Narcissistic Netizens, Burnout Societies, Existential Angsts and the Bane of Social Media: A Psychological and Spiritual Assessment from the Perspective of Sufism
By
Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu, New Age Islam
23 June
2022
Happiness
Is Never A Creation Of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok Or What Have You In
Today's Social Media; No Matter How These Social Media Platforms Are Helpful In
Our Interconnectedness And Modern Communication In This Day And Age
Main
Points:
1. In this age
of social media, people think that to be happy means to be affirmed, to be
liked, appreciated, applauded and approved always by others and by society.
2. Happiness is
in facing our life with hope despite the daily endeavours, struggles, conflicts
and all the problems that we face in our daily grind for existence.
3. Toxic
religion has also programmed our minds into believing that we have to earn our
happiness by our hard efforts of pleasing God.
4. Happiness is
a choice: a free decision that we have to make and a will that we have to face
moment-by-moment in our lives.
-----
Recently, I had finished reading a very insightful book entitled, "The Burnout Society” by a South Korean philosopher, Prof. Dr. Byung-Chul Han. This book argues that our present society is characterized by burnout, boredom, anxieties, hyperactivity, attention deficiency, depression, suicidal tendencies, existential ennui and narcissism caused by the constant feeding of our ego with social media expectations and unnecessary competitions caused by our incessant need to be affirmed, to be appreciated, to be applauded and to succumb to the tendency of comparing ourselves with social media personalities and influencers. The book says that if we want to escape burnout and depression, we just have to accept who we really are, simply do what we can do naturally, and appreciate ourselves without comparing ourselves and our achievements with that of others...
In this age
of social media, people think that to be happy means to be affirmed, to be
liked, appreciated, applauded and approved always by others and by society.
These social media markers by which many people use to measure happiness are
both hazy and crazy! Happiness is never a creation of Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, TikTok or what have you in today's social media; no matter how these
social media platforms are helpful in our interconnectedness and modern
communication in this day and age. Happiness is not even an absence of conflict
and pain. Happiness is in facing our life with hope despite the daily endeavours,
struggles, conflicts and all the problems that we face in our daily grind for
existence.
We have
been conditioned to think that happiness is something earned by our hard
efforts and by our trying our utmost to prove our mettle and to show to others
our successes and achievements. This utilitarian-cum-capitalistic and
instrumentalist view of happiness has made us extreme workaholics and having a
tattered self-image that we are not enough and we do not have intrinsic value
until we have delivered something huge like those great achievers who are
projected by the social media. However, the hard truth is this: we cannot chase
happiness. Happiness is in facing life despite the cramped and crappy
circumstances that we are living. In the words of the physically blind yet
great thinker Helen Keller: “From now on, let us cease chasing the
merry-go-round ride of happiness and just be happy.”...
It is
really a great tragedy in our so-called contemporary civilized society that
extractive capitalism and exploitative consumerism have programmed us to think
that to be happy, one has to work like an abused donkey, accumulating loads and
loads of banknotes and hoard them to no end. Toxic religion has also programmed
our minds into believing that we have to earn our happiness by our hard efforts
of pleasing God and wait for our happiness in the Hereafter as the reward of
our good works that are somehow used as our means to bribe God so that God can
let us enter into the Golden Portal of the Sweet-By-and-By.
The great Turkish Sufi saint of Sunni Islam
Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi has a better view than these abusive
perspectives of happiness and escapist salvationism peddled by toxic religions
to us. Hazrat Maulana Rumi says that we cannot bribe our way to God since God
has already loved each one of us from Eternity to Eternity and this Divine Love
is bestowed by God through Grace alone without religious bribery and
transactional business of being good so God can reward us. Hazrat Maulana Rumi
says that we can never escape from God's Love and Grace; and it is this Grace
from God that will see us through and not our own merits which we thought that
we can use to buy God's approval, forgiveness and Love. God loves and forgives
us unconditionally and solely by God's Mercy and Grace.
In contrast to our
capitalistic-consumeristic-utilitarian-instrumentalist society's skewed view
that happiness is in being always applauded by others and in the obsessive
seeking for the approval and affirmation of others, the great Turkish Sufi
saint Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi says that happiness is in letting
ourselves be, in being content of who we are, of what we have, and of what we
can realistically achieve without comparing ourselves with others and their
accomplishments. In short, happiness is a choice: a free decision that we have
to make and a will that we have to face moment-by-moment in our lives.
Happiness is in simply choosing to be happy despite circumstances that life
offers to us. Happiness is in the “Here-and-Now”... So how about it? Something
to ponder in our onward journey through Life’s meaning and significance.
-----
Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate
Professor-7 of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the
Philippines (UP), Cebu City, Philippines. He was former Academic Coordinator of
the Political Science Program at UP Cebu from 2011-2014. He was former
Coordinator of Gender and Development (GAD) Office at UP Cebu from 2015-2019.
His research interests include Theoretical and Applied Ethics, Islamic Studies
particularly Sunni jurisprudence (Fiqh), Islamic feminist discourses, Islam in
interfaith dialogue initiatives, Islamic environmentalism, Classical Sunni
Islamic pedagogy, the writings of Imam Al-Ghazali on pluralism and tolerance,
Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, Turkish Sufism, Central Asian Affairs,
Ataturk Studies, Ottoman Studies, Muslim-Christian Dialogue, Middle Eastern
Affairs, Peace Studies and Public Theology.
New Age Islam, Islam
Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism