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To be able to live well, to avoid anxiety and depression, it’s not that easy anymore in 2025. Everything is designed to grab our attention, and our attention span is declining and disallowing people to think and learn. Algorithms know more about us than our spouses while grabbing our attention constantly.
This is bad for our health. Bad for our spirit. Bad for our well-being. We need a strong foundation that keeps us grounded, not bringing us on the wrong track. The internet, a connected web of websites as it was originally designed, is no more.
Today everyone uses a handful of websites, a couple of algorithm-dominated pages that are hitting our brain with dopamine as much as possible. So how can we stay sane in a large tech-dominated world? How do we get quality time when everyone is distracted, fighting for the attention of our friends and families against their phones? That’s why we most often default to just using our phone.
I’m currently staying in the Philippines, and the algorithm-dominated web and big tech dependency is even more apparent. People have to use their products such as Facebook Messenger, which is the default for communication and calling. Businesses make sales on Facebook pages, or sell and buy products there.
This essay investigates the ground pillars for a well-lived life, and how the open web can help us with that.
The Groundwork for Life and Well Being
We as individuals have lots of distractions besides the obvious. We are often greedy, egoistic, longing for a lot of money, a big career. And then we try to grind, we try to get a lot of followers on social media, trying to fulfill a Vanity Metric, we try to get more money, a bigger career, a bigger house.
The Pillars of Life: Health, Family and Self-Contentment
Health, a non-greedy life, knowing when we have enough, and family are the three pillars. We need to recognize them. We cannot do it ourselves.
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