If You Are Obsessed With Being Popular, It Means You Have An Underdeveloped Consciousness
How to Deal with the Shadow Side of Social Media
I woke up this morning with so many thoughts in my head. For my Macbeth paper, I need to point out that Shakespeare uses soliloquies to remind the audience that much of the action in the play is unfolding through the psychic apparatus of the protagonist. In my dream last night, there was some serious alchemy going on: I was working at a booth at a country fair selling homeopathic remedies and a male friend of mine who is very sweet and gentle was involved. But, inevitably, my thoughts turned to questions of a personal nature in the mundane world and finally veered right on to my new Medium page and the stories I’m publishing here. I’m very new to Medium, as I am new to genuine involvement in other “social media” sites. What I mean by genuine involvement is that I am bringing to bear all that my awakened soul and the entirety of my intellect can muster in any creative endeavor. In other words, I am not using these tools mindlessly.
The soul is a meeting ground between material reality and internal reality and this includes the daily interactions we have with our digital media worlds. Indeed, every event in the outer world, whether digital or not, must be taken inward to the soul realm to be recognized and assimilated. Trying to live life in a mindless state of automatic response just means that we aren’t really real, we’re like avatars in a video game — we’re holograms, not really there at all. This situation of not really being real is a very common occurrence in today’s “modern world” and I mention it because I think this state of half-awareness is what gives birth to popular culture and drives the obsession with being popular and famous.
As my thoughts turned to Medium I began to wonder what it means to have fans (I have zero) and what that hands clapping icon next to my story is (again, no claps). I realized that these are the mechanisms by which Medium operates like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: they are the equivalents of Likes, Retweets, Shares. Then there is the “stats” section under your profile area where you can check to see how many people have read your stories. While I see the necessity in tracking systems like these for marketing purposes, I feel, in truth, that they ultimately relate to the question of popularity. As is quite apparent to everyone by now, the human tendency is to desire more and more likes and whatnot on all of one’s digital offerings throughout the day and week and month. When these are not forthcoming the result is usually a sense of diminishment, not just in your own ideas about your personal worth, but also in other people’s ideas about your worth. Worth and value are now being judged by the level of popularity exhibited on social media sites.
But there is one huge problem with this metric and that is that popular means ordinary. Things that are popular are notorious for being pretty average. That is because most people are fairly average. Why would we have words like “exceptional,” “extraordinary,” or “outstanding” if we didn’t mean that certain things and certain people stand apart (and possess a higher or deeper quality) from what the masses and pop-culture deem worthy? There appears to be this notion that being popular equals being good, equals being talented, but it’s not always a direct correlation like that. Beyoncé is good, but she’s ordinary. She’s an ordinary product of a popular culture that prizes ostentatiousness. She is worlds away from Leonard Cohen, for example.
I’m not saying ordinary is bad. I’m just saying it’s ordinary. So when we strive to be popular on social media, we are striving to be ordinary and I don’t think this truth is readily understood.
Striving to be ordinary is not a problem in and of itself. But if we are really honest with ourselves we’ll be able to admit that the last thing we want is to be ordinary. Everyone ultimately wants to be extraordinary. Everyone wants to be adored and showered with attention and told how marvelous and special they are and how the world simply cannot live without them and their amazing talent. Compulsively seeking more attention on social media all day is how many feed and nurture this secret desire. But this is a very dangerous road to take because in this process we aren’t grounding down into the deeper, more mature side of consciousness, we are rather grounding down into the inherently shallow and flimsy ego-self. The ego will do whatever it has to do to fit in and be popular — loved and adored. That is all it wants. But true talent and true creativity can only be accessed by a consciousness that lies beyond this realm.
If we want to be really good, and perhaps extraordinary, we need to move away from the masses and the popularity-obsessed hordes of mindless clickers. I’m sorry if it sounds harsh, but it’s true. We live in a world where justice is delivered on Twitter through mob rule. Giving too much power to mass-mindedness is always a recipe for disaster and we can’t sit here and be good germans while the whole of humanity is absorbed into an immature and undifferentiated mass of popular media expression. Now more than ever it’s necessary that we each go our separate ways and discover for ourselves the deeper meanings and mysteries of life. Sustained exploration of the inner world is what yields awe-inspiring creativity, and what’s more, the creative product in itself is enough. Our world is so shallow and money-grubbing. And this is the world we turn to for validation of self-worth and artistic integrity? I don't think so!
It’s worth examining these issues a little more carefully. I notice the creature of vanity stirring in my heart when I look at the stats and I have to remind myself that I am writing and sharing my work because it is what my soul requires of me. I am not doing it to gratify my creepy little ego. Seeking attention is always an enterprise of the ego. And I don’t believe nurturing an egotistical enterprise is ever the way of the true artist. Maybe we can stop clamoring for attention from the masses and start clamoring instead for attention from the realm of the soul where creativity comes from. This would mean turning away from the desperate procurement of likes and clicks toward an intense engagement with the inner world of dreams, fantasies, and all the tremendous psychic occurrences that are continually bubbling beneath the surface of our lives. These energies are seeking our attention while we obsess over what the faceless masses think of us. It’s like having a vault filled with gold and never opening it, instead wandering around aimlessly in a sea of poverty.
I don’t believe in following the crowd. I think everyone needs to strike out on their own and go on a long-term expedition into the wild country of their own soul. This is the only way the world will change into a peaceful place. Because when your energy is focussed on inner growth, you will stop supporting and promoting sociopolitical and cultural systems that generate division and stupidity. You will start to respect others because you will see how complex the soul is and how hard life really is. Only through deep mutual respect of one another’s lots as humans who suffer can we ever hope to achieve an enlightened and peaceful world. This is another reason I think chasing after clicks and likes is a shallow egoic enterprise. This world of ours is in serious trouble and we all need to wake up now. This means putting aside childish ego concerns. Making art and beauty for the sake of adding it to the world stew is a wonderful reason to do what you are good at doing and creating. We can all do what we do not because we are insecure and we need attention, but because the world needs more love, more beauty, more music, more art and we are mature enough to do what needs to be done now for the good of all beings everywhere.
