Our brains are being hijacked
Our thinking about ourselves is being modified, no it is being hijacked. You see the craziest thing is happening to the over one billion facebookers and hundreds of millions more on other social media platforms. And it is that they are being programed to crave being “liked”. None of us enjoy or seek out the disapproval of others. Yet, that is a normal part of our human condition (unlikability happens). However, the “like” button is intensifying, no centering the desire of social media users to do whatever it takes to be liked or viewed the most times or retweeted or followed or be an influencer. You get it, it is getting everyone to think that being the most popular or showing something everyone likes or being someone everyone admires is more important and valuable than anything else. In my view it’s nothing more than a junior high school popularity contest.
And why shouldn’t it be anything more than that? Facebook was created by two teenage boys. And if they were anything like other teenage boys, being the popular was at the top of their essential social motivations. So why not exploit that same drive in everyone else? No reason not to, and they did.
Science has proven that getting a “like” on a social media platform pumps dopamine into the brain….in other words it can form an addiction. No wonder people like getting likes, it makes them feel good. Not only that, it becomes a self reinforcing behavior. Post a certain pic, my “friends” or followers will like it, I get a dopamine pump, post an article they like, another pump of dopamine……….why should I stop? “Why should I not want this good feeling, and besides, I like being liked…I’m popular!”
Actually, none of us really say that aloud, or are even conscious of the sentiment let alone understand what’s happening in the chemistry of our brains. Nevertheless, if we did put words to it, those might come close to summarizing how we feel. We’re being programmed to want to be liked, and to use likeability (that is the subjective measure of me liking something) as a primary evaluative tool.
Whether something is or isn’t likeable to me or anyone else for that matter isn’t “a” or “the” primary evaluative measure. Chemotherapy typically isn’t described as something cancer patients “like”. I’ve never heard a mother describe the pain of child birth as something she liked. In those two cases, neither circumstance is liked but both are necessary. We cannot as a society or as a people or as a country or as a species, allow what we do and don’t do to be determined by whether or not I or anyone else for that matter likes it.
We can’t use the teenage angst about whether or not I am popular - that has been built into an algorithm - to drive our decision making.
Listen, life isn’t about what is liked or popular. Instead life is about evaluation by other determinants. Is it moral? Is it good? What is the utility and efficacy? Am I acting in kindness and integrity? These few examples just scratch the surface of using what really matters to determine value, appeal and proper place in our thinking.
Life is about being yourself, authentic and original. A self that isn’t constrained by whether someone else thinks that me, my image, my sentiment or my post is worthy of their “Like”. A personhood sacred that can stand, alone if necessary, but always in an integrity that is uncompromised by the sophomoric drive for popularity. Life is about not having my neuro-network hijacked and rewired to crave the “like” and then have my behavior and decision making dominated by the need to achieve that outcome.
Shouldn’t we be about life not the “like”?