Over the course of history, human beings have displayed a stunning ability to scale unimaginable heights of goodness and promptly balanced it out with a penchant for plunging into the depths of depravity. For every Gandhi, there has been a Hitler, after all.Yet, we have persisted in the good fight to improve the human condition when we are not giving in to baser instincts to wallow in evil. Even so, there has never been a better time to belong to a minority group, be a woman, or a person of formerly taboo sexual orientation. For those who would scoff at such an overly optimistic assertion and point to the hate crimes repeatedly perpetrated against those belonging to these categories, allow me to reiterate that despite evidence to the contrary, that is no doubt trending right now on Twitter, it is mostly true.There are more chances now than ever before to live the life of one’s choice without haters raping and slaughtering with impunity or depriving those who don’t subscribe to societal notions of normal or superior of their basic rights.
Of course, intolerance is still prevalent, the streets are not safe for women and draconian laws criminalising same-sex love are being reconsidered when they ought to have been discarded eons ago. Still it is heartening to think that it is no longer politically correct to discriminate against and persecute people on the basis of race, gender, caste or it would have been, had some not persisted in doing so anyway.
At least in the good old days (which wasn’t really because too many were enslaved so that a few could live a life of extravagance and tyrants lopped off heads for purposes of entertainment), there seemed to be a certain point to the things people did, a sense of a struggle that was bigger than themselves. Today, we are ensnared by a collective obsession for all things supercilious, ranging from selfies, to the contents of Taimur’s diaper and Sunny Leone’s bra.
We are so preoccupied with mainlining the internet that we have reduced ourselves to a species who are suckers for stimulation, whose smartphones have made them stupid. In short, too many seem to have taken leave of their senses and are willing to do whatever it takes to grab headlines and generate outrage in a desperate bid to be noticed by the desensitised denizens of the world wide web. Even if it means threatening to kill others or themselves over preferences for dietary proteins or a movie based on a legendary Queen who may or may not have been entirely the figment of a poet’s imagination and which is almost certainly not worth this raucous ruckus.
In the meantime, while we get carried away by manufactured drama, absurd controversies and Virushka’s plans for parenthood, there are too many things that need our immediate attention—poverty, corruption, female infanticide, manual scavenging, farmer suicides, and a cleansing of the country at every level imaginable. Hopefully, we will smarten up soon if only to surface from the avalanche of stupidity that has nearly buried us. Besides, despite the dispiriting fact, that the more things change the more they remain the same, it is also true that change is the only constant.
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