Suffice to say, I think it's obvious that it has been a hot moment since the last time any real inspiration struck me. I've touched on why in at least one previous post from many years ago--that thinking of the world and of existence requires a higher level of thought than is often available to us during the daily grind. If you must hunt and gather continuously to find food for subsistence, physical tangible food or else intellectual or emotional sustenance, you do not have the structure in place that allows you the time to delve into the higher levels of existence. If memory serves me, and I'm not entirely certain it does, I had basically surmised that those who have to struggle for air rarely can oxygenate the intellect enough to stimulate new understandings of ideas. It has been such a very long time for me between said events. Inspiration has found a way to strike however, and it is this.
Humankind, and indeed all of nature as we know it, is in a constant struggle. We've labelled this "survival of the fittest", though this is not entirely accurate. It's rather more like survival of the lucky, or perhaps the opportune. The idea of fittest and what we on the surface believe it to mean are different things. It has nothing to do with the most intelligent or most athletic or most--in one way or another--equipped to pass on your genes. Fittest is simply a catch all. It is a label of the amalgamation of all survivals to happen. Nothing more and nothing less. For whatever the reason may have been that survival occurred, it did occur and thereby makes that entity the "fittest" in that situation, at that time.
I sense I'm splitting hairs however. It will be more clear as I progress. Life as we know it is in a constant state of competition. From humans to yeast cells in your next sourdough. Each wants the best possible outcome in any and all situations. "Survival of the 'fittest'" as I mentioned. Remember, too, that in life the best possible outcome rarely happens as the culmination of all possibilities weighs heavily against the possibility of one specific outcome occurring as opposed to any number of a possibly infinite other outcomes occurring. That is to say, it's far easier to pull hay out of a haystack than the needle. That said, statistically it does happen from time to time.
Unlike yeast cells, at least so far as we know, we humans have the ability to comprehend our own existence. We can "see" the rules. That is, we can see cause and surmise effect. We may be clouded in our judgement of effect (or result if you'd rather) by our emotional attachment to a different outcome, our past experiences, simple error, a lack of a full understanding of the circumstances, or frankly any number of other reasons. Yet, we can perceive our existence. Whether that perception is more or less flawed is up for debate on any given day, but it is certainly ever elusive in my opinion.
Nothing I've said so far is all that revolutionary. Perhaps it is better understood as a result of your reading it. Perhaps my ability with words and my ability to convey meaning with them has increased your understanding of the aforementioned concept--survival of the fittest. Maybe it hasn't. Maybe you have a better understanding of it than I do. Or maybe you think you do. At any rate, it doesn't matter. You'll take from what I say that which you, though your lens--tinted by your experience--, suggests you should. This leads me to wonder further about the concept of free will, but that is a discussion for another time. How indeed can your will be free if it is dictated by your desire to survive and simultaneously your tinted perception of what choices would be best for survival? But, I must digress. There are other observations to be made tonight...
Social media is in effect a means of control. In the past fifteen years or so we have seen the growth of what we can broadly describe as "Web 2.0", which was in essence the creation of the internet consciousness of humankind. It is different though similar to the worlds described in any number of science fiction works of the past generation , though each inaccurate in the eventual design of the system, they are remarkably able to see the intent of it. I am not being clear. Ready Player One, Ender's Game, The Matrix... These are examples of world building in which a human consciousness becomes prevalent online. There are many more, but you get the point I hope. Rather, you understand the beginning of my premise, now several paragraphs deep.
We have become a world of social media consciousnesses. We live a great deal of our lives online. From Instagram to TikTok to this forum and that, our existence has broken beyond the barrier of the digital world. A part of who we are is melted into the social media consciousness. And, these platforms that we use daily encourage that behavior. They encourage use. Even something like TikTok that offers you suggestions to put it down and come back later, is in essence encouraging you to continue in the long term at the cost of the short term.
This point brings me to the crux of this essay. Where are the creators of these platforms? Does Jeff Bezos spend his day writing Amazon reviews? Does Mark Zuckerberg spend his day arguing politics in the comments of a linked article on his Wall that has little to no genuine impact on himself? Do the creators of Google spend their days clicking on ads on a Geocities page with 8-bit flashing animations? That that latter statement mixes Google and Yahoo isn't relevant, I just find the thought amusing. The point is, that they don't. They've already survived. They've gotten their best possible outcome of a situation in years past and have moved onto the next battle.
But what do I mean "they've survived". What struggle? Survival of the fittest. Like serfs to manor lords, like employees to employers, like followers to messiahs, they have won. They have won because they were able to profit from your time, time which you have given them willingly in fact. The more time you spend on social media, the more they can monetize that time. The more they monetize your time, the more they profit. And profit they do. At the expense of everyone else
Remember, your time is finite. That is what gives it value. Scarcity creates value. They only have so much time to themselves, but long ago, at the dawn of civilization or even before, we in our ability to understand our own existence have learned that we can manipulate others to give us a share of their time too. If we didn't give our time to Facebook or Snapchat or whatever social media, it, like Sears or the telgraph or AIM, would cease to have any value whatsoever. Just as corporations take some of our time in exchange for less than it's worth (so that they profit off of it), so too do social media companies. Walmart makes money because the conditions are tipped in their favor to do so. The same is true for Fox News. The same is true for Disney. The same is true for anyone and everyone to a similar, albeit lesser degree.
Life is a peacock strutting to a peahen. We hock our wares to the interested buyer to make a profit, to survive. A great many of us will only inevitably have our time to bargain with and nothing or little else. And as mentioned, the cards are stacked against us in this deal. We receive back from that exchange for our time, to varying degrees less of what we want than what that time is worth. Sometimes we are able to make something that appeals to the masses more effectively than our time. Sometimes our strut is grand enough to excite others to give us their time. That hype is what social media creators feed on. Indeed it is how they feed themselves. Yet, they are confined to the social media of their own choosing and the can only draw from that well to feed themselves. The Youtuber profits based on the proliferation of their content on Youtube. Their presence in the mutual fund market would be, if at all, tangentially affected by this. Why is this important? They receive profit based on how much time they receive from others. But they are not in charge either. In reality, they receive a cut of the profit of that time. Youtube's parent company, Alphabet, actually is the one that profits. You simply give them your time and they give you back a lesser portion of remuneration and pocket the rest.
None of this is groundbreaking. It's been happening since humankind first began to comprehend existence. The forms have changed over the years, but the same basic model continues to pervade. The fittest is the person or persons at the end of the day whom the collective efforts of all the others trickle up to. In the Internet Age you have your Jeff Bezos' and Mark Zuckerberg's just the same as Industrial Age had Andrew Carnegie's and John Rockefeller's. These people are, by an large, simply the highest person on the mountain, the one who stands on everyone else. They are, by definition, the fittest.
Yet, this isn't some age old conspiracy of a collective group of wealthy individuals. The players do change, yet as a whole, the fittest evolve. One may depart as an industry or poor decisions or happenstance occurs and another may be admitted to that "club", to that criteria that defines the "fittest". Many mistakenly assume that this means that there is an overarching group that seeks to control everything. There isn't. There is however an overarching desire to be the fittest. They will band together to keep their collective positions, and have done so throughout history. Look at the number of American presidents that are related in one way or another. Or movie stars. Or the crowned heads of Europe. Or any number of other groups that represent the "fittest" currently or in years past. The powerful will band together to suppress others from dislodging them from below. At the same time, they will in the same breath seek to dislodge those around them. Survival of the fittest requires one to come out on top. This general observation explains the sum total of all of politics ever anywhere in the world.
The takeaway here isn't that you need to upset the system or upend it, though given the chance we all would. Survival of the fittest after all. My point is simply to suggest that you are but a brick in someone else's wall. Yet, if happenstance or luck should have it and your best possible outcome should present itself, take it. And don't forget where you come from. Yet it seems you will forget, if history has shown us anything, the powerful always choose to forget that they were once a brick in someone else's wall. Or, perhaps, they choose even more firmly to squeeze those bricks down on their own wall, so as to maintain their position for fear of returning to their previous position. But I digress, this isn't relevant to my point.
Your time is valuable. More so than you think. Keep this in mind as the next age is dawning... the "metaverse".
