“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.” —Sylvia Plath
Though written decades back and in a completely different context, yet Sylvia Plath, the famous visionary poet has perfectly surmised the feeling of millennial in this one line. We are standing at a crucial juncture as a generation where we are in need of nothing. From material comfort in life to the most progressive forms of communication, from the ease of living to the excess of diversion, everything for us is just a click or a swipe away. But have you considered the fact that at some point of time, we will come to a place where we will need nothing and that, the particular aimlessness of future can be the real destruction for us, the millennial?
Digital Revolution and Our Lives
It is only the natural course of time that we as a civilization will make progress. The process of that progress is continuous. From the day of its inception, we have been striving to lead a better life that offers ease, comfort, and affluence as our basic needs. Now think about it; from being a flock of cavemen, we started forming a society. From inventing fire to inventing the wheel and then eventually inventing basic machines that can make our works easier and faster, we have been constantly progressing till what we are at this particular moment. Now, consider, how much time did it take for us to reach this place. The concept of civilization, the concept of society, the concept of religion and ethnicity, the idea that led to many discoveries which eventually became of series of inventions or rather Science, as to how we prefer to call it today, we have been through everything. We discovered media and communication. We came up with the concept of war and treaties.
At the same time, we came up with technology and all the advantages it has to offer. So, if you start tracing back the footprints, the fact that you will realize is that in the last ten years, we have come a long way. When ten years back, we were basking in the glory of the invention of social media, now, we are dominated by it. Just like Matt Haig puts in Notes on a Nervous Planet, “It sometimes feels as if we have temporarily solved the problem of scarcity and replaced it with the problem of excess.”
The Theory of Satisfaction and Its Effect of Economy
If you ponder over the question of why we, as a society, need work, you will come up with different and varied answers, depending on the age you belong to. If you are in the era of prehistoric society, work was the way of survival. With time, work became a lot of things, means to earn more, engaging in productivity, fulfilling the basic needs with the wages earned from work, contributing in the development of the society and country, and finally to improve our lifestyle. But in the current era, often the necessity of work seems to be fulfilled for many which are eventually resulting in the mediocre workforce all over the world that are too habituated with the fashion of working like a machine. When a writer like Matt Haig puts in Notes on a Nervous Planet, “Happiness is not good for the economy.
We are encouraged, continually, to be a little bit dissatisfied with ourselves,” it becomes pretty much clear where we are going wrong. Too much of satisfaction with the economy is resulting in poor productivity. And for civilization, there can be no other curse than this.
Poor Productivity leading to Dependence on Machine
No matter how common mediocrity becomes, to maintain the balance of civilization, you cannot stay stagnant. But when you are unable to motivate yourself to produce something new, how will you offer something better? From this fundamental question, we can find how fast we are becoming dependent on machines. When we, millennial are trusting machines for all our work, precisely from waking up in the morning to preparing food, from transporting to conducting daily business, it is only a natural fear that someday, machines, specifically computers will take up our jobs. And thanks to the invention of AI (artificial intelligence), these machines won’t need any manual handling either.
So, now from here, the question arises that what we will do as millennial?
Reduced Attention Span and Challenges of Concentration
Believe it or not, the human being is a species that comes with the most potent machine in the world already built in them, our subconscious mind. After our seven years of age, this part of the mind stops developing on itself. It needs regular training since then so that it can work in sync with the universal energy.
Now, if we take a look at our current status as a whole, what can we find? We are a race that lacks the motivation to work or produce. We are a species with a very limited attention span that is of 8 minutes on an average. We are constantly anxious and depressed given the recurring deterioration of the world around us and paradoxically we are responsible for it. So, you can conclude that we as a race are living in constant negativity or so we have started to believe.
Using Subconscious Mind to Gain Everything Back
Now, let’s face a fact. Why did we invent machines, science, and technology? Obviously, to claim control of the world. However, we have come under the control of these inventions and we are letting them dictate us. How can we reverse the situation? Simple. All we have to do is train our subconscious mind and affirm that we are still in control.
No, you cannot win this war against our own deeds overnight. And for that, going back to the roots is the best way. After all, this is from where we have started. You might ask here how we can motivate ourselves when this mediocrity is already fulfilling our basic needs. Well, the answer is simple. Look beyond your basic needs of ease and comfort. Your demand for economic affluence is definitely serious and should be taken care of. But don’t you think that living just for the sake of some pure happiness is necessary too? To create such positivity around you, to reduce the dependence on machines and computers and even on your Smartphone, to again aim for excellence, all you have to do is find happiness and satisfaction in something that materials cannot offer. How? In Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig says, “Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
Find beauty around you. And more often inside you. A human being is the most glorious creation of nature. And millennials are actually walking away from that fact. We are filling our space with so much artifice that we are depriving ourselves of truth and beauty. So, let’s echo the words of John Keats that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Let’s believe in the fact that we are not controlled by our inventions. If our discoveries take control over us, if our computers take over our jobs, then we can discover more, create more opportunity. The world is infinite and so we are.
