(Twenty-minute read)
This is a vast subject which is not possible to address in an 800-word blog.
However, values role’s in our lives and their importance is not always fully understood.
Values are the things that are important to us, the foundation of our lives.
What I am interested in here is exploring the influence of technology and its advancement and how it now relates to the modification of cultural values.
Technology commonly exerts a strong influence on daily practices, changing the way values are carried out with each new development.
Will this in the end ‘kill’ our social cohesion and will groups of people be left out? Or will our social interaction become extensive and will our relationships get better? Are there any common values left?
These are all questions that can’t be answered yet and can only be answered in the future.
Technology is all around us.
It is so pervasive in our everyday life that it is impossible to get away from it.
It has become almost invisible so that most of us don’t know how to interact in the real world or with our environment, but it is how humans are using technology that is so devastating our common values.
Before COVID-19 we were already isolating ourselves from physical contact with smartphones.
The virus has pushed us further apart with social distancing, online education, and social platforms replacing almost all forms of entertainment.
Are we connected better nowadays with social media, or are we worse off?’
One of the aspects of culture and values is social interaction between people. How we behave to one another and in which way we do that. Social media has taken a big role in our social interaction. We no longer have to speak to a person to know what they are doing. We just look on twitter of Facebook.
Social media and smartphones both are turning us into non-empathic couch potatoes and it is this passive use of technology that is the reason technology is ruining not just our values but humanity itself.
With the arrival of COVID-19 ( His “epidemic”) technology isn’t allowing the young generation to truly embrace our humanity while creating a gap between generations.
The real connection such as visual and emotional expressions aren’t shown anymore, because we are looking at a computerized display. This way messages could be understood differently than they should be, because they don’t get to know the real meaning behind the message.
If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest country in terms of population.
Now is the opportunity to realize this and that we must use technology as a tool, not reality.
Our overbearing dependence on technology can be detrimental to society.
It is not the be-all and end-all of everything. Everyone is entitled to their own values, attitudes, and beliefs.
For example. From the outside, the cultural values of a group can often be difficult to understand.
In India, 80% of the population practices the Hindu religion. For the believers of this religion, the figure of the cow is venerated and should not be sacrificed. In western culture, this is a strange cultural value, since cows are a source of food and not of worship.
or
Some people may see great value in saving the world’s rainforests. However, a person who relies on the logging of a forest for their job may not place the same value on the forest as a person who wants to save it.
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Before the coronavirus crisis exploded and confronted us with a life-and-death threat to every corner of our planet those who worked in what could be called taken for granted jobs we not valued neither in money terms or the essential services they provided to us all.
As a result, society discovered new heroes.
Times of crisis bring out the best in us. Superficial concerns fall away and we rediscover what really matters: Our values.
Now that the Pandemic in the western world is coming under control (we hope) and the murder of a colored man in the USA our worldwide values which have been honed by decades of biased history are coming under the spotlight, not just our personal views but societies as a whole.
BUT WHAT ARE THOSE VALUES AND HAVE DUG DOWN TO CORE VALUES AND WILL WE PUT THEM INTO ACTION?
It is easy to compile a list of personnel values and at the same time aspire to universal values of peace, human dignity, equal human rights, and freedom values.
They are at the core of our being. They are our motivators, our drivers, the passion in our hearts, the reason we do the things we do and feel the way we feel. They help us to make better choices in life, develop healthy patterns of behavior, and form and maintain meaningful personal relationships.
They are the compass guiding everything we do – our choices and our actions.
So, if we want to change the world for the better, then we have to change
our own behaviors.
Living by your personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. Your values, after all, are simply the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.
Here are some more questions to get you started:
- What’s important to you in life?
- If you could have any career, without worrying about money or other practical constraints, what would you do?
- When you’re reading news stories, what sort of story or behavior tends to inspire you?
- What type of story or behavior makes you angry?
- What do you want to change about the world or about yourself?
- What are you most proud of?
- When were you the happiest?
Think about our most important values and to act on them.
Living your values is about more than the big, long-term goals, however, it’s also about the small, day-to-day decisions. Putting them into action each and every day will have a powerful impact on our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of the groups and communities we belong to, and the wellbeing of the whole world.
The passive use of Technology is the reason technology is ruining our Humanity.
Why is technology ruining humanity?
The only reason people do things is that life gives them the opportunity to do so. Which by extent, whether they know it or not, implies that people value their life.
Behind every use of technology is a person, as behind every murder, there is also a person.
We are about to pass through a long and very painful period of adjustment which is fraught with danger at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.
As the noose of technological enslavement tightens on humanity will our values have any value?
They say that innovations in technology can save the world and is extending democracy. I say that it is concentrating even more power in the hands of a tiny elite.
Personal Values are formulated by a variety of influences, environmental influences including upbringing, religion, friends, family, peers, and, education not by algorithms, virtual reality.
Until we get better at using technology as a tool I think we’re cooked, we’re going to continue to extinct species and we’re going to continue to dig the hole deeper of the whole eco-social crisis.
If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backward through its production you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there.
You can’t have a smartphone an I pad or use Social media without everything that goes with it. You see mining, transportation, manufacturing, computers, high-speed communications, satellite communications, it’s all there, you see and it’s that techno-industrial culture that’s destroying the world.
The only way we’ll be able to responsibly harness the fruits that technology bears are with a renewed attitude of cooperation and care for the most vulnerable among us.
Technology has given us the tools to reshape how we live in the world; if it also changes the way we interact with our neighbors, it can be transformational.
Technology can inspire progressive social policies. When 62 billionaires have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, it’s clear that political principles are skewed toward the influential in business.
Overall, technology has the potential to reduce suffering, fight disease, and level the playing field for the poor if we use it as a tool, not as values.
Values are immensely powerful!
We know that human history is full of hideous, horrible acts, but it is important it explains why things are the way thy are. The problem is that is it not taught in schools without warts so no one gets a free pass.
History is the past it cannot be changed.
But mature humans don’t live in the past and we need to start seeing each other as fellow humans. If we do so maybe we can start addressing the real cause of inequality in our societies which is our present economic systems.
However, you don’t have to go into the future to see what is happing. In the last forty years, we have wiped out 40% of our wildlife, acidified our oceans, pumped CO2 into the atmosphere, destroyed vast regions for livestock, ignored world natural disasters all for the sake of short term profits.
If we don’t have a fucking healthy biodiversity-ecosystem there will be no need for profits or values.
With world economies, slowly reopening, I won’t hold my breath as it is easier to keep viewing thinks as black and white and profit for profit sake, not Clickbait.
We all deserve to be treated as human beings of worth.
However because values are culture-bound, what’s good for one culture may be (and often is) deemed an abomination by another.
Herein lies the ultimate irresolvable dilemma.
Culture gives us prescriptions for appropriate conduct. When judging values, we should not speak in terms of right or wrong, black or white rather we should look at competing values in terms of better and worse.
Who’s to say what my values will be in 2030?
When I hear competing values shouted by a person from a different culture than mine, I hope to take a deep breath, realize that he/she is simply expressing a deep need they have, and then perhaps I can share my values and needs without fostering judgment, evaluations of their character, or moralistic analysis.
In the end, compassionate dialogue changes live, not right/wrong judgment, or taking the keen.
All comments valued. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
(A Banshee is an Irish female spirit who wails outside a home to warn of the imminent death of a family member. Often heard before she is seen, her wailing is that high-pitched that nobody willingly dares to attempt to witness this terrifying spirit.)
We are constantly bombarded by messages by well-meaning NGOs who desperately try to help people living in poverty. At the same time media throw in a mix of news full of disasters and war, and then they host huge charity shows on TV ever so many times a year.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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