26 Mar 2024
The last few days, my mind has been on whether there is any value whatsover to social media. Well, that and the Buddhist concept of emptiness. I deleted my Facebook account at the end of last year. I had promised my Mum that I would keep Facebook so she could see what was happening with her young grandson. I had tried to delete FB in 2010 and she begged me to keep it so she could see what was happening with my son. I agreed, but really wanted to be away from that platform. Mum died last Boxing Day (Xmas Day where she was) and I went on FB and broadcast that I was leaving the platform. That was my last post.
The last few months have been glorious without Facebook! This makes me turn to other social media and question if I need these streams either. I went off Twitter when an unwell person took the helm. That leaves Instagram, Threads and LinkedIn. I have never liked LinkedIn - it feels like Facebook for work. It is one of the the most cringeworthy environments in which I have ever found myself (and that is saying a lot). I rarely log in, so deleting it will probably happen soon, when I can be bothered to log into the site.
Instagram is a place where I share photos and rarely engage others. Social media has always been primarily a place where I broadcast news to loved ones, so I have rarely gotten caught up in the dramas and utter sadness of it all. Over the last days, however, I have found myself getting sucked into suggested reels and they seem to be some of the saddest things I have ever seen. People try to become “influencers” by claiming to be brave to not dye their hair past a certain age - wow. People air out all of their relationship issues in attempts to gather followers. I have wondered what life must be like if you are 50+ and you are acting like a 20 year old. If you haven’t created more substance in your existence at 50 than the colour of your hair, well . . .
It could be argued that these reflections are somehow insensitive, but I would suggest that life is going to be very sad for you if you - as a mature adult - are fixating on dead protein strands on your scalp.
Combined with this has been my continuing considerations of emptiness in Buddhism. Emptiness is not non-existence. It is not the absence of matter. It is understanding how everything depends on everything else (dependent arising) and has no separate existence.
Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there’s anything lying behind them.
This mode is called emptiness because it is empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience in order to make sense of it: the stories and worldviews we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that the questions they raise—of our true identity and the reality of the world outside—pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.
Source: https://tricycle.org/magazine/what-do-buddhists-mean-when-they-talk-about-emptiness/, Accessed 26 March 2024
When I see such fragile egos on social media, I try to imagine how such suffering might be alleviated. Perhaps it could be argued that a “stronger” ego might be what is required. That, somehow, people need to develop stronger senses of self. Would that really help? If you base your ego on your work, you will someday retire. If you base your ego on your intellect, that too will fade. What is a solid foundation? Perhaps a different approach is needed - a focus on the ultimate emptiness of the ego. The ego has no real foundation and is an attempt to grasp things to make us feel significant, from jobs to clothes to hair and body shape.
Perhaps the cure for the ills of social media is a focus on dependent arising and emptiness.
Perhaps deleting social media accounts is a step in the right direction. I will soon be down to Instagram and that might either be deleted or made inactive from lack of use. We shall see!
Aroha nui,
Lee Sturgis
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