Time is the greatest scarcity. Life is that great asset that’s often short. Has technology bridged that gap, or expanded the great divide?
Digital slaves
I want to change the lines, dissolve into grey,
And purify the divide, dissolve into grey,
Are we ever free? Or slaves to technology?
We disintegrate
Nevermore
A Dead Heart in a Dead World (2000)
Life ought to be lived. Experienced. Human connections used to be paramount in marshalling a holistic existence. Remember when we used to make mistakes? When we were unafraid to take risks and chances and learned from our failures and flaws? This is something that’s deeply lacking today. For all the wondrous advents of technology, indefatigable convenience, instant connectivity, and gratification, the advantages of globalisation and digitalisation, teenagers today have replaced real-time human connectivity for a new addiction and drug – the all eternal and consistent dopamine fix.
It’s down to digital fist-bumps and greetings, emoji-based pokes and kisses, where vanity is enthroned and narcissism is embellished with more narcissism. A world of likes and tags and shares. Life is lived vicariously, online, all the time. A person’s worth and value is determined by strangers around the globe based on his/her popularity, notoriety, and social media status.
Teens will even hang out on occasion and be glued to their devices sitting amongst each other at a birthday party or rendezvous, without so much as a glance or exchanging trifle banter in person.
The percentage of teens I know who claim to not have any real dependable friends is staggering. The majority of young girls and boys who endorse introversion and are not allowed by their parents to simply be teenagers is momentous. Kids today are missing etching entire arcs of their own life story by jumping chapters to a technologically dependent stratosphere.
Your kids will never be able to tell the forest from the trees or the rivers from the seas as long as you feed their insecurities with materialism, egotism, and vanity. You are teaching teenagers that everyone’s a winner; that it is wrong to be criticised, called out, and left to jump their own hurdles along the way. Injury is a calamitous predisposition. Hard work is a chore. Dedication is a myth. Experience is a farcical paradox. Perseverance needs to have the promise of recompense and reward. They assume pain and loss and sacrifice isn’t universal. Some believe that a lack of social skills is acceptable in an unforgiving society that rebukes honesty, persecutes the passionate, and chastises the vulnerable. That they deserve accolades without achieving them. The problem is that the young blood of today is part of an amazing, autonomous, quick-witted, highly inventive nomadic generation who many sadly look for meaning in superficial things and have no concepts of loyalty, teamwork, values, and selflessness. Shouldn’t these things primarily be embedded into their cognitive conditioning by the generation before them? Have we failed the generations after us on account of blind obstinacy and an inability to adapt and evolve in understanding the Gen Zs and latter Millennials? Are these the fortuitous fruits that we have reaped through lackadaisical influence and a lack of inspiration?
‘Rocky’
I know a young lad whose parents were rebellious in their heyday and control this youngster’s life to such a degree that he has a distorted view of reality and an amorphous ideology that things should always be convenient and free of challenges. The chap depresses himself suffering fools over exchanging diatribes with random strangers on the internet who have conflicting and opposing opinions to his own literature, music, and film. The moment someone contradicts him and challenges his point of view, he gets stressed, feels demeaned and thoroughly demoralised.
Another young fella looked to me for some advice recently, being fresh out of school and having started work. He was wanting to quit his current job on account of “work stress”, “not getting paid what he felt he deserved” (let me tell you he still gets more than what most of us ever did working our first few years in corporate whoredom), and mainly because he doesn’t get along with his colleagues and peers. I told him he’d been here for just three months, to stick with it and stay for at least a year before making any impulsive decisions. I mentioned that wherever he decided to join, he would face similar or equal hardship, drama, politics, and the dislike and wrath of other disgruntled employees. I used the example of Sylvester Stallone, and told him how Rocky was written. The hardships and sacrifices Sly went through, mortgaging his home and selling his dog and how no studio wanted to finance and make the movie, because he had written the story and also wanted to star in it. Yet I drew a parallel between Rocky Balboa who kept getting back on his feet no matter how many times he got knocked down and Stallone in his real life, through constant rejection and how he finally found one studio that gave him a shoe-string budget and let him make the movie providing it was shot in a ludicrously narrow window of time. Rocky became the highest grossing film in 1976, received 10 Academy Award nominations, and won three including Best Picture. I added that he even bought the dog back. The lad was clearly unimpressed. So I asked him: “You do know who Sylvester Stallone is right?”
He looks at me and impetuously replies: “Yeah. It’s that black and white cat from the cartoons.”
Be the protagonist of your own game
If we want to prep the youths of today to face the challenges of tomorrow, it’s perhaps best to start by letting them enjoy life a little, make a few mistakes, let them tumble and fall – that’s how we grow. Let them understand that the protected dystopia they are nurtured in is a preposterous smoke and mirrors fantasy far removed from the harsh realities of the world. A world that will not accommodate the safety protocols they are brainwashed with. That they cannot simply assimilate and fall in line without the ability to be of sturdier stuff, to not just think independently, but to be responsible and accountable for their choices. Finally, to not live their lives in fear and ignorance. They need not inherit our mistakes. They deserve better. Question is: Are we just passing the ball or letting them play the game their own way or how the game ought to be played?
In life you should play to win, but never be afraid to lose. The whole point is that we play. Not watch life’s game being played by others as a spectator, even if you have the best seats in the house.
In the words of Master Yoda “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Suresh de Silva is the frontman and lyricist of Stigmata, a creative consultant and brand strategist by profession, a self-published author and poet, thespian, animal rescuer, podcaster, and fitness enthusiast.
