When things become so superficial, people are always stuck with the cheap thought and ideology. In the above scenario, no rational man can determine the near possible future. This undetermined future is not the product of an unfiltered imagination, but a logical calculation that assures an outcome from an existing situation. If certain ideas repeatedly surfaced through multiple platforms, then people naturally ceased to engage in the very act of reasoning. Bland discussions and discourses suppress creativity in many ways. When a particular situation arises, which needs to be overcome, for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of justice itself, the act of reasoning becomes inevitable. When these acts of reasoning are being blurred, or is being dragged behind a veil, then civilisation naturally needs to reboot itself to the state that exists prior to the event. For instance, sometime, certain propaganda, though very fruitful from a particular standpoint, also marginalised the potential of the human civilisation. The fruit they yield from such propaganda may serve their personal or political ends, but it hardly serves the humanity at large.
This distortion can be labelled as mass hypnotism. In this age of advance technology, when somebody utters some cheap statement, it can easily convince certain individual, or a group. Life always finds easier to accommodate simple, unaccountable, things rather than complex and thought-provoking ideas. This unintentional feeding, assisted by the AI, resulted into something that can harass and degrade the moral and ethical values of the constituents of a society. Two three decades ago, truths and facts, and the reasoning involved with it, was a product of some resourceful insights, resulting from an extended engagement in the related fields. These days, everyone has opinion, and the availability of the platforms to express their opinions has been sprouted in multitude. This abundance has gone to the extent that if someone intends to capitalize their body, you are just a click away from it.
We are not talking about moral policing. These days people are curious with the mid-term moral policing. What is at the stake is the responsibility one bears on one’s shoulder, when one makes an utterance. There is a saying, ‘Man’s end is determined by what he utters, and a beast’s end by its steps”. The legitimacy of this statement can be extended towards the public domain. More appropriately, in the present context, the social media platforms have provided uncensored box where one can write anything. This is not a critique targeting to the platforms, because in the 21st century, after a series of milestones achieved by humanity, in every aspect, non shall assume that such cheap, irresponsible utterances will ever come into existence. In other words, what one utters will directly or indirectly affect the society it belongs to. Man’s cheap utterances are evident in the themes they update on the social media platforms. This is not of accusing one who is ignorant of the art of expressing a thought, but rather the quality of the thought that is being expressed.
Moreover, things get aggravated when such verbal utterances are made by persons holding key positions, or persons of public interests, etc. When we narrowed down to these popular personalities, and when we encounter those cheap thoughts being spitted out of them, we can easily envisage the near future of the existing society. This envisaging involves the inferring of popular public mentality. In a democratic society, the significance of popular public mentality is to the extent that, every event that occurred, events of both private and public interest, are somehow influenced by the popular mentality. When the alpha male started to feed on faeces, the confused pack remain malnourished. We assumed that the rest of the pack might have learn to console themselves with the nutrients present in the available faeces of other animals.
Now the question is, who should be the alpha? Anyone with an idea in his/her pocket, anyone with a fair complexion, anyone who is the warden of King Solomon’s Mine, does not necessarily deserves to be the alpha. For everyone has a smart phone in his/her pocket, with accounts in sharing platforms, these false alphas might coin terms that serves as breadcrumbs to dismantle the very foundations of a civilisation. Hence choosing an alpha, and the underlying responsibility of the pack in the very act of choosing, has always been an unchartered terrain for many.
The writer is Assistant Professor, Imphal College
