In spite of an exponentiating slew of technological advancements, we are at our emotional core not

4 min readNov 22, 2020

But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the predictions that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are much less impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational faculties, surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one or more of three things:

The dream life of financial freedom portrayed online leaves out all the important parts. The benefit of financial freedom is you don’t have to work for money anymore so you can focus on work you love.

If you don’t at least try, you’ll never be able to realize what you’re fully capable of or — if things don’t go quite as planned — learn valuable lessons from your mistakes which can construct the character and knowledge you need to eventually surpass your goals.

Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics. Surveillance capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate people who might be receptive to their pitch. Candidates campaigning on finance industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates campaigning on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have always targeted their message whether their intentions were honorable or not: Union organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white supremacists hand out fliers at John Birch Society meetings.

I’ve copped lawsuits, had friends cheat on me, walked away from kind partners who loved me, battled mental illness, and had my ego thrown on the floor (twice) thanks to two social media bans.If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to people in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity ward just had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the market for diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of being in the market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly correlated with having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards (and even pitchmen for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with baskets full of freebies).Ascribed to Epicurus, founder of the pleasure-centric philosophical school of Epicureanism, this thought-provoking warning captures the essence of gratitude. The perpetual desire for more and superior material possessions is known to modern-day psychologists as being stuck on the ‘hedonic treadmill’.

Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors can go way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, too, with things like location-based mobile ads). They can target you based on whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, or a host of other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious keywords to advertise against. They can target you based on the articles you’ve recently read. They can target you based on what you’ve recently purchased. They can target you based on whether you receive emails or private messages about these subjects — or even if you speak aloud about them (though Facebook and the like convincingly claim that’s not happening — yet).

It’s only by continuously challenging ourselves and putting a magnifying glass to our most tightly held beliefs and thought patterns that we can make room for intellectual and moral improvement.

So when you’re feeling down, lying in bed, wondering when if you’ll ever find a relationship that makes you happy, remember these little reminders. While they might not make love magically appear, hopefully, they can give you a bit of encouragement to help you keep going.

Modern dating is tough, and I don’t fault you for feeling like you want to give up sometimes. But if a relationship is something you know you want in life, it’s important to find hope wherever you can.

In a world overflowing with groundless assumptions, bigotry, and dogmatism, it’s important to humble oneself from time to time. In other words, to recognize that perhaps the only thing someone can truly be sure of is the limits to their knowledge and perception.

Although we are likely never to be sure of what — if anything — was actually said, the image of the type of enlightened, unassuming, and self-aware person Socrates embodies is admirable.

Teachings in emotional intelligence are sadly all but absent in the modern education system. The majority of us are left to ‘feel’ our way through life and figure out the most knotty aspects of the human psyche ourselves. By making an effort to digest timeless wisdom, converting it into guidance or action, we bolster ourselves that little fraction more against the ever discombobulating chaos of life.

It’s thought to have originated from Plutarch’s (the history profession’s favored chronicler of these faraway times) biography of the iconic figure which was written a few centuries later, so it’s quite unlikely Alexander uttered these heartening words specifically.
That being said, there is indeed tremendous power in the simple sentiment that trying something with your best possible effort invariably leads to a better result — and far fewer niggling regrets — than complacency and inactivity.
If you want to be financially free then be prepared for the emotional rollercoaster. Anything worth doing — like being financially free — requires a huge metal farm silo full of emotional reserves that you can draw on.

In spite of an exponentiating slew of technological advancements, we are at our emotional core not

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