The Culture of Dirty Mirrors

Farzan
Farzan
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

If you look up the term “culture” in Merriam-Webster Dictionary, you will get the following definition: culture means “the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education.” In fact, culture can be described as the way that a nation, a community, or a group acts and represents itself. What I personally get from the definition of “culture” is, that you educate people in order to become better human beings, to better behave and to represent something which is based on intellect, wisdom of learning and morality. Unfortunately, the “culture of dirty mirrors” opposes and contradicts each and every value that the very definition of culture deciphers.

But what is the culture of dirty mirrors?

The culture(?) of dirty mirrors is the culture that teaches you how to cheat, how to get millions of friends or admirers without enlightening them or educating them, without trying to make them better people. Something which cannot come close even remotely to the notions of intellect and morality. Yes, you got it right. I am talking about the culture that demands that if you want to be popular, for example, you have to take a naked picture, a shirtless picture, a body-building related progress on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc. And if you don’t, you might be called names, you might be shamed, you are considered an outcast you can be completely ignored. This culture is now a huge trend among the gigantic power of social media and if you can’t keep up with them, you might be called weird, odd, late bloomer, etc.

This culture teaches people how to throw their core values under the bus, all in the name of attention seeking and there is no vestige of intellect and morality in it. Not only the culture of dirty mirrors does not educate people about morality, humanity and wisdom and life, but on the contrary it objectifies selfishness and attention seeking as a means to succeed in one’s life, without making any other effort.

The problem arises when people look up to Instagram and YouTube “sensations” for example as role models and think that the real world evolves just around seeking attention and the way those social media so-called role models(?) succeed in their lives. What about people who don’t have access or do not use these technologies and they still succeed? What message do we send to our next generation regarding working hard in order to gain something, to become a better human being?

Today the idea behind someone posing naked in front of a camera, is not to show the true body building progress, but just to attract as much the attention as possible of his/her followers. Focusing purely on how he/she can satisfy his/her vanity need to get attention by thousands likes and silly comments. We have all witnessed a ton of talentless, uneducated and uniformed people who happened to have broad access to social media and who use it purely as an effortless, seeking attention tool.

I can’t deny that there are some people who use the social media properly to educate, to teach and to inspire others to exceed in life. Their effort is priceless and inspiring. Because they genuinely improve other people’s lives. However, these people who are doing something really worthy are foolishly put aside and ignorantly compared to the troopers who pose in front of dirty mirrors and take a nude or semi-nude picture of themselves. It is very sad to see that our society has been led to believe that cheap attention grabbing is considered a “value”, while working hard is considered dull and boring.

I have observed while surfing the internet and using social media, that a lot of misguided young people who daydream of becoming instantly famous, think they have now found the easiest and quickest way for getting to the top. By posing naked. On the other hand, I still see several successful people around the world that they won’t seek their success in cheap nudity. They instead seek it in working hard and in inspiring others through sharing and spreading knowledge and wisdom. And I see them teaching people how to succeed without resorting to worthless, superficial, unethical and cheap means. Which example would you rather follow?

Farzan

Written by

Farzan

Michigan, Spontaneous Photographer with iPhone X

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