Heads in the forest and hands in the society - Way forward in this delusive digital world
Hi Folks!
Welcome.
I am Sri Sathya Sai Anirudh K, hailing from South India, Tamil Nadu.I am an IT professional.This is my first blog and i have given my best to make it interesting and readable. Any feedback and suggestions are always welcome.Hope you all would like this blog.
What made me to write this Blog : First of all I am not a guy who loves reading books, but I have made a decision to start reading books from this year and I am on my way to finish my first book.The recent Covid-19 Pandemic has been very aggressive and is taking a heavy toll all over the world. The sad thing which affected me is, there is a cyber war going on while Doctors, and other health department staffs are working keenly to overcome this unknown disease.This is the exact reason i thought of expressing my view on this cyber war which is reaching its peak during this Quarantine time.
So without much delay let me start..
I am an active user of WhatsApp and YouTube. I have been watching a lot of videos in YouTube recently during this Quarantine time. I notice there are lot of you-tubers supporting Government measures and there are equal number of critics. Well this is common, like two sides of a coin. But when i deeply went on to see more and more videos on both the sides, I get confused and even doubt what’s right and wrong. Which information is false and which is not? This doesn’t stop here; since India is a secular country there are thousands of videos which tend to disturb this harmony. These videos take both the colours of Politics with Religion which ignites riots among immature people.
When I say immature people, I don’t mean the illiterates of my country, I mean both literates and illiterates who don’t use their common sense and behave responsibly. Nothing offensive I am trying to define the word maturity. According to me maturity doesn’t mean i know everything, I can live on my own, I can take right decisions; its about realising these and being responsible. We as a Citizen of the Country, being an educated person must know the responsibilities and repercussions of our actions and its impact on this society.
Starting from a simple meme on a government official(may it be PM / CM), reacting to a false news on social media, creating violence in the society, showing discrimination in terms of religion / caste, spreading news that can incite violence or hatred among people are all acts of immaturity. These acts are performed not only by illiterates but also by educated people. I also don’t deny the fact that there are a few people who take immense care in spreading the right news but they also end up fighting with other you-tubers which spoils the main cause.
Now if we try to analyse the root cause, we will end up in a list of inter-linked issues, in which each issue itself takes a long time to discuss.Ex: Lack of moral values and ethics, proper education system, lack of educated politicians, lack of disciplined characters who are having powers, lack of awareness on our history etc.Reasons are many.
So let me stick to the main issue, which is the Delusive digital world, which can incite hatred amongst friends on just a single tweet or a whatsApp forward, only because he belongs to another religion and somewhere that particular community is harming yours. This is just an example of the evil faces of this Social Media. There are lots and lots of other issues. I am taking this example as there are a serious exchange of tweets or videos in YouTube going in favour of disrupting the harmony and unity of Hindu-Muslim communities during this Quarantine time.
I belong to a Hindu community and I too have many friends from other religion. Out of those I have seen many who simply ignore these posts on Social media and there are a few who act like Non-Symptomatic carriers of Corona disease. Yes,they share these in order to create awareness among others. Nothing wrong in it everyone wants their community people be to safe guarded. But unfortunately spreading these mostly doesn’t serve that purpose and instead go opposite. They further create insecurity among them and starts creating hatred among the other community.
I personally believe in God. There are many who don’t, there are a few who believe that god doesn’t have form. Everyone deserves to have a perception and belief. Let us not hurt other’s feelings and their belief system. So in order to be a responsible citizen, I feel the only way forward is to consider this approach- “Heads in the forest and hands in the society”.
So what does this mean? Heads in the forest means to stay connected to our belief, follow our spiritual practise and journey, do our duties with Ethics without getting emotionally triggered by any of these Social media facts; as we all know anything can be spread through social media and 90% of the information passed is misused.But does this mean to alienate ourselves from this society ? Absolutely NO. That is where the second part comes. We are heavily dependent on this digital media to acquire knowledge and let us stick only to that. Hands in the society - We need to realise that all of the human kind are interdependent. By this, it means we are a part of society and we need to contribute to it, like the society contributes and helps us for our living. In fact not only human beings, we are dependent on all living beings.
To the Crux :
1. Let us not get emotionally triggered by social media news.
2. Let us respect each other’s belief and show love towards all beings.
3. Let us inculcate the habit of keeping country in mind first and share information on social media meticulously without hurting anyone and be a responsible citizen.
4. There is no point in blaming government or others. Change has to happen from within and it should spread all over. So let us do our own duties sincerely and with dedication, whatever roles we play( may it be a software engineer, government official, road sweeper, you-tuber, IAS official etc)
5. Let us follow work ethics in our own careers.This means doing what is right and not doing what is favourable or what gives comfort for our own self or for the people who we care about.