Friday, June 24, 2016

Killing healthy dialogues!

What's with this opinion-shaming?  I've often seen people making fun of and mocking those who are vocal about their opinions for being "wanna-be experts" on the subject at hand. The trend of being vocal has upraised due to availability of social media. So, if there's any terrorist attack and public at social media discusses its causes- it's an attempt to become scholars on religion. If there's a shooting and people participate in discussing gun laws-it's an attempt to become political analyst. We saw it with wife beating fiasco and Hamza Ali Abbasi incident. The most recent is Brexit (UK exists EU, Big news!). Masses are merely expressing their respective views but there's a group who doesn't participate in anything productive. Instead it retorts to mocking others who consider it important enough to discuss. I can quote plenty of examples but I think it would suffice saying that some ignorant and lazy individuals with a notion of high intellect just sit behind their keyboards and judge others for raising a voice and think that they are making a difference. Like their own selfies, emotional rants and travel logs are only crucial things that world needs to know about. You say writing long Facebook posts won't help anyone? Let me teach you a thing or two about how power of masses works. Raising a voice is initiation of process that stirs a change and having a productive discussion is first step of staircase of betterment. But how will we ever know that? We are Pakistanis, remember?
It's a curse of totalitarian society where raising a question becomes an anomaly. People reach a level of self-loathing where Stockholm syndrome kicks in and everything looks like a rainbow. When flux of information is controlled by a certain fraction, ignorance seems like a strength. Does it ring a bell? You got it right! George Orwell's 1984 is still relevant.
Our society is immature and intolerant to its core because of same lack of dialogue. If you don't make it comfortable for people to say their hearts out, how will you learn being tolerant to others views? But we are not ready to learn this lesson yet. For now, we find it entertaining to humiliate people who try to indulge in dialogue by calling them attention-seekers and laughing at their desperateness to look cool. Anyone who dares broadcasting an opinion or holding a discussion is seen as an outcast striving to jump on a bandwagon. People call him madman! Maybe being sane in insane times is itself an insanity! But mark my words, this mockery is nothing but satisfaction of your fragile egos. It's just another way to validate your ignorance or lack of willingness to say something that world deems important. Anything that happens in the world can be discussed, should be discussed and there is no shame in it. Only shame is doing nothing and airing a sense of superiority in ignorance! 

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