Valuing Things On Digital Era — A Lesson From A Burger
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. — Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
It was the night when I just finished making a burger for my dinner. It was a cheap-looking burger with buns, chicken patties and some vegetables which I recently bought from nearest store.
At first, I didn’t want to eat my burger dinner right away. I put my burger besides my laptop on my desk. I keep it still, didn’t bother to eat right away because I still had some task to do. Over twenty minutes later, I look up for the burger next to my laptop, but at the moment again I didn’t bother to eat because I still want to finish the rest of my task. I ignored my hunger for a bit, even my stomach was screaming.
Meanwhile, my burger, you know, it just wandering. It’s a food, of course. But here something that I just realized, while I was doing all the task which I had to do and seemingly important, my burger didn’t care at all.
Yeah, I know. It’s just a food. But hold on, that’s not my point.
My point is, my burger didn’t care of what I was doing even if it just wandering next to me. It totally didn’t give a freaking damn. The funny part is, I as the human, have a desire to look up for it. I can’t resist to not care about my burger. I was hungry at that time, and I saw the burger as a thing with a value. A value to fulfill my desire to eat.
See? You got it?
The keyword is value.
In the modern hyper-connected existence era, people are surrounded by new things made of technology. Do you use Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? If you use one of those things, then good, you are related.
It is a fact and widely accepted that new technologies such as social media and smartphone massively changed how we live in the twenty-first century. Let’s face it, you’re addictive to your phone. You embarrassingly check your phone in continues time even if you have realized that you don’t get anything from it. It just like playing a slot machine, and you constantly do it to just see “What did I get?”. Digital technologies are made for people to use it as long as possible. There’s a whole playbook of techniques that get used to get you using the product as addictive as possible until you didn’t realize.
Techno-apologist
On his book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Cal Newport mentioned about his experience when publicly discussed the concerns of new technologies. Cal wrote:
“Techno-apologists are quick to push back by turning the discussion to utility — providing case studies, for example, of a struggling artist finding an audience through social media, or WhatsApp connecting a deployed soldier with her family back home. They then conclude that it’s incorrect to dismiss these technologies on the grounds that they’re useless, a tactic that is usually sufficient to end the debate. The techno-apologists are right
I couldn’t agree more with Cal. It came down with me when I was starting to delete all of my social media. I reached out some of my friends to tell them that I will no longer available on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Their responds were not casual at all, instead they doubted my act and told me that what I’m doing was wrong. It was funny until I tried to explain why I did that, and what my purpose to get rid all of this internet accessories.
But my fellas still can’t accept truth which I told them. They started to argue and look for other facts to protect their statement and savvy-tech lifestyle. I stopped myself and then told them that they can do whatever they want with their life inside this circle of digital life, but it’s not my thing anymore. I’m out and want to free without it. You can say whatever you want to say, but it’s my final choice.
I never ever regret the choice that I made a couple years ago. It was a great choice, and even more, I can live happy with my choice until now. Life is always has two sides of dissimilarity. It’s not a bad thing at all, instead it’s a good thing so you can deeply understand on which direction your value is towards.
I never hate people who still using social media daily. If they’ve made a choice to do that, and be happy with their choice so it’s fine. My purpose of living without all of these internet accessories is because I didn’t find any value from it when I was using these things. In contrast, some people might gone a different way, they find their own value from these things, and I can’t throw a blame to them. It’s their choice to seek happiness from any instrument of living.
Valuing Things
If you want to get draining by social media exposure, but you can still live happily after with that thing, then just do it. No one will ever stop you. But here’s the things that I want to tell you.
If my burger could stay still and keep the value within itself. Then now, you have to think again. Are you really reaching the value from this digital exposure or you just absolutely can’t define the value of yourself?
We are arrived on the misconception of valuing things. Especially, on this digital era. These days, society is blinded by the culture brought to them through the digital world. With the huge melting pot and field of opinion, we tend to get distracted so much. The universe of one and zero makes us can’t stand on our opinion anymore. There is always an invisible barrier to cut off the principle of our own. Other people’s judge, comment, like and share to gain more positive nor negative exposure. Those are the things we live for right now, right in these days society.
Technologies, media social exposure and digital life; those things should become just a thing. A thing as a tool, to support something that deeply value, not to become a source of value themselves. A thing which not so important to get distracted for. A thing that could be stopped or left. But here’s the dilemma, the society these days don’t even know how to reach that action and even worst, they don’t know the value of themselves.
A simple beauty of behavior became a world of abstraction. Things such as: doing less with phone and enjoying just the moment, talking face to face with other human being, knowing what you need rather than you want; those things became scarce, new era of digital obsession were developed.
We must change. You must change. Everyone must change. Society that pretend to make a valueless thing valuable must gone. Otherwise, what are we living for anymore, if you just much lesser than a burger?
