The "Sin" of New -- Why We Need To Question The Future Before Adapting To It

(Philosocom's Directory on Technology)

Mr. Ogbule Chibuzo Isaac's Synopsis

The article "The 'Sin' of New -- Why We Need To Question The Future Before Adapting To It" criticizes modern society's pursuit of novelty and adaptability, arguing that while it allows progress, it also leads to disposability and transactional relationships, creating a culture of abandonment.

The constant pursuit of new experiences diminishes the value of existing relationships and possessions, creating a cycle of consumption and disposal.

The article calls for a balance between adapting to new trends and fostering meaningful connections, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and inner dialogue to avoid being trapped in the pursuit of novelty. It advocates for a life of contentment and inner growth, rather than chasing fleeting pleasures, to achieve true fulfillment and peace.

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At What Cost? How Adaptability Breeds Disposable Lives

The darker side of possibility is adaptability. With the ability to adapt to new possibilities, we are then capable of disposing of things -- and beings -- with greater ease. After all, the human being's great potential for adaptability can render certain people useless, in their eyes. This is most true in psychopaths.

This explains, in part, why modern life appears so "fake." With each new possibility a likely reality, the former state of things becomes less and less desirable, fostering a culture of disposability. Many of us may please others until doing so no longer serves our interests. That's how so much human relationships are: transactional. Some may even claim that all relationships are transactional.

How foolish, and sad, to think undying loyalty to another cannot exist. From dogs to Korean Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, one can be loyal even to those who condemned and punished them. It requires an undying will, one that can overcome the need to adapt to different realities. Japanese philosopher Yukio Mishima sacrificed himself to Emperor Hirohito for a reason. I work relentlessly on Philosocom for a reason, despite decreasing interest in blogs worldwide.

This disposability stems from our very core, our ingrained instinct for survival: To adjust to new people and new situations:

• The rich are admired because "the affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.” (Adam Smith)

• In contemporary culture, people may simp for certain online personalities to reduce their pain, loneliness and feelings of helplessness. Once a certain influencer or celebrity is found, they may create a parasocial attachment to them, and even then, it is transactional.

Even in situations where survival isn't the pressing concern, we humans excel at adapting in order to please our wants and needs. It's this very skill that propelled us to dominate the world, and to design this human-centric reality. Countless other species have become mere relics, some forgotten entirely, casualties of our relentless adaptation.

This ability to dispose, to eradicate, and even to backstab, just for our personal interests, has forged the world we see today. One marked by material prosperity and a near-universal unity in communication, travel, and technology. Yet, this progress comes with a price: the ease with which we abandon our current status quo, in the name of novelty.

On the greater scale, the effects of the appeal to novelty fallacy, should be clear:

• Gone are the days of being rooted in one place. Now, you can be born in one country and choose to live in countless others. New environments, new people, new opportunities. It's this constant arrival of "NEW" that makes emotional attachment to existent places and people, difficult.

• This "Sin of New" fosters a culture in the dating world where fear of abandonment can be dominant.

• Furthermore, the online act of ghosting has been normalized due to new possibilities in the form of meeting new people.

• This hidden cost of regular uncertainty can decrease psychological safety, which in turn amplifies loneliness and reduces trust in other people. Our experience with them is often imperative for our outlook on reality as a whole. And, after all, these might always leave, stressing us further in an already stressful reality.

• Healthline article: "Attachment might help you feel safe, comfortable, happy, maybe even somewhat euphoric in their company."

Irreplaceable Value in a Fast-Forward World?

The world has accelerated dramatically ever since the Industrial Revolution, forever changing the value we place on certain objects... and people. Products are mass-produced relentlessly, and the Digital Revolution demands a constant stream of new content for the every-hungry consumer. Old content is quickly devoured, only to be discarded for the next shiny thing. This cycle of consumption and disposal extends beyond the the world of production, and can be seen in many areas of human activity.

In our pursuit of ever-expanding possibilities, we risk losing sight of the value in what we already have.

• Relationships become disposable.

• Experiences are fleeting and can be reduced to mere numbers for comparison with the neighbor's seemingly greener grass. See weddings as example.

• And even gifts can be treated with ungratefulness, ignoring the good intent behind the gesture.

My question is this: Can we adapt to different trends and novelties, while fostering a sense of connection and value for what exists in our ever-changing world? Metaphorically, can we enjoy an entire garden of roses, while rarely forgetting that one, beautiful rose that caused us great joy?

A Paradox of Prosperity

We are in an age of constant consumption, always eagerly waiting for the next thing to pop up. The next job, the next people, the next car and the next video game. We treat jobs like merceneries, and some of us somehow manage to fall in love with A.I instead of human beings. Everything and everyone can be commodified, their value in relation to our wants and needs reducible to mere mathematics.

Your success and failure in life can be measured by how good of an asset you are to those who consider your value. Fail to demonstrate your value and you will be discarded like some mere object, for the sake of a newer, better counterpart available.

This isn't a reflection of prosperity. It is a reflection of depravity. It's an abuse of functionality over being, that fuels a society that thrives on constant novelty, but leaves us feeling perpetually empty. What worth are grand metropolises that tower over the misery of the homeless? What worth is cutting-edge military technology, capable of being utilized for avoidable destruction? What worth are shiny and vivid movies when their grand imagery fails to grap public desire?

This insatiable craving for the "new" is what I call the "Sin of New." It's the reason we uproot ourselves from familiar ground, leaving behind loved ones and cherished memories, in exchange of a future we wouldn't necessarily be happy or even more content in. It's why we dispose of emotionally-valueable friendships with the ease of discarding a worn-out gadget that lost its appeal despite practicality.

The Sin of New keeps us perpetually focused on the horizon, blind to the beauty and value of what we already have and what we've accomplished.

Understanding "NPC" Mentality

Our minds, like bottomless bellies, can never be truly satiated by the pursuit of new experiences, for they are conditioned to be on the move. A hedonic treadmill. This relentless hunger, unless confronted and not aimlessly fed, can lead to a constant state of anxiety.

Adaptability becomes a double-edged sword when wielded with an anxious hand. It is difficult to truly be relaxed, when you are conditioned by push notifications to constantly seek the next big updates.

Society's relentless drive for the "new" has become a suffocating reality for many. However, in the absence of critical thinking and an inner dialogue to serve as proper check-and-balances, our misery would only reign supreme. Reign supreme, by the very social engineering that enables it.

It was surprisingly found that not all people conduct inner speech. Dr. Russel Hurlburt writes:

Chris Heavey and I gave random beepers to a stratified random sample of 30 students from a large urban university and interviewed them about the characteristics of their randomly selected pristine experiences.

Five main characteristics emerged, each occurring in about a quarter of all samples... Three of those five characteristics may not surprise you: Inner speech occurred in about a quarter of all samples, inner seeing occurred in about a quarter of all samples, and feelings occurred in about a quarter of all samples. The other two phenomena occurred just as frequently but are not so well known.

Pristine experiences, a higher form of self-awareness, are functionally imperative for the examination and criticism of reality and of our actions. The lack of intuitive ability to conduct inner speech to review our activities, can end us up in repeating them over and over again. This form of unquestioning programming can be compared to that of video game characters that cannot override their own behavioral design.

A society that fails to teach its future generations to not criticize its own mindset and behavior, inevitably engineers a collective mentality that is instead built on common mimicry. To quote Mr. John Duran:

Breaking Free From Such "Matrix"

Breaking free from cycles that leave us miserable is no easy feat. Seeking alternative mindsets is crucial for changing our behavior, which in turn further alters our perception. Having critical thinking techniques as check-and-balances is the key to overcome "The Sin of New". Ideally, we must able to criticize any action that we and others make.

We must understand what we're doing on the long-term by adapting, before adapting. It's time to question the script within our genes. Embrace the possibility of a different kind of life, a life where contentment can finally take root. Not by seeking the next shiny object, but by understanding that not all that glitters is gold.

Let us not follow in the footsteps of the very people and organizations that contribute to our misery and misfortune. How can we work towards a better world if we succumb to their ways, and become not greater than them, but similar?

Ms. Tamara Moskal's Feedback

"God is dead," wrote Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, and he was right. After the life-changing Industrial Revolution, citizens of developed countries gradually lost faith in heaven and hell, the unquestionable answer to life's moral and spiritual meaning.

Ordinary people, waking up from the soothing comforts of religious beliefs and with the rise of unprecedented personal freedoms of choice and democracy, encountered a new existential dilemma: what to do next?

When God stopped judging, and people got free time and money to spend, a new culture worshiping the "New, fast, and changing" emerged. Nowadays, in Western countries, we live exciting lives, proudly presenting our adventures, travels, and love life as normative happiness on social media.

We buy short-lived satisfaction and do everything to avoid the unsettling silence of the existential void of meaninglessness.

Yet, the void awaits us. No matter how much money and resources we have, the novelty of experience can't prevent us from falling back into the feeling of inner emptiness. [It's that] which gets more profound with age and wisdom. None of the worldly novelty sinful pleasures will feel relevant one day.

We should spend our time and energy wisely, investing less in the materialistic chase and more in inner growth, learning, and finding a passion or talent that we can develop and perfect over time. Self-actualization or realizing our purposeful potential through internal drive can make us happy, fulfilled, and peaceful.

On the contrary, getting "high" on a fleeting "new sin" will leave us with an existential hangover and a void staring at us with an empty gaze of a purposeless existence.