I went to Google, typed the phrase ‘disconnected’ and received a series of headlines like this: ‘The reasons why you lose your internet connection’, ‘How to fix the loss of internet connection’, ‘direction How to use the computer to lose wifi connection ‘,’ Why does the internet sometimes suddenly lose connection … ‘.
I was startled to realize a truth: for a long time, every time I think of “connecting”, it seems that modern people often think of concepts such as wifi, internet, social networks, information technology. .. Naturally I wish: in the forest of the above titles, wish there was a title “How to fix the loss of connection with the great narratives”.
Humans have survived up to this point, after all, because of connectivity. Individual men joined gens, individual clans joined together into tribes, individual tribes joined together into nations. By the time of globalization, science and technology take the throne, individual countries can even be hyperconnected to form super nations. Super-national technology manufacturing corporations, super-national pharmaceutical corporations, supranational media corporations – those are long-familiar modern human concepts.
Facebook is also a super-country, Google is also a super-nation, these are new concepts that people have been gradually adopting. Like the ancient tribes, today’s super-states can function only if each of the parts of it were connected to each other. And the tool of the connection is the internet, the wifi, the online meeting software, the dialogue functions of various types of social networks. One cannot imagine what would happen if the entire world lost the internet for about an hour?
Economic, communication damage is obvious, but there are even more devastating losses: a nation or a super-state could face the risk of collapse. Therefore, it is easy to understand that “losing connection to the internet” / “losing connection to wifi” is one of the most permanent obsessions of modern people.
But, not everyone uses the internet in a useful way. Not everyone participates in social media responsibly. From the EU to the US, from Vietnam to Brazil, people are everywhere complaining about fake news – malicious news – bad news spreading on the internet. The falsehood is so terrible that it has contributed significantly to creating an era that researchers call the “post-truth era”, where the nature of the truth is in many cases less important than the fact that it is. launching bad – real information types that hit the crowd’s emotions. Of course, the pre-internet era also had fake news, but it did not have the distribution environment and created many consequences like it is now.
Then again, now people are complaining about this YouTuber snatching the view sentence, causing social pain, tomorrow people complain about another YouTuber making clips poisoning children. It is the nature of the internet that anyone can participate, as long as there is a technological connection. The essence of the social network is that anyone can publish / write articles / comment, either with their real accounts, or with the multitude of virtual accounts that they can create.
Is this a consequence of ineffective educational processes in less civilized countries? Are not! No. of course! Because even the world’s most civilized countries are also having a headache with this problem! These are the inevitable metamorphosis of the first process of contact between real ecosystems and virtual ones? If we believe so, when will this process stop, everything becomes formal and orderly? Looking deeply, on the human scale as a whole (and not just in a few small countries), all these horrible phenomena are probably the inevitable consequence of a human process. away from the great narratives.
From about the late 19th century and before, when performing an action, a person on earth is often dominated by what factors? The first factor is definitely law. Neither was the Middle Aged East or the West, before wishing to marry a person, wanting to join a war or wanting to sacrifice themselves to the gods had to answer the question: whether their actions were appropriate. with local laws / regulations?
But, in addition to the rule of law, there is also the domination of the great narratives, making people face the second question: do our actions violate the standards set by the great narratives? In many cases, the great narratives set strict standards but in many other cases it helped people to be aware of their responsibilities to the race.
Christianity is a great narrative. Buddhism is a great narrative. Islam is a great narrative. Capitalism and communism are also types of great narrative. Believe it or not, believe in each particular narrative is your right, but for sure, people dominated by the narratives often have a higher sense of community responsibility than instinctive people. So researchers believe that it is the great narratives that construct society.
In other words, the narrative creates culture, creates history, creates people with a distinct “human” character. The narrative is a concept associated with postmodern philosophers, can be understood simply as the common / universal things that a community or all humanity has experienced in history. If it is not in the state of “same experience”, it can appear in the state “with hope”, “on the same direction” to create universal values.
When you believe in a great narrative like Buddhism, you will certainly believe in the law of cause and effect. Hundreds of administrative laws in a country will govern your behavior, but the laws of cause and effect will govern your perceptions. Because of the law of cause and effect, you will not be able to do evil. Do not dare to do evil. Do not think about evil. If you believe in a great narrative like Confucianism, you will pursue the qualities of kindness – ceremony – meaning – intelligence – of a gentleman. And, the more people who believe in such great narratives, the more beautiful the human-to-human behavior in a society, the more repulsive an evil evil will be.
By the postmodern era in the West (around the late 19th century), people began to fall into a state of aversion to great narratives. This may come from the harsh rules that some great narratives often make. But, instead of trying to get rid of those constraints, maintaining its proven states of superiority, people tend to break it down.
Philosopher F.Lylotard observed that at that time the “great histories were torn apart,” the fragmentary, local histories simply appeared. Researchers around the world encourage the transition from “great narrative” to “mini narrative”, where social people sink, psychological people emerge, conscious people become roles. side, the human unconsciously becomes the main role. This transition has its reasons, but when it goes from one extreme to the other, contemporary society inevitably sees the disintegration of social constructs. And that disintegration is the germ that creates chaos in the ecosystems that witness human-human compatibility.
“Loss of connection”, if you mention that phrase, people today will definitely think about “lost internet connection” and may shrug their shoulders in fear. But, actually the biggest frightening reality is that people today have somehow lost connection with the great narratives. The stereotypical return to the previous great narratives is certainly not the way out, but selective return – conversion – and renaissance may be the way out? Or, today people can create new great narratives, if not for themselves, also for their descendants in the next tens or hundreds of years.
Losing connection with the great narratives is likely to be one of the greatest human tragedies.
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