Can social media save the world?

Human interactions are filled with landmines in 2019

It’s OK to forgive yourself. It’s a bruised point of view — everything. Conversations tainted by previous misdemeanours are used as reference points when speaking to someone new. And that’s all right — it’s a human condition and you are speaking to someone just as mangled by experience as you.

But circumstances, they change. And slowly you edge out of what’s expected and land in the cold waters of what must be. It’s usually called growing up, or growing old — something that sounds sophisticated but is actually like a waddle in mud, dirty and unwanted.

How do you change? One theory is that every seven years all the atoms in a person’s body are replaced by other, younger ones. Logically then, every seven years you can choose a different path. Then, there’s the exhale-and-you-are-dead belief - and with each inhalation you are reborn.

Yo-yo dieters such as myself know a lot about these equations — we’ve become a cliché — tomorrow is another day.

But here’s the thing … If you’ve moved squares on a checkboard, why do you always end up in the same play? Some scientists say your deeds in a certain situation are all mapped out by your genetics and free will is the promise of a hope that never was.

Is then there no escaping the maze, that haze, that feeling of suffocation that comes from walking a path you have tread a hundred times before?

Consciously make a decision, they say. All right, and then what? What happens when right feels wrong and wrong feels right and the sky suddenly feels like it’s under your feet and you are covered in earth?

Can you really — and I mean really — control your actions? Do you know of ALL your actions? What if you’ve rolled an eye without meaning to, sighed at an inconvenient moment in a conversation or looked at the tick, tick, tick of a clock as a story stretches out?

The only way to know for sure is to channel a stone figure — blank face, base look, no unintended messages. Perhaps it’s time to lock yourself away so you do no damage to another. It’s possible social media was created for just this purpose; think and type, think and write, and in the end speak coherently to that distant someone who cannot see you at all. No face-to-face interaction, no pain; the disconnect remains.

Does this make social media a saviour? What about the bullies that abound — not in sight but with barrels of sound? The trolls LIVE and BREATHE as sure as you and I do.

So I suppose one could argue there’s no getting away from it. To feel pain is to know you are alive. Some may say discomfort is needed for a growth spurt. [Incidentally, these are the people you don’t really want to speak to anyway.]

But this is the tumble to a bruised outlook and discussions moulded like clay — by experiences that sculpt themselves.