Finally! Decolonizing the mind is the new black

German philosopher Martin Heidegger once said in an interview (1966) with Der Spiegel that when humans first went to the moon and saw the Earth from space, he was shocked and also terrified. He felt that humanity had become “deterrestrialized.” His impression of technological progress was this: We are everywhere and can see everything, yet we are also nowhere, because we are no longer grounded where we stand. For him, this was frightening, an experience of rootlessness, even a critique of early globalization. But what if Heidegger were a young person in 2025, experiencing social media, artificial intelligence and algorithmic manipulation?

I take my phone, open Instagram or TikTok. Physically, I am in Istanbul, but mentally I am in Bali drinking a smoothie made of exotic fruits at a meditation workshop. Or I’m dreaming of a honeymoon in Paris, a selfie in New York and make-up hacks from an influencer in Dubai. I want everything I see: videos and photos that disconnect me from my own reality. We start desiring things that do not belong to us. We begin to feel that our identity belongs elsewhere.

Until recently, young people mostly saw the “fancy” side of globalization. They were almost hypnotized, believing the world was only what they saw on their screens.

This changed when the brave journalists and cameramen of Gaza risked their lives and showed us the “non-fancy” side of globalization: