Post 4: Internet Imaginations and Real Life Pt.1

Nowadays, real-life seems to be lost, especially on social media. Compared to work eight hours a day, people prefer the fascinating utopian life on Instagram, which is disastrous. As the digital online platforms are decorated with material desires such as money and upper-class lives, users may take them as the common real life, especially young people. Growing up in such an environment, their life goals simply turn into making more money and gaining better living conditions, because they see celebrities smoking weed on yards, throwing money to bars’ ceilings, or driving Rolls Royces with charming ladies beside them.

While if these scenarios even count as the people’s ideal living conditions remain disputable, it is problematic that they become some people’s life goals. I am not criticizing or abominating certain wealthy people’s lifestyles, but I truly find it pathetic to see some people abandon spiritual lives for money. So, what is wrong with the above “rich” scenarios? Money ensures basic living needs while spirit leads human beings to move forward. Max Weber holds that wealthy people living a luxurious life is a sin while Hegel believes that ideas drive the world to move forward; in Maslow’s pyramid, living conditions merely satisfy the lowest basic needs which money can bring, whereas higher levels of human needs include love, respect, and self-actualization which money cannot provide us with. Even in Marx’s historical materialism, he strongly believes that there are some “true” material needs, and I know these are not the ones we see on social media.

To seize the “truth” and abandon the imaginations, one needs to be wise enough to distinguish real life from fantasy. Learn more knowledge, strengthen the spiritual world, fight through the foggy jungle, and become the opinion leader rather than those being deceived and beclouded on social media. Meanwhile, focus on constructing real-life, expel fantasy imaginations, and disclose the truth to everyone, so that fewer and fewer users shall be deceived and the truth shall be protected again.