Consciousness in the Age of Distraction

Warning: This essay emerged after an exploration of philosophy accompanied by a touch of whiskey. I affectionately refer to it as a captivating splatter of nonsense that may surprisingly hold meaning.

Consciousness is like a miracle popping out of an old jar. We humans take it for granted. We are self-conscious: "we think therefore we are". But wait, where does that thinking come from? Where does that sentence come from? Or even better, where does the "I" that makes up this "we" come from? Are we born with this sense of "I"?

In our age of commercials, superhero movies, and social media, these questions are often swept under the rug. Why, you may ask? Profit is my answer. What will happen if we turn the lens of this mysterious "I" back on itself? We may never know where it comes from, but we certainly don't want it lost in the ever-noisy information age. Each "I" is unique. It is the sum of all experiences, feedback from the ever-changing environment, achieved desires, rewards, punishments, successes, failures, braveries, and fears. Whether it's an illusion or not, this "I" is the entity in control.

In the information age, this "I" is being overshadowed by the noise of the masses. How? By the attention industry, of course. You are not truly yourself if you do not self-reflect. Yet, what we mostly see is the constant checking of phones, the abuse of social acceptance, all for a few more pennies of profit. How much of our time will be lost before we realize that we are made up of collective "I"s?

This situation didn't necessarily start this way, or perhaps it did. It doesn't matter for our argument here. The only thing that makes us human is the self-consciousness we possess. The unique "I" formed by our genuine, varied experiences. What makes your "I" and my "I" unique is that each of us has different desires, dreams, fears, and ideas. Now, the realm of social media, the attention market, and the misuse of social approval are creating a virtual environment that confines these human experiences to a limited set defined by a handful of engineers in Silicon Valley.

Our attention is up for grabs, auctioned to the highest bidder. What does our attention represent? The feedback that shapes our "I"s. Hopefully, you see where I'm going with this. Our identity is being reformed to pad the wallets of a select few. The repercussions of this diminished self-awareness are grave: increasing suicides, pervasive unhappiness, needless social comparison, loss of attention and focus, addiction to social media, and immersion in a fantasy world, losing touch with reality. George Orwell's "1984" isn't necessarily about Big Brother. It could be something as seemingly benign as the engineered attention business, limited by the experiences of a few. When the spectrum of experience diminishes, consciousness—the essence of "I"ness—suffers, and an Orwellian world emerges.

Time and again, I've observed people feeling lost when their phones die. I remember a time when I was a child, and neither phones nor the internet were available to the general populace. As a kid, I never felt boredom. There was always something captivating in the world around me. For hours on end, I could lose myself in books. Once, boredom was the wellspring of creativity. Now, solitude with one's thoughts is nearly foreign to newer generations. Recall that what makes us unique is the power of self-reflection. Some might say I'm being melodramatic. But am I? Don't you think the long-term threats are more significant than we imagine?

Our core "I", the essence of our identity, is under manipulation. Some might argue it's controllable, but I believe the gravity isn't fully grasped, and until it's recognized as a real addiction or syndrome, it won't be taken earnestly.

It's not just a group of engineers trying to connect humanity globally with dreams of heightened worldwide empathy. If you believe this, I reckon you're living under a rather sizable, illusionary rock. When billions are spent hiring behavioral psychologists to tweak our behavior, ensuring we're hooked on using social media services more, viewing their content more often, and thereby taking precious moments from our lives, it becomes an assault on our very being. Each second we invest in these profit-oriented machines (and not to our benefit, mind you) is irrevocably lost.

We must remember our mortality. We're afforded a finite amount of time on this planet. While these services seem free, they exact a toll: our time. Can we attach a value to human life—in seconds, minutes, or hours? The outcry would be a resounding no. But in reality, isn't that their business model? In a movie, it would be a heinous act if subjects were forced to view the world through a narrow lens, their realities tailored by a select few to optimize others' profits. Yet, this is transpiring in our world, with our life hours auctioned for gain, and it's all perfectly legal. Surprised?

To encapsulate my thoughts, I'll borrow from Thoreau: "I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been in vain."