That’s literally how we came into the world. Screaming and crying with reckless abandon; with no consideration for a father who stayed up all night, and a mother who pushed through hours of intense labour pains. Then it became how we grew to view the world. Through the lens that we are the protagonists of our narratives; every life event a development in the story arc.
That’s why with each minor inconvenience or grave offence comes an indignation that we shouldn’t have to be put in that situation, or given such treatment. Yet should we minorly inconvenience or gravely offend others, we have our reasonable reasons and misunderstood motivations. We judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions. So quick to let others know when they hurt us, often forgetting that hurt people hurt people.
Self-preservation is an evolutionary trait. It’s why we fight for what’s rightfully ours, but what we think is ours may not be right. Entitlement is invariably the root of the pettiest crimes to the biggest wars.
The prerequisite to change is empathy, actress and activist Michelle Yeoh once urged Harvard graduates in her speech. Seeing through other people’s perspective activates our compassion which becomes the driving force for real-world demonstrable action.
At some point in our naturally self-centred lives, we encountered “sonder”. The realisation that every individual we’ve passed, however brief, has a life as complex as our own. This also means that the journey that shaped their unwavering views is no different from what shapes our own to a matching degree of conviction.
It’s easy to empathise with loved ones, people we like, or like-minded people. It’s hard to empathise with people we have no relation to or respect for, or carry completely opposing views.
It’s easy to shirk consequences when someone else can take the fall. It's much harder to kill your rights and freedom than let another pay the price for it.
“Parents always say they will die for their kid,” A newly-minted parent recently told me, “That’s easy. You take a bullet for them and everything ends. Living for them is hard.” Previously reluctant to have children until the unexpected blessing arrived, the pair decided to cherish what some other couples could spend their entire youth and fortune striving for.
So, birthed profound lessons of what it means to live for someone other than yourself. What sacrificing your own desires and comforts for another’s sake is like. What joy, as many parents will profess, is found in looking at the world through a different set of eyes. How different and less painful our world could look, from every imperfect interaction to inhumane execution, if we respond by embracing others over ourselves.
I’ve recently been haunted by a cartoon. An animated film, as the grown-ups call it. 2008’s Wall-E to be specific, but the scene is not any of the bits to do with the two robots. Not because it’s weird to humanise inorganic androids and empathise with them (fine, the movie made me feel things).
It was the depiction of future mankind that seem uncannily close to where we’re headed: Obese slobs plastered to individual virtual screens, whizzing away in sedentary positions. 16 years since and we don’t just outsource manual professional and domestic work to smart devices. We now outsource cognitive tasks to Artificial Intelligence, and don’t seem nearly done with what’s left to outsource.
At what point in this unending obsession to make everything more convenient does it become unnecessary? Consequentially, when we remove ourselves from what we want to avoid doing, would we use the newfound freedom for something actually meaningful? Or lose it to more mind-numbing content?
It’s almost like we don’t want to do anything but be entertained. The root cause is obvious. We’re desperately trying to stave off boredom. That’s why we can’t function waiting in line without our hands itching for the phone, or have a meal without having first picked something to watch.
In a small study, 66 percent of men and 25 percent of women chose to painfully shock themselves rather than sit with nothing to do. The time span of the experiment? 15 minutes. Boredom doesn’t just incur self-harm. 18 percent of bored folk killed worms when given the option, nine times the number inclined to do so when not bored.
History also shows how bored parents and soldiers behave sadistically (which leans me one way in the eternal debate of whether humans are inherently good or evil, but that’s an Unpopular Opinion for another day).
If using the analogy of food; we’re engorged with everything we consume, but not working the calories off. I fear children of today do not know what it’s like to be bored. Or rather, cannot discover the wonders of what can be born out of it if properly cultivated.
Author and technologist Ray Kurzweil adopts a more optimistic slant. He believes this unprecedented liberty granted by clever machines will serve our deepest human aspirations to learn, create, and connect. Not too utopian a concept when recognising that it has happened before.
What we deem the rat race of modern life is truly an abundant luxury to our palaeolithic ancestors. See, the constant struggle of hunter-gatherers to survive left little opportunity for invention or philosophy. It was only post-agriculture civilisation that could afford literature, law, science, and engineering.
The fault never lies with technology. Which, as a means like money, is only a mirror reflecting what we choose to do with it. So we need to acquaint with boredom, and be adept at managing it. Only then can this automation-enabled fortuity herald the next creative revolution.
Newspapers and magazines used to carry perceived authority; the way an academic paper in the form of a book outweighs the same research presented in a dot com article. Published material certainly tends to convey itself as a piece of legitimate zeitgeist thanks to how such mediums previously conducted themselves. Keyword being: previously.
It's not so much about credibility these days, though. Especially when most of us can discern digital scams, fake news, and now the work of AI (…mostly. Check the fingers!). Nonetheless, the modicum of sensibility seems to stop at the factual bit.
Emotional judgement is where it gets tricky. It's why influencers—sorry, content creators—wield that influence. They marry the best of word-of-mouth marketing and blatant advertising; straddling layman relatability and celebrity endorsement. It’s why Micro Influencers have skin in the game.
It is pretty much a Black Mirror moment, however, when the subject of a shaped impression extends beyond a product or service. Like concerning, oh I don’t know, governing policies? I observed this erring in my social media behaviour: Opening the comment section of a reel merely seconds into it.
For context, sure. Yet everyone’s take on the matter inevitably colours mine. Worse still, diving into the exchanges. It almost becomes a way to check if I’m on the “right” side, regardless of content. No, that shouldn’t be called art. Yeah, definitely bring back bullying. If the top comment possesses a reigning number of likes, it must be a popular view and therefore right, right?
Try to pinpoint when we as a collective decided Justin Timberlake stopped being cool and when Anne Hathaway suddenly was. Try doing the same for fashion brands. Apart from outright felony (*cough* Diddy), it’s hard to tell when the narrative will sway in or away from your favour.
When did we stop forming individual sentiments, and sticking up for it? Is it that daunting to stand alone in a belief (that does not advocate hurting others)? Getting cancelled is probably the most direct effect of online groupthink, but how much weight would you give a hivemind as fickle as the Internet?
At this point, it’s almost a fantasy to access space to express yourself while having the openness to listen with respect. Most just want to do the first half while expecting others to do the latter for them. And if we keep this up, all we will be left with is varying degrees of dictatorship or civil war.
It’s pretty wild that throughout the varied permutations of time, one thing doesn’t seem to change. Its medium and mode of transfer has seen different phases, but money maintains its hold on us. This strange relationship we have with the ability to purchase has barely evolved.
Might even go so far as to say that it has taken two steps backwards. The most common associations with the term are power and greed. These two concepts continue to power our economies and way of living; where profit maximisation of any nature is priority.
This has led to devising ways to accomplish faster and cheaper to beat out the competition on the manufacturing side, and us buying faster and cheaper from a consumer angle. Both fronts fuel operations that heavily compromise in the name of productivity, and result in a lot of harm. Think Fast Fashion, Food and the models that “sustain” them.
As Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern states, "Economic growth accompanied by worsening social outcomes is not success. It is failure."
It doesn’t help that we also treat people with money differently—even if they weren’t the ones who earned it. Why does the knowledge that someone belongs to generational wealth change the way you regard them?
Just gander at the insipid shows on Netflix. If there ever was a reality tv competition on how much charitable work an individual can do, viewers will probably still choose the documentary on billionaire lifestyles. So the blame isn’t even on the algorithm when it only churns what has proven to earn the most eyeballs.
What Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith penned three centuries ago still stands today, where The Wealth of Nations is not measured by gold but the living standards of the whole population: “Every man is rich or poor according to degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.”
It could boil down to our perception of money, as a predominantly inherent misconception of what it can bring. You think it’s an obvious statement, but it doesn’t change the fact that you hanker after a big house and nice things. Ultimately, you believe that’s what will make you happy, and money is the means to achieve it.
I’m doing it for my family, you may argue. Earning a living wage is one thing; think long and hard about what a child truly needs to feel loved and fulfilled. The richer they come, often the more unhappy they are. Any deviance is likely an inherited mindset.
It’s like what comedian Jimmy Carr coins as ‘Life Dysmorphia’. We’re living in a great era (Singaporean households didn’t have ensuite bathrooms merely 60 years ago), but we still think our lives are could be better.
We continue somehow convinced that if we’re not happy now, we will be when we get there. When the truth is if you’re not satisfied right this moment, you’ll never be no matter the size of your bank account.
Do you ever think if farmers from a century ago could see what we call a workout these days, they would genuinely be so confused? When they tirelessly endure a full day of manual labour to get paid, but we pay to do pretty much the exact same movements? There is literally a station called Farmer's Carry in Hyrox.
Not to incur the infamous defensive wrath of CrossFit fanatics, but the fitness competition is ultimately a first-world privilege. Sure, it’s a fun bonding activity and a novel personal challenge. Yet if you can’t picture pitching the concept to developing nations; where they are required to purchase not only participation, but training at gyms that specifically provide a dedicated programme (yeah, look it up), then the debate settles itself.
It’s just how the times have fashioned our attitudes. We do crash diets rather than cultivate healthy eating choices. We take pills to sleep rather than incorporate plans to fix terrible bedtime patterns. We shell out thousands for Botox rather than inculcate a lifestyle that actively resists aging.
The only reason why cure looks sexier than prevention is because the latter involves time and effort. And the modern age has convinced us that those are things we can’t afford. Whereas it is certainly much easier to throw money to achieve a quick fix, despite the cost of meagre durability.
For a people who are barely willing to get up to switch the light on and would much prefer telling their robot assistant to do it for them, let’s not be too ambitious. For a society that outsources feeding pets with automatic dispensers, let’s not get carried away.
What self-help books are right about is how we would naturally give up when the time taken to reach the goal is too short; and necessary actions are subsequently big to bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
If we could simply reframe our expectations from overnight success to small building blocks that set us up for lasting benefit, we might realise that tiny adjustments can eventually ripple larger effects. As psychology proves—what we mistake for willpower is often a hallmark of habit.
90 days of lifestyle modification may seem daunting, but repetition in minute doses usually isn’t. Whether it is using streak-based motivation AKA the Duolingo method, or tying it to an existing daily routine, we have to trust that these little shifts will attain results should we have the patience to see them through.
The greatest impetus is that even if you avoid starting now, the time passes all the same. So why waste three months of what could be foundational moments of helping your future self? Perhaps if we embark on a long-term, balanced way of living, probably then we wouldn’t need to engage in a race to tell us how fit we are for only that particular chapter of life.
I should qualify to say whatever I’m about to, since I am biologically (and also identify as, for woke folks) female. It’s like the free pass we have to make racist comments, but only if they’re about your own race. So, toxic femininity. Let's go.
It’s tricky to determine where the awakening began. Perhaps it was the many Instagram Reels that seemed so dead right in exposing the myriad insensitivities of men. It might have been the article that Shakira somewhat called Barbie “emasculating”. Or more concerningly that I found myself agreeing with the other parts of her statement.
That’s not to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy what I consider a revolutionary movie. I recall being disappointed at the reaction of male friends, who while not despising it the way chauvinistic online trolls do, did not seem to fully appreciate its brilliance either. But how could they?
This wasn’t a toy they spent their childhood with, so that alone eliminates sentimental resonance. They never had the complicated relationship of affection for the doll through the eyes of a girl, to questioning her caricature appearance as a woman. Nor have they been personally treated to the male gaze which, as Margot Robbie’s version observes, is underscored by the threat of violence.
A universal female experience so comedically yet accurately captured in that Master of None episode (S1E07: Ladies and Gentlemen); contrasting an evening return home for both sexes—a casual jaunt for one and sheer terror for the other, no prizes for guessing which is which.
It’s hard to dispute that phrase that what men fear most about going to prison is what women fear most walking down a quiet sidewalk. Or justify against why seven out of eight women would rather encounter a bear than a man alone in a forest.
This is not to demonise men, but it was a haunting revelation the day I counted the number of women I knew directly who have been sexually assaulted. It’s bitterly ironic to say this, but you just have to take my word that these were not “asking for it”-type situations, nor “asking for it”-type social circle.
So I certainly understand what’s fuelling the 4B Movement and other spouts of Down with the Patriarchy. Just as much as I will never understand how to strike that perfect balance of being attractive without being provocative, or how to strive towards that standard without looking like it.
Nonetheless, I also see how easy it is to be swept into the many waves of hate perpetuated by social media that often focus on polarising a topic; whether racial, political, or etc. The flavour of the season just happens to be gender disparity.
Sure, Boyboss is not a thing, but why do we act like only women are subject to unrealistic expectations? If societal pressure was one-sided, male mental health issues would not exist. Instead of ammunition to pit against each other, differences would be better handled as learning points towards empathy and synergy.
To quote the Columbian pop star, “We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”
How many mobile numbers can you recite without referring to an external source? If that number is more than five, congratulations—you belong to the top 25 percentile of people who do. Pretty cool if not for the fact that it’s a completely made-up stat. Though my fabrication probably doesn’t stray too far from the truth.
You don’t need an article to tell you how storing information on devices is commonplace. Even Instagram does a great job reminding you what happened this day four years ago; something you’d only be able to conjure if you consciously, manually tracked your memories, and who’s psychotic enough to do that on a regular basis?
And of course, the infamous ‘Google Effect’. The phenomenon where individuals are more likely to forget information they know can be easily accessed online. This heavy reliance may lead to passive consumption of data as opposed to active processing and engagement, dulling our critical thinking in the long run.
Experiments have shown how even taking photographs can alter your memory of an event i.e. participants with cameras retain comparatively less mental information than those without. Worse still if said photos are intended for sharing, because the added factor of their presentation and liability to judgement poses as another distraction from the encounter. It’s unfair to solely call it digital amnesia.
We’ve taken notes and marked calendars long before they were little squares on our screens. We seem prone to not depend on internal memory whenever convenient. Which, to no one’s surprise, potentially weakens recollection skills by reducing the brain’s ability to effectively encode and consolidate fresh information.
Nathaniel Barr, Gordon Pennycook, Jennifer A. Stolz, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang cover this tendency to offload thinking in favour of low-effort intuitive processing in ‘The brain in your pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are used to supplant thinking’. Building upon prior concepts of “cognitive miserliness”, a simple Cognitive Reflection Test best illustrates.
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? __cents.
Chances say your initial response would be wrong, and basic math would spell out why. Typical scores of college students and online-recruited participants registered only 33 percent correct (Campitelli & Gerrans, 2014; Frederick, 2005).
Thankfully, apart from adequate sleep and physical exercise, memory can be boosted via simple brain training. No need for memory palaces like Sherlock (though proven useful). Simple sudoku or word puzzles help. Otherwise, journaling or a daily mental recap. If that’s somehow still asking too much, start with memorising a couple of significant birthdays rather than let social media do it for you.
Not only will concentration and analysis be enhanced, problem-solving and overall mental agility will also be sharpened. And like what mahjong does for the elderly, the risk of dementia will also be reduced.
Perhaps most interesting of the benefits will be the lesser-known effect it has on creativity. A well-trained memory means the better you are at association. This is great for drawing connections between seemingly unrelation concepts and ideas, sparking eureka moments and driving innovation. So what are you waiting for? Try Remembering ThingsTM today!
Don’t get me wrong. Freedom is great. Power to the people. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to write a scathing op-ed about what of it makes me weary (thanks, Ancient Greece, birthplace of modern democracy). Trust me, as both a consumer and producer of content, I fully acknowledge the irony.
Dispersing legislative and judicial authority prevents a single entity or individual from abusing their position—which is generally the direction you’d want to head as a civilisation. It’s this civic participation that promotes accountability, but what happens when the opportunity to participate is too freely available? And active participants are only composed of select personalities that are naturally inclined to, well, participate?
Let me steer away from the notion of government and focus on culture. The Internet was obviously the great usher of an equitable albeit virtual society. With effectively no one owning or governing it, in the words of Berkeley astronomer Clifford Stoll, “It’s the closest thing to true anarchy that ever existed.”
Anyone with access could contribute as much as they could partake. From requiring expensive equipment, experience and connections to make and market an album or a movie, to the ability to do so without all that save a smartphone, dramatically levelled the playing field (resulting in stats like the one about lifetimes worth of hours needed to watch all existing videos on YouTube alone).
It would be beyond ungrateful to lament about the extremely wide spectrum of choice. We will never run out of things to watch when we train the machine to automatically feed us with at least four more you might like this.
Talk to anyone from the days of yore (specifically, before digital TV), and you’ll find most of them are able to bond over what was on screen at prime time. Author of The Nineties called it “the last era that held to the idea of an objective, hegemonic mainstream before everything began to fracture” in his exposition on the defining decade.
It may not be direct causation but is it possible one factor pushing an all-time high divisive climate of opinions and temperaments is the fact that we remain chowing down only what appeals to us, made by people who already share the same perspectives as us?
Our last major shared experience was probably COVID. And maybe Tiger King. Now, at the seeming height of streaming, enter Sora. OpenAI’s next big thing since ChatGPT constructs realistic videos from text prompts at a standard that is frightening. It’s great that tools to create are available for anyone to express their ideas (maybe not so much for graduates who spent years earning qualifications to use earlier versions of said tools, but c’est la vie).
It means more diversity, representation, and recognition. However, at this zenith of infotainment free-for-all, opening ourselves to alternative viewpoints is definitely going to take a little more conscious diligence than sitting back to let an algorithm decide what to watch.
I often wonder what Andy Warhol would think about current celebrity culture, given his most attributed quote about a universal 15-minute notoriety. Which is not even verbatim, apparently. Prophecy aside, what would the visual artist make of the 21st century sea of trashy reality TV and viral reels?
Putting people on a pedestal traces back to royalty and religious figures throughout history. This, apart from making Jesus the OG influencer and another pun about God-shaped holes, demonstrates how an innate aspirational desire existed even before the advent of mass media. It’s almost like preparation met opportunity with the rise of Hollywood, tabloid culture and the successive Internet-accelerated commodification of fame.
There’s plenty of literature exploring celebrity impact on societal dynamics, but would it be fair to say the root of the obsession is a little more complex? Quite literally anyone can cultivate a fan base; without even being human. First, it was pets, now it’s AI thirst traps.
You have to admit the metrics are inconsistent too. Widespread circulation and exponential interconnectivity of diverse platforms today allow individuals of various fields to gain recognition, even going on to become an international phenomenon. Yet, we don’t necessarily regard their achievements with the same weight as the ones within the entertainment industry. Say, a semi-decent actor versus an exceptional... accountant. The extent of our interest can be equated with how much time these personalities spend in the spotlight; their relevance a parallel to how prominent they remain after we notice them, whether for their careers or their antics, à la Musk, Trump, etc.
So what fundamental aspects of human psychology does this enduring allure reflect? Why do we confer this status to entertainers, specifically? What makes fame increasingly enticing to each subsequent generation since? To loosely quote a TikTokker, “Think about it—medieval peasants didn’t ask the jester for a photo after his courtroom fart.”
I’m not against celebrities; I’m just not for inflating a performance beyond what it is. Being influenced is one thing, idolising is another. It’s that eternal debate of whether we should divorce a person’s work from their conduct, no doubt prompted by the characters we’ve dubbed "tortured geniuses".
If anything, these may be the least prospects whose behaviour we’d want to emulate. The very nature of the profession demands a certain spoonful of egocentric attributes. Worse still if said personas were thrown into a star-making machine from an impressionable age (doesn’t help that K-pop trainees eventually graduate to become ‘idols’).
Imagine spending your formative season ingrained with the need to be validated because your worth is directly proportionate to public opinion. Imagine being constantly engulfed by people who relate to you like a product because they have a job to do. What sort of worldview would that shape?
I’d argue that present-day fame transcends escapism. It has gone a little deeper beyond connection to identification, and thus emotional attachment. We surely know better than to consider everyone with a voice a role model, but in a time where fame is powered by the very attention and admiration we give, let’s perhaps not freely relinquish this respect and value to a fallible sense of extraordinary.
I can't recall the last time I did, off the top of my head. My mind goes straight to basic survival like consumption and absolution of energy; eating and defecating—excuse the savoury start to this article. Yet, even these exercises are hardly ever carried out solely anymore. You spend your lunch with mobile Netflix and play <insert top App Store game> on the crapper.
It certainly doesn’t help that AI is continuously advancing its proficiencies. If the Industrial Revolution reduced back-breaking labour 300 years ago, bestowing folks time to pursue interests outside the daily grind, AI is now doing the same with mental labour. Which means more time on our hands, and theconstant need to do something only intensifies.
We’re wired for stimulation, as exemplified by doom scrolling. Even without Tik-Tok induced dopamine highs, we’re too permeated in a state of overstimulation to acknowledge it. On numerous occasions, I’ve caught myself thumbing my phone not only during commercials (thanks, YouTube) but the shows that I’m watching.
It blows my mind to recall that listening to music used to be a pastime. Ever since they made gramophones fit in our pockets, songs are now musical white noise for commute. Even then, Spotify isn't the app you’re primarily engaging with. You’re sifting emails, answering texts, replying to comments (I promise this is not a smartphone-hating piece).
A lot came with modern convenience but a lot left as well. With everything instantaneously available, value is lost and gratitude diminishes. It's an extreme analogy but we once (and for certain parts of the world still, optional or not) had to physically get out there and source for sustenance; not just click "Check Out".
This displacement is so poetically encapsulated in Triangle of Sadness, after the motley crew gets marooned on the island. The dynamic shift based on life and death priorities effectively spells out how challenging and therefore, valuable a simple task like keeping yourself fed can be.
We are evidently geared for different times. Consider a washer-dryer versus manually doing a load of laundry. With this luxury of time, we should allow ourselves to simmer in one activity in a moment.
A study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London proved that multitasking makes you dumber. Think poor sleeping habits are bad? It's found that multitasking is detrimental to your IQ more severely than losing 40 winks or watching hours of trash TV. Done chronically and it can decrease grey matter density in parts of the brain.
There's no self-help angle here. I could advise to schedule “deep work” at “peak performance time” set away from “distractions” but I'd instead proffer the sinful cliché of a perspective change.
Is it plausible to retrain ourselves to concentrate even amid internal and external interferences? To plan for recreation—in its true sense—the way we do with healthy work practices. In blocks of pure, present, recognition.
In the past, fasting was one religious way to connect to a higher power. Perhaps not only because the devout abstains from sensory indulgence but the absence of needing to hunt/kill/gather/flay/cook/clean likely resulted in hours returned; hours used for quiet meditation. A contemporary equivalent wouldn't be one from bodily grub but mental fodder.
You'd be amazed how long a weekend can be without the Internet. Remove media consumption from leisure and all that’s left is either existential panic at newfound boredom or production. To create. Write, sketch, heck, dance. Explore what the body and mind are capable of. Appreciate the endeavour and how we can afford to partake in it.
Dial down the ambition; we don’t have to do them all. Only one at a time. And for once in a long time, focus.
