“Too Subtle to Ignore” isn’t that an Oxymoronic statement? It is indeed, isn’t it? Especially in the Indian context.
We the Indians don’t do well with subtlety. We are a country of extremes. Extreme beauty, Extreme Ugliness, Extreme Wealth, Extreme Poverty, Extreme Cold, Extreme Heat. Hell, we have taken the Extremities of Extreme to such a level that even our news anchor who is supposed to convey serious news needs to be the loudest to be on top.
I can go on & on till the Cows come home. Oh! BTW I hope it is not blasphemous on my part to use the word “COW” in such a trivial connotation.
Coming to the point I made about extremes, our movies are fairly reflective of our culture isn’t it? Our escapist movies are too fanciful & our real cinema is gut wrenchingly gory.
But is it true with our life too? Are the things so dark that it swallows every speckle of light or are they so bright that they are totally spotless?
Many seasons ago a friend of mine Abhijit said to me something which has made a lasting impression on me that can never be ignored. To quote him, Oh! Before that let me give a small intro about him. This Abhijit will come across as 1 of these spoilt son of a rich dad, his general expertise is only in the areas of Pornography, Food, Expensive gadgets. Very rarely does he say things which have life changing perspectives. Coming back, to quote him “BC…. Why are you looking at life in Black & White, when 99% of it is in Grey”?
Bolt of lightning, Epiphany in rare Clairvoyance. Say what you may, but isn’t this the universal truth of the world?
We never tend to look at things/people as a combination of a little good & a little bad.
The tragedy is that in recent times we are becoming more & more polarized and the extremities we have as Indians are way too visible now in the form of “SOCIAL MEDIA OUTRAGE”
It isn’t that our beliefs have changed, it’s that the way we feel about people we disagree with has changed.
In short, people have become less tolerant of opposing opinions. And their reactions to those opinions has become more emotional and outrageous.
In the 1990s during our school days, there was a huge optimism about the internet. The idea that we could bring all information and all points of view together into one network brought hope that people would become more tolerant, accepting & appreciative of one another.
But in many cases, the opposite has been the case. In fact, it seems that the more we connect disparate people and show them differing points of view, the angrier they become that those different points of view exist in the first place. As a result, you have a hardening of divisions between different demographics of people, and the very technology that was designed to bring more people together is, in many ways, pushing them apart like never before.
The internet does this in three different ways:
1. It’s easier than ever to seek out and find information that already confirms your pre-existing beliefs or feelings. Hence if you feel Nehru & Gandhi family laid the foundation for modernity & tolerance in Indian society there’s information supporting that and it’s immediately available. Or if you feel that Nehru & Gandhi family is responsible for all the present-day ills in Indian society there are always “news” stories one click away that can confirm that feeling.
2. It’s all immediately available to you, reinforcing your pre-existing beliefs & assumptions and making it harder to question them. And without the ability to question your immediate beliefs and assumptions, things such as growth, tolerance and greater understanding actually become more difficult to achieve.
3. Media sources on the internet are encouraged to find the most sensationalized and outrageous information possible because this is the information that cuts through all of the noise and travels the furthest. Information is pruned not for validity or importance or factual accuracy but for emotional response. Part of this is consciously done by the publications and outlets; some of it is just a result of the system itself.
4. People are now more removed from those who disagree with them or see the world differently than them. Back when the only way to communicate was face-to-face, if you ran into somebody who disagreed with you, you were able to see the micro-expressions, tonality and body language behind that disagreement. You were likely able to see that the disagreement was well-intentioned and that the person disagreeing with you wasn’t a horribly depraved individual, rather just someone who saw the world a little bit differently. But today, people are just characters on a screen. They are so far removed from you and the nuance of their beliefs and their expressions are lost to the bits that travel from screen to screen. As a result, we tend to assume the worst about one another, turning people who disagree with us into caricatures or stereotypes who just infuriate us further.
Not only does there seem to be more outrage happening in all sectors of society, but as you’ve probably noticed, this outrage seems to constantly be escalating.
Part of the problem here is that outrage is addictive.
We enjoy feeling a certain moral superiority over others. We enjoy feeling as though we are on the right side of history and we have some meaningful moral crusade to fight. And in this sense, there’s a weird pleasure and satisfaction among the anger. Even as these moral battles upset us, they feed our growing sense of entitlement: the feeling that we deserve a better world that we’re not getting, that we are somehow better than the life that has been given to us.
And when you have everyone on all sides feeling both entitled and victimized, along with an endless supply of information to reinforce one’s own ideological bubble at the click of a mouse, then things get messy.
Isn’t it time for us to tone it down now, shouldn’t we go back to the days where It’s kind of Ok, takes precedence over it has to be right?
