Social Media Feeds Our Desires But Is Ultimately Empty

“We love the life stories of other people, and cannot be sated with too much such detail. Gossip is the means by which we learn and shape our social network.”

-Edward O. Wilson

Part of the reason why social media is so popular is because it feeds into our desire to learn about other people’s lives. The issue, however, is the lives presented to us are artificial which creates a superficial, often unfulfilling, social network.

Richard Reeves, from the below video, explains that loneliness is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. We've never been as connected as we are today yet we are as alone as we've ever been.

For 2025, make it a goal to meet some old friends or get to know new people.

Repeating Lies To Control A Nation

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.”
-Carl Sagan

A lie repeated over time becomes believable because we are creatures that finds comfort within our habits or what is known to us. 

We could learn, or assimilate, new information but that would require time/effort which we don't have. It's much easier to "fallback" on what is known to us.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

-Joseph Goebbels

One of the first thing a new Dictator does is take over the media in order to control the message shared with the people. Always be careful of those that have an invested interest in having you think a certain way. If you feel like you're being brainwashed then you probably are which is your cue to stop listening.

"There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only possess charms and seductive power for the mediocre spirits..."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Any entity that spreads misinformation or encourages division in a society needs to be silenced not by an enforcer (who could enforce such a thing?) but by the masses. This means that we, the people, need to develop the skills necessary for the identification of those bad actors.

Remember that lies must be repeated in order to become believable...

School is for Reading and Inspiration

"There is nothing which an better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."

-George Washington (Address to Congress, January 8, 1790)

Public school will be, to some, their only exposure to a system of education. If the educational system has failed to teach them how to read, or inspire to self-educate, then the system has failed them.

Learning is supposed to be fun...

While it's true that some things can be difficult/stressful to learn, if all the student remembers from school is anguish or boredom then how likely will he be to pickup a book later on in life?

“In a world in transition, students and teachers both need to teach themselves one essential skill—learning how to learn.”

-Carl Sagan

Self-Education and Choosing Political Leaders

Wars are fought against imaginary enemies created by leaders seeking more power. The problem isn't that those leaders have a voice to speak evil but that they're able to find an audience. All it takes is for one delusional President to spread lies for a friendly country to turn into an enemy.

Enough is enough...

Because I spend a great deal of my time on self-education, I'm now able to identify some of the absurdities being shared by Dictators. If more people prioritized their self-education, those charlatans would never be given positions of power let alone be able to spread their lies.

Would a Country benefit from screening their political leaders?

Some workplace require employees to go through security clearance, drug test, internal reviews... wouldn't it make sense to implement the same for our political leaders? Before we give a leader keys to a Country's secret, couldn't we ask:

• An analysis by a renowned psychologist to determine what are the ulterior motives (if any) of the individual..
• A security clearance...
• A physical evaluation to determine if the individual is fit to lead...
• Drug test...
• test test test...

Is this too much to ask? In-lieu of screening exercises, we get bickering under the guise of "political debates" and that's how we're supposed to choose our leaders.

“If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.“

-Carl Sagan

Creating our Ideology

"Mere education, however, is not enough. The important thing is the kind of education. We often hear that "education is power", but we need to remember that it may be power for life and human welfare or power for death and destruction. We can teach people to be selfish and narrow, or we can give them an education which broadens their outlook and makes them cooperative members of a world society."
-P. 212 of "Living Issues in Philosophy" book by Harold H. Titus and Marilyn S. Smith

As a kid going through school we don't really think about what sort of education we're getting. Are we directly, or indirectly, programmed to hate specific groups? Are we being influenced beyond words and numbers? Are we getting a good education?

Everyone has an ideology, including teachers, that they either consciously or unconsciously push unto others. Our responsibility is to create an ideology of our own based on experiences and what we teach ourselves.

While it's great that we live in a country where education is free, the responsibility to learn falls on us. We are responsible to take in what make sense and cut out what doesn't in order to live the sort of life that we want to live.
What is offered, for free, is essentially the basic. If everyone knows what you know then you're not standing out above the crowd. What you learn is important.