Sleepwalking through life

Attention deficit generation, How the society, state, and corporations Influence and mislead the people

Afroz Chakure
5 min readMar 24, 2024
Photo by Shane on Unsplash

Smartphones are ruining Human life

People are spending 90 percent of their free time on smartphones.

If you extrapolate the same result to their entire lifetime you’ll find that human beings don’t really have a lot of free time that was once available to them.

Even when the age expectancy has risen to 70 to 80 years for modern man and women, I don’t see it as a game changer since we’ve already filled up our time with stupid devices which we carry around in our pockets.

The active lifespan where we actually do ‘Productive Work’ has actually reduced after the invention of Smartphones.

Free / Unlimited internet doesn’t help as well.

We fail to see the problems surrounding the modern world and fall prey to whatever is shown on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter and even TV as true.

New Generation Doesn’t have any Aspirations

There’s a new thing that I’ve seen in the current generation, this thing is called ‘Don’t try’.

I’ve seen the consequences especially when the “well-informed” generation will watch a video on Youtube and say so-and-so told me not to do it, so I’m not doing it.

Things like Innovation and Discovery requires you to go beyond what is already accepted & venture across unknown territories to find & invent new things.

When you prevent people from trying or discourage them from asking, questioning, doing, or reacting — You are killing that innovative spirit that is there in us humans.

Fooled by the Media

There is a notion that I feel deeply, that you’re being controlled by unknown forces without you knowing and without you understanding it.

The first time I learnt that Google showed different search results for two different persons, it really made me think. Why would you want to do that?!

When everyone has access to different sets of information then it is quite possible that people will develop different notions or perceptions of what the problem is.

Although I have worked a lot on recommendation engines and Deep Learning models, I’ve never truly really liked their applications.

You’re essentially manipulating people into thinking that they are ‘in-charge of what they are seeing’, when in reality they are getting shown things that ‘an algorithm wants them to see’.

Most Billionaires (Monopolies) come from Rich families

Whether it be Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Elon Musk,

There is a thing which the common people don’t get, the monopolies in the modern world are being run mostly by people whose parents & families were already rich.

Most of the so-called ‘Geniuses’ got a head start early-on in their life.

There is a story about Bill Gates that most people don’t know.

Bill Gates’s mother, Mary Maxwell Gates had asked John Opel, IBM’s then CEO to consider Microsoft (his son’s company) for making software for its upcoming personal computer called IBM PC.

That single deal with IBM is said to have changed Microsoft’s fortunes forever.

This is a thing which they often wouldn’t want the public to know because how would you fool common people into buying your things or investing in your businesses.

Scared to talk against the authority

People conform to other people’s views & opinions a lot easily, although I think respecting each others opinions & beliefs are vital — You should always listen to your inner voice for guidance.

You know why ‘Muhammad Ali’ is considered the ‘Greatest Of All Time’ (GOAT), it is not because he had an unbeaten record or was any way a special boxer.

He is considered great because he stood up for his beliefs when no one at his position could think of doing so and spoke against racial segregation that was so prevalent in the United States at that time.

His ideas on black pride, slavery, black resistance to white domination and refusing induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War were way ahead of his time.

He is the only champion in history of boxing to be stripped of his ‘World Heavyweight title’ for his views and whose boxing license got suspended for more than 3 years.

In-spite of all this, he never gave up on what he believed in (never conformed), years later he would return to the ring again and beat George Foreman to regain his ‘World Heavyweight title’ back.

Changing History and Selling Lies

You know how I know someone doesn’t have the best intentions for you — they will give you a misguided History lesson.

They will try to manipulate & rewrite your history books so that you don’t have anything to stand upon.

It’s the same tactic which the British used to enslave all their colonies.

It was only when leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and others tried to find out what the actual history of India looked like did the common man understand for 200 years they have been sold a lie.

For those who are aware, same thing happened with African nations.

European traders initially went there as an excuse for trade and wrote extensive records of how people there were poor and had worn out clothes & how they were helping them to become more sophisticated!?

They ultimately enslaved all of Africa with their clever tactics and made people work in plantations, extracted all their precious minerals & made them forget where they come from.

It is sad how some Political Parties, Dictators and Cult organizations misguide others to further their agendas, lie, spread hate and fill their Bank Accounts.

Crazy times Ahead

I want to be hopeful but I don’t see any end to us human being coming back to our senses.

Unless we somehow ban the addictiveness in smartphones and have strong regulations to not allow monopolies to exist anywhere, we won’t be able to figure out what the actual problems are in front of us.

Being ‘Lost In a Fairy Land’ where everything seems good and there is nothing to worry about is not good.

There is a popular myth which says “A Ostrich buries its heads in the sand when they are scared.”

Most people behave like Ostriches in real life and don’t want to see the truth.

They don’t want to see the reality and want to live in the illusion that everything is well.

“A civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence.”

— John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

Photo by Warren on Unsplash

--

--