Pandemic, illness, death.
Cruelty, violence, protests.
Position, power, politics.
And the resultant…Disaster.
it’s beginning to feel like the end of the world…
Or the end of humanity at the very least.
Seeing images of India’s sick, gasping for breath and endless rows of funeral pyres, in the international media especially, has been depressing.
(This is not a political opinion piece, nor am I defending how we got into this calamity.
Everyone knows…and enough has been said.
There’s simply no defence, yes we saw it coming, and it’s unforgivable.)
But flying a drone over the pyres in the name of media coverage…
Seeing the actual CCTV camera footage of people being brutally murdered….
The Internet showing us image after image of people hacked to death in violent clashes (today it’s Bengal, tomorrow it could be somewhere else in the world)…
should really make us stop and question,
‘what has become of us?’
By denying the dead their last dignity; by intruding on their loved ones in their final moments of goodbye and grief; by reducing their pain to statistics to prove a point, what are we really achieving?
With every bloodied, gruesome image that circulates at our fingertips, the human race is becoming extremely desensitized to terror and violence…one like, share and forward at a time.
Sure, we can argue, it’s done to ‘spread awareness’! And yes, ‘awareness’ is so important.
But only if it comes with a definite call for action!
(And no, gathering in an open square to protest, especially in times of the corona pandemic, is not ‘doing your bit’. If we are being perfectly honest, that’s an excuse for an outing!)
Talking point…lending your voice…starting a dialogue…these are nothing but millenial terms for armchair humanity. The desire to save the whole world from the comfort of your home gives nothing but a lazy, false sense of superiority…a gift from social media.
But somewhere in this misplaced ambition of earning the fictitious currency of ‘likes and followers’, and to have the prestigious blue-ticked title of ‘influencer’…did we sell our souls?
I had heard about the dark web…the underbelly of the internet. Just the thought of its existence made me shudder. But I put it out of my mind, labelling it a hellhole I never wanted to visit.
Now whether we like it or not, this underbelly seems to be rising to the surface.
With every story of brutality shared to ‘spread awareness’ the incidents keep increasing.
Is that a coincidence? I don’t know. I have no statistics backing my claim. It’s just an observation.
But does every post shared by us to draw the attention of a handful of people on our contact list, towards the barbarism of others…
encourage more acts of violent behaviour from the depraved? It’s something to think about.
With the whole world talking about them, are we inadvertently giving them a platform?
Any publicity is good publicity, right? We’re enabling the madness of many others like them, by giving these very barbarians their 15 mins of fame!
There was a time, not so long ago, when our world was simple. It was contained.
When it was not a global village;
We didn’t know everyone and didn’t feel the need to.
True, our voices didn’t have any real power.
Was that a bad thing though?
We couldn’t contribute in anyway to the #BlackLivesMatter movement all the way from India and nobody could tweet #prayforIndia from elsewhere.
But was that really anybody’s loss? They could still say an actual prayer without letting us know, and I believe those work like magic.
We’ve tried this ‘More Voices’ thing for a while now and what have we really achieved, other than more global unrest, than I can ever remember.
Humanity and compassion are about bringing joy with our presence…about making the lives of the people that we are in everyday contact with, a little bit better.
Humanity does not demand an intelligent political opinion a minute. It prefers silent but real acts of kindness every few days or so.
Ask the doctors and nurses sweating under their PE kits for hours together, for over a year;
holding the hands of the dying so they’re less lonely;
staying far away from their own loved ones so they don’t infect them;
dealing with their personal grief and loneliness,
helplessness and fatigue;
and still showing up to work the next day, without any individual accolades, rewards, or hashtags!!
What did we ever do to deserve these super humans who haven’t yet quit on us?!
Why isn’t every frontliner’s picture going viral instead of every murder victim’s, who never even consented to that image being their last seen.
So the next time I hit forward, or use my 20-20 vision of hindsight to educate the authorities on how they should do their job, I intend to stop and think…what would I have done better, had I been there at the scene of crime rather than secure in my home?
If my first thought is ‘but why would I ever be there?’
then maybe, I know nothing about these places and people that I’m lending my one sided, half baked, perceptions to.
Maybe it’s better if I shut up and instead, check once again on my immediate neighbour, parents, siblings, friends…people that I actually do have a responsibility towards.
Maybe, if each of us went back to doing just that, as we did before the advent of the internet, we could take back some of its evil power.
Let’s use Social media only for sharing smiles, humour, our work, videos of puppies and babies, online shopping of course.
Let’s go back to being politically informed, involved, concerned and opinionated, of course…but more privately, without the numbers!
Because in a world as big as ours, it’s not so hard for everyone to find plenty of people who share your views.
And strength in numbers makes everyone right…right?!
PS: Before you point it out, I do see the irony…I know I’ve just shared my strong opinion, on not sharing opinions, over social media!
I still am a work in progress like everyone else 🙂
I also believe censorship of the internet is not the solution, but self-censorship that aligns with our value system is. In fact, so often we share graphic images that we later realise were fake, but only after we’ve become emotionally charged and incited few others as well.
I’m not going to lie, the temptation to share freely available, and very disturbing pictures of recent events, to lend weight to my post, and attract more views was strong.
But I’m ending instead, with words that rhyme, in the hope that they bring some hope.
#stopthespread #dontgoviral #selfcensorship #frontliners #salute #respect #India #funeralpyres #Bengalisburning #prayforBengal
NityaAlwaniSatyani #NityaSatyani #SunsetEffect #poetry #life #nature #fantasy #imagine #Randommusings from the crossroads of conflict & common sense…science & soul searching #hope #notetoself #lifeslessons #quotes #inspirationalquotes #motivationalquotes #inspiration #spirituality #help #lifehacks #wordstoliveby #myrealinfluencers #thingsmyfathertaughtme #thingsiwantmychildrentoknow #ruskinbond #williamwordsworth #robertfrost #sadguru #dalailama #timesofindia #mumbaimirror #speakingtree #rumi #hindustantimes #thehindu #newyorktimes #huffingtonpost
Sunset Effect - Nitya Satyani 