Recently, with the global lockdown effect we started to observe or feel “fomo” very commonly.
Fomo, with a very simple explanation, is the fear of missing out. Missing out of recent trends, recent habits, recent way of livings. If you start observing the tendency of similar posts or videos that have been served to your attention, you will quickly catch the similarities between them. Looks like there is a hidden hand or brain that choose what would be the agenda for the world, for all of us. We even have a new occupation which makes it more official,“influencers”.I am not against of influencers, I am sure there are great ones amongst them. But my intention is to question the fact that do we really need artificial agendas to make decision about how we live our life or not?
Back in March this year we started to see a tendency of people who make their own bread at home. Being self-sufficient and produce your own thing is one of the strengths that I really admire and there is obviously nothing wrong with that. But can you explain to me why we are all baking multi grain breads or banana breads at most?
Regardless of our cultural background, regardless of our grand mum has a secret receipt or not, from west to east why we are choosing to bake banana bread?
The basic answer is FOMO. Because if my friends are doing it and I am not doing it I am behind of them! Nobody wants to be behind, feeling of belonging to the tribe is one of our basic needs since Maslow, right?
And this is where the danger begins for our humanity. The moment I convince myself that I am behind of my friends because I am not baking banana bread, I am ignoring my authentic capacity to create something else. Not something better or worst but something else… I simply close my frontal cortex which might potentially help me to create a new flavor of bread.
When Darwin mentioned that it is the one that can best adapt and adjust to the changing environment who will survive, I don’t think that he was only talking about our adaptability to the new era or new expectations of the world from us.
Our free will is our unique power as humanity that we have to maintain. The moment our freewills have been manipulated by “others”, we start becoming more “similar”. And it makes life easier for AI to manipulate or predict our behaviors. When we have been surrounded with similar ideas, characters and perspectives even not fully belong to us we are using our ability to use empathy to the different, to use our free will and to bring our authenticity to the table.
When you observe the nature, you can’t see two fully similar trees with each other and also you will see that, growing is not one way only. Growing is always two ways, one from the roots, one from the branches. If you have strong roots your branches also become stronger.
Therefore, it is very important to be aware of our authentic potential, even you don’t know how to use it, just start with being aware of your thyself and making conscious decisions based on your own will without falling into the social media traps. Keep your freewill free!
Stay safe.
