The Decay of Human Essence
In 1940, Charlie Chaplin, in his movie The Great Dictator, delivered arguably his best ever quote, which goes as follows:
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men — cries out for universal brotherhood — for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women, and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
This was back in 1940s where radio was the most popular means of media and communication, and just a decade before television became popular throughout the west. But the pace at which technology has developed, the difference between technology of 1940s and of now, an 80-year gap, is as huge as the distance between Earth and the Moon, at least the way I see it.
Let us take, for example, Nepal — the country I live in. I was born in the year 2000, exactly on the turn of new millennia, and while growing up, the greatest asset anyone could have in their household was a television. Usually a television was accompanied by a VCR or a VCD player, this was long before DVDs were popular. It was quite common to have only one television in the entire household, which meant that every night, you would have an entire family socialising just to watch a show or two on the television. I twas a time when telephones were landline, computers were luxury items only few could afford, cellphones were unheard of, and an internet access was not even a thing.
Fast forward 10 years, 2014. The year I felt technology became a widespread phenomenon in Nepal. This was, I believe, as a result of increasing popularity of smartphones. By this time, a lot of people had access to computers and the internet, despite the agonisingly slow internet speed — waiting for an entire week just to download a movie of 1GB size. The kind of patience we really don’t have nowadays. I won’t say ‘imagine’ because I assume we’ve all went through that phase of the internet. This was still the time where we used to sneak in game CDs in school and exchange it with our friends.
The pace of technological advancement took off rapidly, and within next two years, every person had smartphone in their hands. Everyone I knew were on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, everywhere. No longer did you have to ring the phone in your girlfriend’s house, afraid of getting caught by her dad or mum, now you could talk to her 24/7, chat, video call, whatever, staying in touch all the time.
There was a kind of excitement in the beginning, but the excitement died off soon.
Soon, everyone were sucked into the vortex of digital world, slowly divorcing themselves with reality.
Scenes like these are quite common nowadays.
People used to wish that they had a phone, a camera, a music player, a notebook, everything in a single device, believing that it would make things a lot easier. Of course it makes things easier, it has made things easier, the very essence of human being has been sacrificed in achieving such efficiency.
Why do I call it an “essence”? This is because I believe the very essence of human being is creativity and awareness. We, as human beings, are here to create, to create something beautiful and profound. The creation can be from anything as influential as an invention, or something simple yet subtle as giving birth to another human being. The entire process of birth, as simple as it may seem, is quite beautiful, the more one thinks about it — it is creation of a new human being, someone who is alive, someone with life.
Awareness — the very act of being totally present in the moment, interacting with our environment, our surroundings, and involving in an act with our surroundings — is another essence of human beings. Anything from socialising with another human being, or concentrating on an important work that gives meaning to oneself, or being aware of one’s own body and emotions, and able to use emotions, counts as awareness, in my words.
To quote Chaplin again — “We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want” — our very desire to seek something meaningful and profound has concentrated around development of technology that makes everything easy for us, but in the process, it has enslaved us, and left us more idle and unproductive than ever.
Manual labour and scarcity gave our lives meaning, because we had to work hard to obtain what we needed. With everything in abundance, thanks to technology, we are left with a very strong void within us, a void deep in our soul, a void that is increasing day by day, and its because we really don’t have to engage in anything worthwhile that gives us a sense of accomplishment, of contentment and value anymore.
I believe the very nature of human being is to find meaning in a universe devoid of meaning, a universe of absurdity and randomness, to make our infinitesimally minuscule and instantaneous existence in an infinitesimally gigantic universe worthwhile, I also believe that the very nature of human being by default leans towards pursuit of ease and comfort, hence the tendency of human beings to be lazy unless exposed to situations that threaten their existence.
We live in an era where situations threatening our existence is not prevalent. We no longer live in a time where war is common, we no longer live in a time where plagues were rampant. Healthcare is better than ever, technology advanced as ever, which means everything is really just a click away. And since our very default nature leans towards pursuit of comfort and ease, we are sacrificing our very true essence in favour of short-term comfort. Tell me, what is easier — sitting in your room, lying in your bed, and binging YouTube all day, or going out there and spending 8 hours farming?
To quote Chaplin again — “Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…”
It is now easy to shut ourselves from the entire world and totally immerse ourselves into the virtual world, which obviously is more fun and pleasurable than the real life. I mean, who wants to give any damn about the real world, which is harsh, and unlike our inner world, our imagination, which is very much perfect.
No man wants to really go out there and socialise, approach a woman they like, take them on dates, and get things going. They’re just fine sitting in their room, scrolling Instagram, liking photos of pretty women, commenting repulsive words, wasting hours watching pornographic content, because it’s much easier than going out, socialising and actually approaching women. No doubt a large population of males in present times are suffering from depression and mental health issues, because they no longer engage themselves in real life. Sitting in your room all day, in front of your computer, ignoring all your responsibilities, and grinding on Call of Duty is much more comfortable than cleaning your room, going out for a walk, and going to the nearest callisthenics park to do 100 pushups.
Hard times create strong men, but we live in an easy time, and so we’re breeding a generation of weak men. Strong men, and by strong I don’t necessarily mean physically strong bullies, but men who have strong sense of purpose, responsibility and ethics, act as positive role models to children and the family, both the male and the female child, which acts as a foundation for a healthy, functioning family, and thus a foundation for a healthy, functioning society. What we now have is a society with weak men, lacking purpose and responsibility, in a society which devalues men so much, that there’s increasing cases of fatherless children, which has thus given rise to delinquent children.
But de-masculinisation of men really is just one example of how disconnected we have really become with reality thanks to the advancement of technology. Children are another victims of technology — I mean, how many times have you seen toddlers, as young as 2 years old, in front of smartphones watching videos on YouTube, instead of playing around, playing with toys? Parents find it easy to just put a phone in front of their kids, because they believe their child won’t do anything stupid, and just sit in one spot, totally immersed into the virtual world.
Well, it is the very nature of an infant to do stupid things! Children are curious by nature, and they learn by doing stupid things, and by putting them in front of phones, I think all we’re doing is stifling their development. I truly mourn the upcoming generation, as I think we’ll be having a lot of socially inept and disconnected people in coming future.
We really want more, but wanting more has left us in a state of misery. Not physical or emotional misery, but a deep, deep, spiritual misery. We’re being more and more disconnected from reality, from our surroundings, but that’s not just all, we’re being increasingly disconnected from our own bodies, from our own emotions. We aren’t aware of our own bodily sensations, our own bodily functions, the signs our body gives, and we aren’t aware of what we’re feeling and how to respond emotionally in a social setting. Like Chaplin said, it has made us hard and unkind.
While comfort and indulgence is paramount, we really are dissatisfied with ourselves and our lives, although we may not really feel it. We’re becoming increasingly cynical, increasingly nihilistic, because we really don’t like interacting in the present moment, with other human beings, we’re shut off from everything totally. We then go out and interact with other human beings, with our inept social skills, and we feel cynical because we interact with another human being who is cold and detached as we are.
While we have access to tons of information, we’re still left in a state of nescience. We have knowledge, we have information, but we really don’t have wisdom. Wisdom comes from practice and experience, not from study, and by being more withdrawn and detached with reality, we really aren’t exposed to situations where we’re able to cultivate wisdom anymore.
Awareness, clouded, creativity, blocked. We would no longer have human artists who would spend hours on an artistic masterpiece, no longer we would have human musicians who would spend hours crafting a perfect piece of music to resonate with our souls. All we’ll have is an AI that creates art and music for us to indulge, while we lay in our comfortable movable chairs, just consuming endless amount of content to keep ourselves numb.
Well, all I can say is this — suffering is the only constant thing in life, and our very tendency is the opposite, towards happiness. Suffering gives life meaning, just as the darkness of night sky makes the Moon and the stars beautiful. Embracing and understanding suffering enables us to strive towards happiness, but it is rather easy to chase pleasure than happiness. It is easy to indulge in short-term pleasures, because there really isn’t any suffering involved in it, because true happiness is something that is truly earned, by yourself, and not something that is handed to you.
Do remember one thing — some 2,600 years ago, in the foothills of the Himalayas, was a king who was foretold his son would grow up to be a great man, so all he did was keep his son confined in a palace, providing him with all the pleasures possible at that time, because the king wanted his son to grow up to be a great emperor. But the prince really grew dissatisfied of his hedonistic life, and one day, decided to leave the palace for good. And guess what happened next?
Well, I certainly am not negative, nor am I positive about the looming future, rather I am ambivalent. What is meant to be, will be, that’s how it is. Everything is for you to judge.
