Where are we Headed?

In a world where political correctness has gone overboard and everyone seems to be corrupt, a backlash was inevitable. Is being obnoxious the oral version of that backlash, wonders Santosh Desai:
“The idea of truth has become so severely compromised that professed strength is seen to be a substitute for it. In a world where everyone is deemed corrupt, calling other people names without any restraint becomes decoded as a sign of honesty.”

But why is obnoxious so appealing to us?
“The directness, the uncomplicated self absorption, and the primitive nature of the promise combine to create a compelling force that we find easy to give in to… the most important reason for the success of the obnoxious is that they are always entertaining.”
Entertainment: it’s been what the masses wanted ever since the time of the gladiators, bread and circuses!

In another blog, Desai wonders if this is just a transition phase of democracy, caused by social media:
“Social media, by giving voice to the millions who were earlier forced only to listen, has deepened democratic participation while simultaneously enabling a shallower political discourse.”
Some believe that “as we discover the costs of our (social media) freedoms… some of rabid beaviour on display will get toned down”.

Logically speaking, why was it OK when the pre-Internet media (publishing, radio, TV) got to decide the topics of the debate, and pontificate on what was good and right? Does that lead to this very scary proposition:
“If we were to accept this axis of analysis, then it could be argued that liberalism and the idea of modernity that drives it is not an inevitable progression based on the human instinct for freedom, but a development contingent on what the dominant media form of the time is.”

How will this storm created by the Internet + social media play out? Nobody can say for sure, says Desai. But because the stakes are so high, it’s still worth thinking about:
“It is too soon to imagine what kind of changes lie in store, for the codes of a digitally powered society are still in the process of being formed… It is not a comforting thought, which is why it is worth thinking about.”

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarSeptember 23, 2016 at 5:39 PM

    A little strange blog from you because you usually quote more than one author! Here Santosh Desai dominates.

    Most points are valid.

    As to the point, "Why was it OK when the pre-Internet media (publishing, radio, TV) got to decide the topics of the debate, and pontificate on what was good and right?"I have this to say. Who says it was all OK? Then also people were feeling some things were wrong in that. However, in our younger days, the media was not a real devil that it is today. There was less manipulation, less overdoing, less commercialism, less shouting down. It was a lot milder than today, because it was not a competitive world then of the to the level of today's cut-throatism then.

    Well, we all know every solution leads to a problem. So let's live our day as it is. Though some may feel today's world offers more elements for lament, truly speaking that is not the case. World forever was a mixture of good, bad, neutral ingredients in it. And it will be so in the future too, unless somebody has proof otherwise.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more