Alone In Crowd

Can you express the state of mind of a society in a single word? “Kalabalık Yalnızlık”, chosen by TDK for the year 2024, best summarizes this age in which we all live in one way or another

Loneliness in crowds. People rushing from one screen to another. But silence and coldness in the hearts.

This is the striking dilemma of the modern world…

“Kalabalık yalnızlık – Alone in crowd”

“Yapay zekâ – Artificial intelligence”

“Algoritma – Algorithm”

“Yozlaşma – Corruption”

“Dijital yorgunluk – Digital fatigue”

“Yabancılaşma – Alienation”

“Merhamet – Mercy”

The Turkish Language Association (TDK) recently announced that the finalist words will be submitted to the voting to determine the “Word of the Year” for 2024. Among the 7 words and concepts created with the contributions of Ankara University and submitted to public voting, the concept of “Kalabalık Yalnızlık”, which expresses a phenomenon that has been increasingly encountered in society in recent years, was selected as the word of the year 2024 as a result of the voting. This choice is remarkable as it reflects an important societal situation.

1 The term “kalabalık yalnızlık” points to one of the most striking dilemmas of the modern world. While people are close to each other in crowds, they are also lonely. In the age of social media, where everything is virtual and artificial, time spent in constant communication tools, a crowd of people on every corner, humans are emotional beings. Things that don’t touch them, that don’t touch them, lead to the proliferation of people full of emotional emptiness. This state of loneliness is so deep that people look at the people around them, see them, and maybe talk to them, but feel distant. The individual who falls into inner loneliness can sometimes feel lonelier even in crowds.

2 “Artificial intelligence” is part of this loneliness in a crowd. As technology becomes involved in every aspect and moment of our lives, artificial intelligence attempts to copy human thought and emotion. But at some point, this “intelligence” is nothing more than an empty imitation. Artificial intelligence will never be fully human, even if it adopts a structure that replaces the inner depth, empathy, and compassion of human beings.

3“Algorithm” is like the blood flowing in the veins of artificial intelligence. Everything is reduced to an algorithm. Human behavior, preferences, thoughts, and even thought flows can be analyzed with algorithms. But humanity and its historical will cannot be defined by a mathematical calculation. Human emotions and thoughts trapped in an algorithm turn into a code and a formulation emerges.

4 “Corruption” refers to the loss of social structure, human relations, and social morality, which is becoming more and more superficial every day. Capitalism, consumer culture, narcissism… These all form the surface of corruption. As the bonds of sincere feelings weaken, fake faces and hedonistic thoughts emerge more strongly. People value not each other but the images they impose on each other.

5 “Digital fatigue” is the cognitive fatigue and exhaustion caused by all this technological bombardment, constant connected and dependency, and the fear of missing something at any moment. We become mentally confused and emotionally complex at the expense of accessing new and different information. While all the small and large screens, emails, and notifications we follow throughout the day fill our brains with everything unnecessary, our mental structure, which cannot bear this weight, reacts by becoming blind to some things after a while.

6 In this world where everything is mechanized and emotions are read by numerical data, man is alienated from himself. He loses his connection with society, nature, and even with himself. Humanity is alienating itself from the real world by building a new world for itself, because being human used to mean carrying memories, understanding the past, interpreting life, and making sense of life by finding new concepts, whether abstract or concrete. Now everything is abstract, everything is distant.

7 “Mercy” is an emotion that is about to be lost in this system. Mercy is one of the strongest human forces that binds people together, anyone who can empathize will be able to understand mercy. Nowadays, like everything good in modern society, mercy is diminishing. For mercy sometimes requires sacrifice, and sometimes it means sharing pain. Feeling compassion for a creature in the cold is mercy. Opening the doors of your home to the oppressed fleeing war is mercy. Being merciful is one of the maxims of being a virtuous person.

These words, chosen by TDK for the year 2024, are not just words; they are part of the story we all share. So where are you in that story?

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