We live in a happening world. And the world is in chaos. Look around: what we see are geopolitical instabilities due to the wars that are currently on, and equally, the wars that could erupt in the near or medium-term future. Geopolitics is suddenly the new politics. And war is the language at play again. Even as I write this, Pakistan’s minister Hanif Abbasi has threatened India with a “full-scale war” if India stops water supply to Pakistan in retaliation for the recent barbaric killings in Pahalgam. Abbasi even threatened India with nuclear retaliation, saying 130 nuclear warheads in Pakistan’s arsenal are kept “only for India”. The language is offensive. Offence is the new defence.
The chaos we live amid is further compounded by the different philosophies that dominate the world. In some parts, right-wing politics is coming to the fore with gusto. Even as this happens, there is a clarion call to get back to the basics of religion and religious belief systems that have dominated our lives for centuries. While some parts of the world are singing the death of the “inclusive” and the “all-embracing” movements, other parts are emerging as protest-centres against all that is “different” and “not meant to be”.
In other parts of the world, there is a clear divide between the war philosophies at play. A case in point is Israel and Palestine. The entire world is divided on the lines of two differing philosophies on them. And in another part of the world, it is Ukraine versus Russia, and the completely divergent sets of passion across these two lines of thought and action.
In some parts of the world there is ethnic strife, just as there is drought, malnutrition and poverty in another. In yet another part of the world, there is a battle against obesity. There is the flood-ravaged part of the world, just as there is the drought-mangled. The world sure is a complex place. A complex place with a complex set of issues. Issues that get their share of voice on the basis of the perspective that popular media in that country and region take. The world is a perspective.
Media has a rather important role to play in shaping perspectives. These perspectives are really not individual perspectives and views that must become the collective one. Instead, these are collective perspectives that need to become the singular view of a nation. Sadly, this is not the way it always works. More often than not, the singular view becomes one that gets embraced by a society that believes in the rule of the majority.
To an extent, the media shapes and drives everything in a society. While this may sound a bit too much, just think of it this way. If you were not to read a single newspaper, not listen to the radio or watch television at all, and if you were to disconnect yourself from everything that you do on a smartphone, and finally if you were to switch off from word-of-mouth and word-of-digital altogether, wouldn’t you live in an ideal (and Utopian) world? A world where your primary concern would be you and your immediate family and the local community?
The fact remains solid. Media today does not just present the fact. It actually adds value (or depletes value, depending on which side of the fence of this argument you sit) to the fact. A television anchor reads the fact with a tone of voice that in itself conveys a lot. Anxiety is in the voice and the manner. It would be so boring otherwise, wouldn’t it?
Added to it, the presenter adds perspectives. There are voices invited to contribute. Each voice and face contributes an individual perspective. Some add anger, some fear, some anxiousness and some others add bluster. The viewer then is “exposed” fully. The viewer needs to make up his mind on which argument to buy. And he does. You are indeed what you watch. The exposed individual then adds to the cascade with his own notions on his micro social media feeds that cater to yet another impressionable audience down the line across the food chain of news and views consumption.
In a simple society, it is quite likely that there are a host of people who just have no view on a subject. Media helps and aids to create and curate a view. Media helps to cobble together a perspective and a view. Media corrupts even. Aids you to hold a view that you possibly mustn’t hold even in a civilised society (whatever that means).
Primary mass media vehicles such as television, print and radio, aided by secondary cascade mediums such as micro social media feeds, create the perspective that society holds. There is no perfect method to the madness of perspective building though. The perspective that you build within yourself of an issue becomes you. Shallow views and opinions become rigid as they stew in their own sauce. And rigid opinions and views have a way of becoming a way of thinking itself. And that is a religion in itself.
I do believe there is a new religion in our midst today. I will call it ‘mediaism’. You and I are a function of what we read, watch and hear. Media helps (or hurts) us in all of this. Media is what the interstitium is to the human body. It binds us all internally. It helps create the you that you have become. It helps create the I that I have become.
If you do not believe in the argument I put forth, just sit back and think about your view on any issue that is confronting you, your family or for that matter the nation. How were you introduced to the issue? Who “exposed” you to the issue? What was your first opinion on it? Was that opinion (if you had one) based on the residue of what you had read or heard in passing sometime in the past? If you did not have an opinion at all, how did you form one? Who helped you form that? What mediums ‘helped’ in forming it. Was it just one medium? Was it one person? Was it one news-presenter? Was it one ethos? Was it one bias? Was it an experience you had while growing up?
Like it or not, all of us are zealots. The religion you and I are immersed in today is ‘mediaism’. We have been a part of it for a while now. I suspect we will be for a long, long time as well.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru & founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)