BENGALURU: In the early days, to acquire knowledge, one had to forfeit worldly pleasures, and walk into forests. One then had to find a guru, and study under him/her/them for a number of years. Only then was one considered an expert on any subject — even if it was learning how to carve on rocks.
Till the previous decade, one had to resort to the university system. One had to first traverse through the turbulent years of teenage, deal with acne and puberty — and then battle through a Bachelor’s degree in the subject. One had to navigate through silent libraries, issuing books and returning them week after week with the discipline of a monk. These three hardworking years were followed by a Master’s degree, which came with turbulent relationships, minor flirtations with Communism, finally culminating in a degree that accredited one as some sort of an expert on a subject.
Today, all one needs to do is tap on a few buttons on one’s phone. Experts will pop up like unwanted acne, doling out unsolicited advice and opinions on every subject under the sun. For we live in the age of ultra-expertise, where everybody you know around you is an expert on some field or the other — depending on the flavour of the economy.
With the repealing of farm laws, experts in the field have popped up again. On LinkedIn, you’ll find MBAs talk about MSPs. On Facebook, you’ll find that your childhood friend — who was mostly known as the kid who’d pick his nose in class — extol the socio-economic virtues of farming laws in Venezuela. On Instagram, you’ll find teenagers make 15-second reels on 15-year-old issues with the confidence of Yo Yo Honey Singh in a Chandigarh disco.
And this isn’t today’s phenomenon. Through the years, I’ve found my friends to be hidden experts on fields as diverse as military strategy and macroeconomics. When Demonetisation was declared, my friends — who would debate for two hours to split a bar bill — made Raghuram Rajan seem like a drunk backbencher in comparison. When Article 370 was in the news, my friends transformed themselves into geo-political experts with the confidence of Machiavellian leaders.
Ironically, none of them have actually farmed for a single day of their lives or studied politics and macroeconomics. Their experience with defence purchases is limited to purchasing Deepavali guns and the circular reels that came along with them or purchasing Deepavali bombs and launching rockets into neighbours’ homes.
You’ll find spiritual gurus discussing politics and economy. And politicians talking about kundalini and finding one’s purpose in life. We have all become experts in various fields, and YouTubers have become our source for infinite knowledge. Aldous Huxley would have been surprised with the ease with which we knock on the doors of perception, eventually knocking them down like Daya in the TV show CID.
For we live in the age of ultra-expertise, where one needs no degree to speak about anything under the sun. All one needs is a degree of patience, to bear all the gyaan flying in one’s direction. If Buddha were alive in our generation, we would call him a Boomer with mental issues. And we’d quickly unfollow him on Instagram!
(The writer’s views are his own)