The way we view technology has changed over the years, and the same thing can be said about mental illnesses. Until the 1970s, it was common knowledge that homosexuality could be categorized as a form of mental illness in the US; thus, it should be treated accordingly. The same principle can be applied to numerous “policies” or “laws” that have graced the face of the earth.
Policymakers adjust themselves with the current events; when it comes to the law, specific structures are not set in stone, especially those heavily dependent on the situational and social contexts. That is to say, specific ideas might be more culturally influenced as opposed to being a biological phenomenon.
Perhaps the most salient aspect of the aforementioned phenomenon could be better explained through a highly established psychological theory known as conditioning. The basic premise is not that complex, but countless human behaviors can be presented in an empirical and testable manner through this notion. For instance, I would like to think of our lives as a set of complex interactions between countless aspects which make us who we are; this much is true. Moreover, this very fact makes each of us unique, and it would be an oversimplification to say that certain “inherent constructs” might put some of us in the same box. Rather than doing this, conditioning merely tries to explain our actions on a behavioral level.
With that, I believe that everything that we do is just the byproduct of this mechanism, crystallized. For instance, perhaps the reason homosexuality was perceived as a form of mental illness for the people during that era meant that the subscribed ideology clustered among religiosity or spirituality, which abhors such acts. As such, the people's conditioned state circulates within those specific sets of ideology that interplays with other equally complex structures. So it is not that they are backward or less advanced than we are in terms of cognitive ability; they wore a different pair of colored lenses — which brings us to our main point: we should redefine certain “excessive” behaviors.
We live in a world where almost all communication forms can be categorized as a “mediated interaction,”; meaning that every piece of information we receive must first pass through a centralized channel known as the Internet. In the past, perhaps being in front of a PC for hours could be considered a form of excessive psychology behavior, and thus, it needed to be intervened. However, the very fact that we will not maintain this sense of connectedness with other people without the so-called mediated interaction only means that there is a massive shift in how we, as a species, interact with technology. The act of repeatedly looking at our phones or laptops might be seen as a “compulsion” years ago, but nowadays, is it even befitting to categorize such prevalent activities as an emerging sign of a type of mental illness?
Perhaps it is time for us to redefine certain deeply-held beliefs that were crystallized via conditioning. As simple as they might seem, these crystallized notions build pretty much everything we see in our lives, and they give structures into our world. It affects how we interact with our internal world, society, and even how we categorize the circumstances in front of our eyes. In sum, redefining our preconceived notions about the world might help us pave a better understanding of the heavily constructed reality that we presently live in.
