Anonymity and the Internet
Virtually all the problems are caused by anonymity — and actually there’s very little gained by it.
The objective in life is not to be more anonymous but better known — and that is why people even try to become famous, for no good reason.
Anonymity merely reinforces that you are nobody — and have to live in fear of being known, and having your thoughts revealed for who you truly are, and what you really think. Most people have bought into this negation of their own selves and being — as though it was some kind of a value.
Freedom of speech also implies the right to be known — for that speech, but if you can only say such things under the cloak of anonymity, then there is no freedom but the fear that prevents any freedom.
So if we are to move into the next step in freedom, we have to let go of this “protection” of anonymity, and when we do, virtually all the problems on the Internet disappear — because legitimate people are not inhibited and restricted from what they will do, while all the criminal and sociopaths are.
There is very little to be lost and everything to be gained — but the old media status quo is vested in anonymity because they want to reserve the right to determine who is well-known and who is not, as they are probably the greatest perpetrators of the “anonymous sources” control of information.
That’s the paradigm shift of the Information Revolution — and not just MORE of the same.
The fear of being known, is also the much deeper fear of knowing oneself — and that is the great prohibition of the mass (anonymous) society.
So everyone pretends to be somebody they aren’t, rather than in being who they are — and being known as that person.
So while initially the Internet has caused an explosion in the participation of the traditional manner, in order for it to evolve to the next step of usefulness and validity, people have to be known — which doesn’t mean that everybody will be a celebrity. It will still be very difficult for people to be known, or for other people to want to get to know them.
But there is vastly more to be gained by this self-knowledge that the continuing deception of who one is to everyone else — and ultimately, to oneself, which is the greatest illusion and delusion of all.
posted by Mike Hu @ 12:44 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I think this issue of anonymity and the Internet is really the pivotal question of these times -- because it is redefining who we are in the emerging new world consciousness. Will it continue to be the world of mass anonymity with a few overexposed celebrities and those who are the most ruthless and unashamed who get known?
The "average" person has a real problem with this notion of "being known" -- for who they truly are. That's one of the great crossroads that define the full and fulfilled life in the future -- that was mostly not possible before.
People lived in fear of being known -- and the unions institutionalized that mindset -- in not standing out, not sticking one's neck out, conforming to the political correctness.
So when people can be known, many will not rise to that opportunity -- just as many prisoners offered freedom will not take advantage of it but find the first opportunity to earn their way back in.
A lot of people don't want freedom because that means accountability and responsibility -- and they'd rather have the demagogues of the world do their thinking for them. They want to be manipulated and deceived -- anything but allowed and required to think for themselves.
Obviously, this is a very important leap in the development of human consciousness and actualization -- that only a few are ready for. But because of the new network of communications and information, they are no longer battling the entire human tradition alone.
Although the most self-actualized are still the one in a thousand, those one in a thousand use the Internet most prolifically and even dominate it and determine the course of its development -- because sheer numbers do not dictate its course in the old mass media manner that limited the participation.
Finally, in this development, commercial success is not the end-all and be-all of its activities -- in the way that conventional society was dominated by. Many do what they do for the sheer joy of self-expression -- and that is the troubling challenge for the dominant institutions of the past to deal with.
What if the competition (alternatives) is not motivated only by money and gain -- but also by possibilities and expression? This is not an alien world or concept but actually a new renaissance of a more whole and balanced existence that humankind has known before -- as the best of times.
The last several decades has actually been a perversion of professionalism overriding all -- that has been unique in history and evolution. Because of the rise in "professional" education, this preoccupation with doing things only for the money, distorted human society and culture to an inordinate degree, and so a lot of forces in the development of culture -- like art, leisure, religion, spiritual and human development were minimized and derided to this prevailing secularism.
For those who know how to look for these things, this culture clash is really the big news that "old media" is powerless to report on even though it is changing the world they used to dominate and dictate.
They have no language for describing "process" -- only for labeling in static categories and boxes (pigeonholing). That's why it is so important to categorize someone as the left or the right, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat -- because they have no language for consciousness and behavior beyond that.
That is the cutting edge of where news is really happening -- and not the petty struggles over the old remnants that already no longer exist.
Already, the most troubling aspect of contemporary "journalism" is that it no longer involves or describes real life events but is just editorializing on top of editorializing which has little or nothing to do with what is actually going on.
The events depicted, are merely generalizations and studies of fabricated events rather than actually anything real. Polls and studies are the way in which opinions are manufactured as "facts."
Eventually it becomes one indistinguishable quagmire of rumors, innuendos, prejudices, biases, wives tales, and words just to hear the sound of one's own voice.
When they lose their sense of true purpose -- they are just hopelessly lost, wondering why they are even bothering to get up in the morning anymore. Their communications reflect nothing but this confusion; it seems like only yesterrday, there was a meaning to all this.
Taken to extremes, mass media culture is a mental illness that is easily revealed in a world of personalized communications, in which the object is once again, to communicate and share information rather than manipulating the other -- the major objective of mass communications, mass marketing, mass education, mass indoctrination, etc. -- which is ultimately to render any other into the "mass."
That's why that whole "mass" orientation has to fail and be extinguished in the emergence of a more whole and healthful individuals and personalities. In the final phases of its self-destruction, we become more acutely aware of these victims of mass media -- and all their counterproductive behaviors and strategies.
These people invariably believe that the world revolves around them and everything they say -- and so their entire preoccupation is demonstrating that they can get people to believe anything they want them to.
That is the total objective -- and the end in itself. So no matterr what one believes, they must arbitrarily make them believe the opposite -- as a continued display of power, control, domination. It does not matter what the issue is anymore; they just require that sense of total domination and control.
That of course, is the totalitarian personality and cultures of the 20th century (mass media) in which all those tactics are honed to powerful effectiveness until they run into the natural immunity of diversity that is immune to those susceptabilities.
That is the real rationale for diversity -- that it conveys real survival capabilities beyond the average vulnerabilities. That's why a fad will run its course until most -- but not all have succumbed to the madness and hysteria -- except those who are the vanguards of humanity in that particular instance.
"Celebrity" is the opposite of anonymity -- being known as a sheer fact in itself. It leads many to believe that "fame" doesn't not require any other ability to justify itself. It is enough just to be famous in this most superficial of ways -- as though somehow it mattered.
Others think that just because they are on television, everybody else in the world is required to watch that program -- and are shocked when others don't, because they think that control of everybody else's actions, is the control they have in life -- rather than simply their own.
It's not how everybody else responds that is the significance of any action -- but the quality and integrity of one's own. That's what matters -- and the rest is a mental illness of one's own illusions and delusions.
The emerging new consciousness, is actually the cure for mass (media) consciousness -- but in it, one will see all the ills of the old (mass) media culture revealed and played out until it is so obviously absurd, they no longer bother to try to fool anybody else -- and then themselves.
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