Social Media is a Return to Roots

On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

NOT all changes are meant to make life more efficient.

It could be that it is more of a top priorities change and what is a search for efficiencies basically morph into finding the shortest route to making a quick buck. A plan requiring perseverance, diligence and the correct way of doing things is now replaced by a scheme.

NOT all things change for the better. (Cure is worse than the ailment)

Take a look at agriculture for example. Sure, we have built dams, tractors and other devices to enable us to harvest more crops in less time. Yet, given the situation now, seems like we're far off worse than before if you look at statistics on world hunger. Those processing plants may be giving off more carbon that would basically kill off the people who are supposed to be the consumers. Well, you may argue that the new tools are about giving people more time to do other things. Question is, are those new things about helping more people or about helping themselves to more profit in detriment to self and community? Or shall we say feeding the greed.

Social media isn't new

Sure, it isn't. What actually is new is 'traditional media'. Since it is the one we've been exposed to since we started make full use of our faculties, this generation considers as sort of the de facto. Newspapers, TV and radio have surrounded us like a huge net of information filter meant for us to be more knowledgeable and stay well-informed. Most of us devour it 'hook, line and sinker' without question. Guess, what? Most of these so called info are actually marketing pitches and at worse, propaganda.

Re-birth

We are born into social media through the stories we hear and pass on. As babies and kids, we listen to stories. We learn them by heart and consciously and subconsciously, learn about their subtle meanings as well. We pass it on to other kids and store it in the recesses of our memory only to retrieve it back again upon the twilight of our lives in search for true self.

Social media is the way ancestors pass on news and spread word about things. They pass on knowledge across generations and tribes by telling stories validated by their lives. Foremost among those stories which still remain with us today are tales of heroism or even everyday banter about cures for common ailments, how to till the land or how and when to get a good catch. (Maybe they were really trying to tell us back then that 'comets are bad' judging by the supposed myths about it.). It may not be as idyllic as we ought to believe but it is way better than the lies people in power come to perpetrate nowadays.

Truth is the root

There's lot of talk about harnessing the power of social media because it looks like the in-thing. Yet the true power of social media is being able to peel away the embellishments and going to the core. If people find value in the labor or the product then well and good. Information will spread among communities who find connections across lands they don't even have the faintest idea who or what they look like. It isn't about popularity in an instant. It's about patience and nurturing and the belief that value takes time. To think otherwise, might just be to corrupt it and people as well.

Good thing about it is that people will eventually find out. One just has to look at the roots.