4Voices’ Post

Transcript

When somebody asks me where I'm from, I don't know what to say. I mean, I usually say my dad's American, my mom South African, and I've lived here in Spain for most of my life. But that doesn't really answer the question, it just leaves people more confused. Tell me one place you're from. I don't know how to answer that. Growing up, I've had a unique journey bouncing between different corners of the globe. I was born in South Africa and then I lived in Argentina. Eventually I sold it in Spain and high school actually brought me to San Francisco and I still just can't tell you where I'm from. In my travels. Ohh sorry. As those can't tell where I'm from. And you know, it's funny, whenever I go to the US, my friend Sam, the guy from Spain, whenever I go to South Africa, I'm just a loud American. And in Spain I'm just another giddy. Ask for my family's from and then you've got me pulling out overall map and placing pins in different countries. And every time my family gets together, it's like they're meeting at it's like the United Nations is meeting at the dinner table. So yes, you can ask where they're from, but I'll just tell you from everywhere. Even though I actually don't know where I'm from. One thing the world has taught me is that you learn about yourself through traveling. In my travels I've seen all kinds of things, including a not so rare species of human known as the Tourist. Now, tourists are a different kind of breed. They're everywhere. You go around the world, destroying wildlife, vandalizing historical sites, taking pictures of absolutely everything, including mundane objects like street signs and even pigeons. I mean, they'll go to a city like Barcelona, see the pigeons that black out, and pretend they're on a wildlife safari in Africa. Why? For social media. Tourists live for instant gratification. They go around cities and big group tours without actually living in the moments, and they just live behind their screens and their cameras. They they just travel as a means of escaping their current reality to some utopian vacation of how their life could be. On the other hand, there's travelers now. Travelers, myself included, are individuals who immerse themselves in experience. Don't just go to a country to take some photos and just post them on their feet and make it seem like they're having fun. Or consume to the OR consume and just contribute to the economy and no. Travelers actually value experience and absorb the culture, gets to know the locals and in the process get to know more about themselves. When I traveled to China with my Chinese friend last summer, I was right there in the audience. We did so many things. We navigated unfamiliar situations. Ventured far out from the cities to rural towns and tried so many different types of foods. I tried eyeballs, intestines, and anything you could put in a hot pot. It's crazy. I learned a lot about China, but I learned a lot more about myself. By being alerts and in tune with my surroundings. Now, what if I told you that the way we navigate and travel around the digital world is just how tourists and travelers voyage around the physical world? Going around the Internet is just like traversing a jungle in, let's say, Brazil, except this jungle is a digital jungle. On this journey through this jungle, there are tourists and travelers just like anywhere else. I like to call these online tourists and online travelers. Online tourists are the scrollers. They've lost their abilities to critically think for themselves and instead just consume, consume and consume, mindlessly scrolling social media feeds like caffeinated squirrels without actually taking a moment to absorb them information or to even evaluate whether it's real or false. So they just accept everything as it is. On the other hand, online travelers are those who consciously make decisions, unlike the unconscious, ignorant tourists. They actually see through the information they see online by critically thinking and using their brains to decide whether it's real or false. And they don't just and, and they don't live their lives in the search for instant gratification and dopamine just as as online tourists would. If we all navigate this digital jungle with the tourist mentality, we will get left behind. Because perhaps what is most threatening to our future and the world is the fact that we find ourselves. In the midst of an information crisis, we can't really tell what's real and what's fake anymore, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. I mean videos of celebrities and deep fakes and AI generated voices and anything generated by AI is just blurring the lines between what we can see is what we can consider as being real and what we can consider as being false. Now, how will we humans survive in a near future that finds itself in the middle of this information crisis without actually having the critical thinking skills that we need if we all just have this tourist mindset? We will inevitably fail to develop as a society and instead just surrender to this information crisis if we don't all adopt this traveler mindset that I'm talking about. As I travel the digital world, I worry. I worry about how I worry if information is real or not. I worry that the things I see online. Are that if the things I see online are misleading or not? I worry that just like in the real world, there are more tourists than travelers, more people who accept than who question. And. This is not the end of the story, though. There's still hope if we all adopt the traveler mindsets, questioning, engaging and staying present with our surroundings. If we all adopt this mindset, we can move towards a more mindful and present society that actually understands and critically thinks about all this information that they receive. So let's stop being tourists in our day-to-day lives. Don't choose the fork over the chopsticks. Don't go on those guided group tours that are extremely expensive instead of just venturing off and exploring on your own. You don't need to take photos of the street signs and the pigeons. Trust me, they're not going anywhere. And you don't always need to take photos to capture the moment for Instagram. Instead, just live in the moments. And put your phone down. Stop scrolling. Be present and look up for once in a while and realize that reality goes beyond the pixels in our screens because everything else, well, is just ultimately part of the digital jungle. And. If you ask me where I'm from again. Well, I don't really know. But in the end, perhaps not knowing where I'm from. Is what keeps me forever curious about where I'll go next.