Killing Kardashianism
Women and Girls, Stand Up. Feel Empowered. Find Your Purpose.
Feeeel …for Spirit. Look Within and Not Without!
We live in a world where too many are looking frantically to what others are doing, especially if we are young and establishing life habits about how we feel, our thought patterns, our habits. We look to Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and Tumbler and Facebook and LinkedIn and Pinterest and Google Plus. We watch where others go, what they do, what they wear, where they live, what they drive. If we’re past our young adulthood, we may be addicted to Facebook and Instagram and texting instead of giving attention to the warm bodies sitting at our side, or across from us at the restaurant table.
I would guess more young women than young men follow young women, famous women who are known for little or nothing more than what they wore or what fashion shoot they just completed or what fabulous place they just ate at or what yacht they just sailed or what handbag or clothes line they just “created” oversaw production or what appearance they are making..
Why do we do this? Why do our teenage girls do this? Why can we not find a celebrity speaking about their breathtaking hike in a redwood forest and their visit to the hood to speak with the children there, why can we not find a celebrity speaking about planting trees and saving our rainforest, the very lungs of our planet? Why can we not find a celebrity speaking about meditation and the Spirit of Place and their healing with a shaman?
And our boys, who are they following and why? Are they looking for “likes” from gaming accounts, from cool shoes and electronics pics, from pics of feats of bravery stupidity? What’s the worst thing they’ve ever done in a video game, do you know? Are they glorifying the killing of characters in video games, characters that are surprisingly human, characters that may be allies in the game, allies they need to kill to win?
Magazines still exist at the checkout counters, seeking a new young audience for their airbrushed perfection, a reality that does not exist but lures our young to believe. Material goods are peddled to our children from billboards and sitcoms and youtube videos’ “unboxings” (do you know what that is?) and cool new slang. Worse, our electronically connected (but spiritually disconnected) youth are drawn to social media where statistics like these sit in wait front and center to snare their young unseeing attentions, talking only of material gain and cool places to hang and thanking their million followers, causing our youth to want their own million followers….”because then I’ll be famous and rich”.
Here Instagram accounts seeking eyes and souls:
And here, Twitter’s top accounts soliciting our youth:
Yes, I made up the word “Kardashianism” to mean following the empty, following the unattainable, following the illusion peddled by celebrity and mass media. If you know the Kardashians, I’m sure they are lovely people in person. But their commercialism is poison to the public, though it enriches their Kardashian bank accounts. I am calling them on their #$!@. It is time those with a billion to spare do the right thing in this world. They can survive many lifetimes on their earnings-to-date, so how about enjoying their lives while either going quietly into that goodnight, or becoming aware that their words are influencing a great many people, and not to good?
How do we steer ourselves and our children to true authentic connection, to the sacred? How do we lead them away from hours of social media, where likes from unknown uncaring people are the prize? How do we encourage them to look within instead of without, to know that looking outside our core only leads to anxiety and unending starvation for validation? How do we encourage them to create for the long haul, when the short haul offers 200 likes from “followers,” surely real beings who offer a true stamp of approval?
This is one of the important conversations we will have here at Karyk. Comment with your ideas. Step in. Look around. We will explore the starvation of our current age, the age of destitution in the abundance, the age of disconnect in the connectedness, the Age of Irony.