Synchronizing with the opinions and the anecdotes that usually surfaces in public domain, and actualizing the same tendency to the very life-world of the self and the other self around it, is becoming a habit of a public life and its associated thought. This habit, initially, remains preferable to the most, and anything that emerges out of it, during its regime, is like piping hot cheese over the warm bread. Then over a period of time, it withers, and everything that is associated with it too withers. The problem lies not with the procedure, but with the very act of acknowledging the authority of the populism.
In some of the recent events, I have been able to capture strange public characters that is out of the book, and that astonished me to certain extent. For instance, in a random Facebook post which highlight issues that belongs to the social or political context, I found three types of people dropping comments in that particular post. First, there are peoples who drop comments, who personally knows the publisher. Second, those people who drop comments considering the power and status of the original publisher, and presenting themselves as an exponent. Third, are those people who checked the previous comments, analyse the number of supporters and refuters, and drop a comment favouring the majority. For the sake of humanity, and for the sake of morality, and other related sublime things like conscience, intuition, etc. I should have seen one more type of people who drop an objective point of view. All I found is their absence. Such commentors are seen passing into the realm of myths and legends, and the present society is being deprived of one more jewel that should guide them through dark paths.
What hurts us more is our present situation; that we are being bulked by these second and third types of people. In other parts of the globe, people’s judgments are still objectively valid and reliable. Number of comments dropped in a post published by a President of a nation, usually is being shared by different types of people. Significant number of comments are being shared by the fourth types of people. The least amount is shared by the first type, and then comes the second one with a very few numbers, and finally the maximum number is occupied by the fourth type of people. In this adventurous task of dialogue and discourses in social media platforms, they don’t provide seats for the third type of people. In our context, the standard of one’s existence, standard of one’s choice, is being judged by one’s ability to accommodate themselves in the direction prescribed by the majority.
That being the case, we also need to observe and study the invisible force that drives such judgements. Is it truly an existential crisis, that we are compel to called such inclinations as the zombies of the modern world? Is it the fear of castration and excommunication that could be a possible outcome of one’s objective moral stand? Or, is it the sense of prudential expediency that is very natural to human as such?
There may be reasons and justifications behind the exponentially increasing number of the third type of people, but we are free to address them as the zombies of the modern world. Multiple works of fictions have successfully convinced us that zombies move with the masses irrationally, and the quantifications of irrationality is beyond measure when one drops few words in the form of ‘comments’ or ‘opinions’ in accordance to the majority of the other previous comments.
If certain society is found to be populated by zombies, then it is doomed to its extermination. No intellectuals, or any other party or institution, has the authority to find a cure. Neither they are capable to find the cure. Because, everything is vicious circle, in the sense that the formulation of the cure begins with the algorithm that analyses the demands of the zombies themselves. Hence a socio-political commentator, when opinion is being seek from him/her on certain issues, the journalist/host begins the question with his own views, or rather with some popular views, and the commentor begins his opinion with the word ‘EXACTLY’. And the term ‘exactly’ is being sustained in all the following opinions. Authenticity and originality are being cast down in the abyss.
All I say is, that such thing can happen randomly, as one among others, in the form of error. But what is evident is the sound consistency, similar to a ‘zombie march’ towards a powerful landmine. None can save the zombies from the blasting mines, except their own resurrection to the normal man, and avoid the extermination. To our astonishment, the unveiling of these zombies happens in social media platforms, and in the time of elections. We as spectators are irrevocably suffering.
The writer is Assistant Professor, Imphal College
