Ctrl+Shift Focus
Somebody famous recently tweeted, asking how come there are still apes out there if we truly evolved from them. At first glance, the tweet sounds like a brilliant question but it doesn’t take time to point out its ridiculousness. Why so? Because of a misplaced preposition. The fact remains that humans evolved with apes, not from them. Anybody who has read as much as a synopsis of The Origin of Species would be able to tell you this. Evolution is a process, not a measure of ends. As i am typing and as you’re reading there, we are continuously evolving. We are constantly adapting. Rest assured, we will notice the physiological changes before it’s too late to do anything about them. And let’s not even get into the territory about the psychological or sociological evolution.
I’ve noticed one such change in recent times. This has something to do with the way we perceive things around us. To put it poetically, it’s not about the flag anymore, it’s about who is holding the flag. A narrative can’t stand, let alone survive, on its own. Crusaders are needed, mascots too. Issues have become relevant as long as they boost the narrative. Or else, they can go take a long walk into the sea. That’s the world we inhabit today.
We don’t seem to have a say in what or how we feel about an issue. Our views are tailor-made and dumped on us—via communication and media conduits— by the vanguards of these issues. Which makes you wonder whether these vanguards will be relevant once the issues are solved. Which also makes you wonder how much of these vanguards’ interest are at stake here. Thus, bringing us to the eternal question: What is real?
We get our information from our electronic devices and we believe whatever we feel is true. We don’t know what’s going on hundreds or thousands of miles away from us. All we’ve got to spare is our invaluable attention. In exchange, we get reports and we frame our opinion — the crappiest of all human inventions so far — based on what we consume. For all we know, we are being played by these media circuits. Our history is rife with misinformation as well as disinformation. (Do google the difference between the two.) But then, do we really care about authenticity anyway? We feed ourselves crap, from food to water to air to knowledge, wittingly because somewhere deep down, we’ve understood that we don’t deserve real. Fakeness suits us better.
When accosted by such existential doubts, we prefer to shy away from ‘deep’ discussions. Shallow talk, please. Philosophy is welcome only after everybody in the room is 45 miles away from sobriety. Which brings us to the part where we shift our focus from the flag to the flag-holder. To give you an example, last month, Andy Murray pointed out a journalist’s casual sexism vis-à-vis the Williams sisters’ achievements. Within minutes, Murray was paraded on the Internet as a much-needed icon of gender equality. Nothing wrong in there as, pointed earlier, the media thrives on attention. Your attention can come at any price. Even at the price of misguiding you. Ideally, the focus should have been on the Williams sisters because they were been deprived of their recognition but for the sake of the ‘issue’ at hand, Murray will enjoy the limelight. It’s not like he asked for it. Just that we are in dire need of heroes—crusaders and mascots sound crude, sorry — so we’ll do anything, in collusion with the media, to make ourselves significant again. In the same vein, poverty is an issue capable of grabbing our attention on its own. But, no. The vanguards of issues think we need icons to represent poverty. Lo and behold, Bono and Jolie and their ilk enter the room. Oh, the world is ending too. Let’s ask DiCaprio and Gore to fly in on their private jets.
I call this change of goalposts as the unbecoming of us. We’ve driven ourselves hollow for so long now that we’d overlook Trudeau’s misadventures with the Sauds and Merkel’s contemptuous anti-homosexuality stand as long as they fit the bill of my-PR-is-better-than-yours coolness. We see it happen everyday not just on the social media but also in our living room. After all, the television still remains a potent force of change. But then, it faces an existential threat too: if the screen fails to keep us occupied with shifted bullshit, it will be following the route phonograph, telegraph, walkman, cassettes and CDs took.
