There’s nothing to see here today.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing to see here. Move along. Click away. You don’t have to see everything. The bags of rice can and will fall over without you. A plea for more flat balls.

(Reading time: 5 irretrievable minutes of your life, is it really worth it?)

Could you stop reading? Apparently not. That’s okay. We all fall victim to such mechanisms that only want to generate attention. Me as well as you. Maybe you were just about to do something else, e.g. write to your wife to ask if you should bring some bread home or call a colleague. And bang, someone like me posts this nonsense of an article and you’re already reading it here. It happens to me quite often.

“Next level excitement”

It is natural that we catch fire easily and tend to be easily distracted. It is a basic requirement of human nature. Without this drive, we would probably not have come this far. Imagine if Homo Erectus, around 1 million years ago, had simply looked away and said: “Yes, oh, it’s burning. What’s it to me?”

Today, it sometimes seems to me, the masses act as if things of the magnitude of the discovery of fire are happening all the time. You only have to ask around on the train, for example. The tendency to get “overexcited” is omnipresent. “OMG!!! My lover wants to take me to the movies today Netflix and Chill.” The most banal things are emotionally stylized into a “life event”. Yes, of course I’m exaggerating a little.

Just as it was once cool to be over-the-top cool, it’s now cool to go off like a rocket over every little thing.

And that doesn’t just apply to younger people. No, even seasoned people in the business tell me with incredible enthusiasm about all the unbelievable things they launch. Sometimes with so much enthusiasm that I don’t believe them.

For better or for worse

Anyone who believes that this only happens for better or for worse is mistaken. When I see how some people fall out of character because of negative little things or general unavoidable things that are simply part of life, I seriously wonder what they do when the real blows of fate – which inevitably come their way in every life – hit them. Or when they win the lottery. There aren’t that many exclamation marks in the iPhone!!!!!

Maintain perspective

Maybe it’s just my subjective perception, but I think we’ve gotten pretty bad at keeping perspective. Putting things into a wider context and putting them into perspective with a cool head. On the negative side, this is probably because very few people here have experienced war. Fortunately, of course. But it ensures that many people don’t even know how bad everything can be. Maybe that’s why “Little Kevin’s” sunburn, for example, is usually a drama of epic proportions.

On the other hand, on the positive side, we tend to glorify mediocrity as greatness through this exaggeration. Many people simply lack the “craftsmanship” to appreciate exceptional quality. This is the reason, for example, why cheap plastic sunglasses with well-known fashion labels stuck on them sell with a profit margin of more than 3000%.

The bad thing is that our ambitions are indirectly diminished by this exaggeration. If every child receives a medal at the ski school’s final race in winter because “everyone is a winner”, then what is first place or “being the winner” worth? Not so much that I really want to learn a lot more next year in order to win.

This aspect will also be particularly exciting in a future in which we will have much more technology that can accomplish things we can’t really imagine today.

When we move to this deep “penetration horizon”, we will begin to perceive this technology as magic.

The miracle thing and all that. A potentially perfidious development because it takes us away from technology. What we need in the future, however, are people who can understand and explain the basics of the technology – in broad terms. As soon as we no longer understand what the things around us are doing to us, we fight them. This is potentially dangerous in the future. Because unlike the camera that is destroyed by the jungle people, our machines of the future will be able to fight back.

Detached, not jaded

I think we would do well to take a step back. On a small and large scale. Not to be outraged by every malicious gossip. Not to talk about great things when it comes to the basics. We should keep our heads down. Not quiet, but flat.

We should not confuse detachment with dullness. Especially when it comes to humanitarian issues. Instead of just complaining and condemning, concrete solutions are needed. For you personally, these usually start within a radius of a few meters. That’s what everyone can do. Even outside the triangle of job, family and consumption.

And we can, should, indeed must rejoice in small things. But please without turning ourselves into clowns. We can be quiet, without talking, without judging and/or categorizing. But what am I saying? There’s actually nothing to see here today.