Everybody, everywhere all at once has an opinion—like a school-of-piranha-attacking-prey kind of frenzy. Our pea-sized brains are addicted to the dopamine rush we get from scrolling headlines and swiping videos, which has attuned our attention span to last all of five seconds. And this has led us to form entitled, ill-informed, prejudiced opinions at the pace of 5G downloads without bothering to read or see the content beyond the headlines or the click-bait image.
This is an existential crisis worse than the Philo-trinity Socrates, Plato and Aristotle asking, ‘What is the truth?’ There is no Jack Nicholson to repartee with ‘Can you handle the truth?’ His movie clip is probably being passed off as real and an Instagram reel, titled ‘US army general loses cool when asked if UFOs exist’ or ‘Did Biden truly fix the elections?’—depending on whether the person is a fan of Martians or carrot-top who could be a Martian.
We have become a jumpy, irritable, irascible, knee-jerk-reaction-espousing generation. Our opinions are formed faster than a surgical strike or an ED raid. Our inner voices keep pushing us to voice opinions in the hope that somebody will accept us into their tribe of thought—that we will belong to something and be important for those seconds, or better still find ourselves being retweeted, liked or shared.
The Dalai Lama with his limited English tried to interpret a traditional Tibetan culture-specific grandfatherly joke. The words came out making him sound cringey. That is an understatement. The world erupted. From Indians trending with #DalaiLamaLeaveIndia to the Western Karens and Kenneths labelling him all sorts of names. I was shell-shocked. Why did he say, what did he mean, why didn’t he choose his words carefully? Damn the translator, was he on a pee break? Look up the Tibetan term che le sa and you will realize HH needs to brush up on his English language skills, and the term wasn’t to be taken literally, and he did not mean any harm.
In another development, the seculars erupted, the Right-wing celebrated, and the ultra-Right rejoiced, saying finally everything is right. Mughals have been deleted from the NCERT books. But who knows what happened in detail? The Mughal chapters are still being taught in Classes VII and VIII. For sake of making the syllabus concise, the repetition has been deleted from Grade 11 and 12 books. But deep-diving is not the forte of this generation or even the times. No patience, no time, no detailing—just click, react, opinionate.
Having said that, quite quietly a section in the same syllabus that had earlier spoken about the RSS being banned has now been removed. No doubt, there is a concentrated effort in trying to rewrite history, but our quick reactions seem to be defeating the purpose of the protest.
In a decade, we will no longer be able to tell fact from fiction, with AI-generated content passing off as real. With Midjourney, ChatGPT and Deepfake, the real world is slowly being pixellated and consumed by AI, bit by bit. “This is the world now. Logged on, plugged in, all the time,” says John Connor in Terminator Genisys. James Cameron was right. And now it is too late.
Anirban Bhattacharyya
Author, actor and standup comic
anirbanauthor@gmail.com