Lynching in the 21st century!

Our world has become one which is ruled by mobs. We thought we had cancelled mob behaviours when we started engaging in intellectual discourses and discarded our weapons for civilised dialogues. We were made to believe so. The muffled undertones of passive-aggressiveness were always there in the background. It never really disappeared. In those days, the dominant ruling forces called it resistance, reformation or revolution. We learnt that numbers matter and recruiting the masses worked best to overthrow a seemingly impregnable and cruel regime. Most new religions came about through these ways - show the unthinking inebriated public the virtues and purpose of existence, riled their emotions to unite them against a particular cause, sometimes a self-serving one. The major Abrahamic religions began thus, creating a sense of fear, perpetually assuming that they would be besieged.

Fast forward to the present time. We thought that in modern times, with the ease of information at our disposal, we felt that we would be widespread in the depth of our knowledge and be empowered to choose what is best for us. We were never so wrong.

The law of the jungle and the Neanderthal code of ethics, if there ever was, is the law that prevails in cyberspace. The loudest, the most devious and the most insincere, wins the arguments hands down. Anyone who does not conform to the voice of the majority is mercilessly crucified. The 'voice of the majority' is not actually the plea of the most, but narratives of ringmasters of who are paid tools of their puppetmasters with vested interests. If in the medieval times, muscle power, blood and gore put the weak statehood in submission, modern-day cyber warriors do the same through cyberbullying, mass hypnotism and peddling of fake news. Oft-repeated nonsense gains credibility via mere repetition without giving opportunity for critical assessment. Anyone who even utters whispers of differing viewpoint is instantaneously shot down through cybertrooping activities, public shaming and cancel culture. Lynch mobs on social media are out for blood to sow communal hatred, assault on scientific knowledge and insult to our thinking faculty.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International 

Beware of deep fake videos!

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Carrie Fisher, who acted as Princess Leia since the beginning of the Star Wars since 1977, died on December 27th 2016. But thanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI), she is kept alive in the movies until her character gets a decent burial. She appears in almost half of this movie due to the unused footage from Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Imagine someone who had died two years previously still featured in a movie that demands continuity. As we see in this film also that there is a thin line between being alive and dying, especially if one is a Jedi Master. A departed soul can still perform ground shattering literally 'out-of-this-world' feats. One has to tune in to the correct frequency to receive the intended instructions on decision making. Do I sense a speck of Vedanta teaching here? 

This kind of make-believe is no longer confined to the celluloid industry and fantasy but has permeated into the mainstream. Cybertechnology has advanced so frighteningly fast that algorithms can digitally manipulate audio and visual inputs to create fake videos. These are called deep fake videos and have the potential to create disaster when conflicting information is inserted for nefarious intentions.  We have to be aware of this ability and be ready to differentiate what is real and what is not.

Now, coming to Star Wars Ep 9, it was not the fresh idea that came to change the world when the first episode (or rather Ep 4) hit the screens back in 1977. Since then, many have changed in advances in storytelling and film technology. Many copycat franchises have also emerged competing for a share in box office collection. 

It is the same good-over-evil message, but this time around, the storytellers are telling us that there is a thin line between living and dying, as mentioned earlier.

This YouTube video gives a complete rundown on the Star War saga.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.