Saturday, August 18, 2007

Mental Clones

What are the general topics of discussions we have? If we were to list down ten topics it surely would include news , events , celebrities , movies and sitcoms. The topics are limited and the opinions on the same are rather trite because the source of opinion for most such opinions are common. It is the media and a few media personalities to whom the channels have easy access who become the opinion makers. The handful of such media hyped personalities start voicing the opinion of a country of 1 Bn+. How democratic to have such representatives whom we know not much of. So Prahalad Kakkars and Mahesh Bhatts of the world turn out to be the ones commenting on anything and everything.

We watch , we listen , we accept and occasionally we question. So it isn’t surprising that we constantly find ourselves in agreement with each other. For if the source is the same , the outcome cannot be too different. What you sow is what you reap.



The problem is that media while representing opinions and presenting ideas may not do it democratically. So as media becomes the voice of the democracy we all are so proud of , I am not sure if the facts are reliable enough , if the opinions represents the majority and if media is not being used for the purpose of propaganda.

The idea is not to demean the importance of media in shaping the opinions. The concern is about the blind acceptance of these opinions and unquestioning belief in the information provided. The hero worship and uneducated approach to media representations is scary. After all the human race is endowed with the thinking faculty to judge and decide for its own and if it fails to use the same effectively there is no way at all that we will be able to judge fact from fiction. There is no way we will be able to ensure that as we exist peacefully we don’t loose our individuality and becomes mental clones of each other.

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