Social Media & The Thirst For Significance
The un-acknowledgement of self is a dangerous thing. When you fail to acknowledge your own worth and value, you will search around the world, travel every country and crevice, all to find that which will acknowledge you.
There will be a thirst. An insatiable one. And this thirst will drive you. And for some, this thirst will drive them to do desperate things––out of desperation for approval, acknowledgement and the feeling of significance.
It is a nasty little predicament that incarcerates a human being when under its influence. But, more disheartening is the fact that the entire drama of it is all to replace your un-acknowledgement of self. This happens when we have left ourselves completely barren of our own love and respect.
Social media. Our Instant Grams, Book of Faces, Snapping Chats and Twitterings are having an interesting effect upon us. Log onto IG right now and count the number of young women taking scantily clad photos of themselves to arouse the interest of strangers they don’t even know. Notice the young women’s thirst to be thirsted after. Why is that? What is that really about? It is about esteem and chemicals––biochemicals.
These communication apps are not always used as devices of communication but devices of ‘approval addiction.’ If you’ve ever seen a laboratory rat who has been made addicted to heroin by his observers, you will see the same compulsive behaviors of these addicted rats happening in humans––in the social media laboratory that Silicon Valley is watching us through.
And when your “good feeling” is only released when another person or group of persons dictates it to be released, you become the addict and they become the drug provider.
This reality affects teenage users of social media more than any. Teenage life is a time when a developing human is in the process of abandoning one tribe (his or her family) and seeking entry into a new tribe––their peer group.
For 11 years or so, the developing human fed from the approving accolades of their families while avoiding their emotional banishment, whenever the child did something disapproving to the tribe. When the child did something pleasing to the group, the child would receive its form of a ‘pat on the head ‘or a ‘rubbing of the belly,’ to feel good about the good it did or achieved. The child feels good about itself when the tribe feels good about the child. Meaning, the child has become a dependent––an emotional dependent––but deeper, a chemical dependent.
Feeling good about one’s self has a biochemical partner in the brain. Feeling good is not just emotional, but chemical. And when your “good feeling” is only released when another person or group of persons dictates it to be released, you become the addict and they become the drug provider.
This does not happen because they choose to be your drug dealer, this happens because of how you position yourself, inwardly, in hierarchy with them.
They control you. Not because they want control of you or need it, but because you refuse to take control and dominion of yourself. You refuse to be your own supplier of esteem and validation.
There is a reason you hear the oft repeated phrase of, “First, love thyself.” It is because “love” and approval, and accolades, and self-value, and personal worth and all of those other things that gives a human of sense of significance is critically important to the emotional and psychological stability of a human.
But when we leave the getting and dispensing of this crucial element in the hands of another person, peoples, place or thing, we go a little insane. We become a little emotional or psychologically unstable––or a whole lot.
Stay vigilant and aware of what drives you. Stay cognizant of what thirsts you may have. Then quench your thirsts from your own cup first. You don’t want to be an addict to a person or group. And a group or person doesn’t want an addict around always seeking to siphon them for a substance the person innately has––but refuses to give to themselves. You have permission to love thyself.
If you simply acknowledge that you are a creation of the Supreme Intelligence that created all that is, in perfection, you will know that you are born significant and have no need to seek significance.
Chill.
Know.
And ‘BE.’
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
