room.
It has also divided us as well as accentuated our real aloneness and loneliness. The loneliness and discomfort of aloneness or solitude has pushed some into seeking a place of belonging into alliance and conformity. However, there seems to be a confusion between a sense of belonging—being accepted as who you are as an individual—and moulding yourself to fit into a group, even if you may be a square trying to fit into a group of round pegs. This maladaptation of fitting into a group at the expense of forgoing or replacing your individual, personal, sovereign identity with a group identity has a high price tag that extends far beyond the individual and the particular group, but out into the society at large. Authenticity is of paramount importance and that is one of our fundamental personal responsibilities to ourselves and to our communities.