Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 0:51
The Problem with Discourse These Days
What do you think are the problems with discourse these days? I largely think it is this ability to make everything about us rather than the topic at hand. Let me know. Yeah
It's not entirely, because if you look at infants, they will cry when another baby is crying. And there's an innate empathy there. So I don't know exactly what's going on, but it seems so strange. And I think it's very easy then, to weaponize against people the excessive individualism, because you can manipulate their emotions, you can manipulate how they get their dopamine hits and then it's no longer questions about solving bigger issues or looking at ideas and so on
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 0:46
I think I agree with you. It is radical individualism that is causing a lot of these problems. And it absolutely makes sense why that's the case, because once we teach it, it's difficult to unteach it, and then it's going to manifest itself in different ways and forms all over the place. And one of those is making everything about us. Right. Because that in and on itself, is what the I would say flipside is of individualism when we compare it to collectivism
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Arya Sunyata
@theheartdrive · 5:00
And I just having grown up in a culture that's so intensely individualistic and getting backlash from other cultures that aren't kind of tells me it's not about the individualism. It's about the capacity for critical thinking and separating self from what is thought. Thank you both for raising such wonderful points. There's a lot to think about
And when that wasn't the case, they didn't know what to do with that. Just as I didn't know what to do with the strong emotions coming back, the personal attachment to their thoughts or ideas. So I've learned I still fumble this, but I'm learning let's say to avoid certain conversations where the topic could potentially be more interwoven with the person and who they see themselves to be
Arya Sunyata
@theheartdrive · 5:00
It's interesting what you're pointing out, that you thought this would have been more of a brainwiring thing. And I'll have to think about that too. I think we are taught as children to either think critically about things or not. And I think there is a definite cultural element in terms of how much we are allowed to question things. Things. In some cultures it is highly encouraged. In others it is highly discouraged. And in some cultures there are elements of shame around questioning
Maybe that sounds terrible, but not in the way that I want to dig into not just my own ideas, but others thinking as well. Tell me, what are you curious about in this world? The other day I went down a rabbit hole of how does the system work with respect to mail? I was waiting for a package to arrive and I was thinking how much of this is automated and how much of this isn't? And then reading articles, watching videos
Arya Sunyata
@theheartdrive · 5:00
You raise a really good point and this relates back to Benati's question about discourse. If you have no reward system for having dialogue and you are not aware it could just be as simple as you just don't know. People just don't know that it's possible to have a debate without any form of attack. That difference does not equate conflict and challenge does not equate fight. This is something that you're taught
I mean that's how social media sort of built its monstrosity and continues to thrive. But I wonder if I got to think on that some more and of course there are some that will say this is an evil awful thing
Arya Sunyata
@theheartdrive · 4:58
Anyway, the point is, if there isn't a positive mechanism to having an open mind, much of the human, I guess orientation that I can see has no disposition towards having an open mind. It tends to be the minority rather than the majority. Otherwise you wouldn't see things like these mass movements of just politics and hate just spewed into the form of social narrative. If there were a propensity to having an open mind, we'd see a very different world. We don't
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 5:00
I think those of us who have access to education, who have access to environments where rethought is allowed and I do realize that when we have an Internet connection and when we have the kind of life we do have, it's easy to, I suppose, assume that everyone else has those things available with them. Right? Because I started with nothing just like them and look where I am. Those very rudimentary reasoning
It doesn't foster encourage, it requires more initiative on the individuals, I suppose, to build up relationships and so on, where I have found more people to have conversations with in social audio. Swell being one of them. Clubhouse is a strange one. Their algorithm is based on who you follow and what they have written in their profile. So it'll take keywords or things out of there to create and maybe even the clubs they follow. I don't know