As kids, we used to ask a popular riddle:
Which one of these sentences is correct?
An egg yolk is
white. OR
An egg yolk are
white.
Most, who’d heard it for the first time, would have a go at
the error in grammar. There was, after all, even emphasis on it when it was
asked. The correct answer, though, is neither – an egg yolk is yellow. The
riddle works because choosing between the options that are ‘given’ to us is so
ingrained in our behavior, that we fail to consider an alternative. Or the fact
that there could be something wrong with both of them.
We fail to consider, that real life issues are not an
examination, where you HAVE to choose between the given choices. Especially
not, when those choices are two extremes promoted by a sensationalist media. It
is important that we interpret “We are free to make our own choices” to mean
that we are free to ‘create’ our own choices as well.
The problem starts when closed-minded thinking begins to
enter the minds of the common people. Every issue is brought down to one
question and two options – Yes and No. Do you think that reservations should
exist – Yes or No? Do you think that PK should be banned – Yes or No? And it
gets better – Do you think that women can have it all? Yes or No? Everyone
doesn't even agree on what ‘all’ means here. Yet, you have news channels and random
‘social experiment’ YouTube channels showing graphs for people’s responses.
image source: http://www.fulldisclosure.net/. Text mine.
Based on these responses, in the recent debates on PK, the
AIB roast and the Delhi gang rape documentary, as well as in the enduring
debates on racism, feminism and casteism, the media, and by extension the
people, have started branding everyone into one of two extreme categories –
One category, is where you are branded as a revenge driven
victim like this:
A hateful, yelling, spoilt and rich freedom of speech
pretender.
A loud, spiteful female supremacist.
A selfish and greedy person over-capitalizing on a tragedy.
The other, is where you get branded as an orthodox conservationist
like this:
A short tempered person with misguided morals, but who
considers oneself Alok Nath.
An indifferent male chauvinist.
An entitled by birth replacement of a stereotypical
pre-independence Britisher.
Then comes more of the fun. While the media (if you are
lucky and unlucky enough) will brand you into either one of these, you can even
get branded into both! Because, as we
say for driving – everyone who drives slower than you do is a moron, everyone
faster is a maniac. So you get your own, ‘personalized’ branding from anybody
and everybody.
It is said that every debate has two sides. That is exactly
why we should not be having debates. We should be having discussions. We should
start asking ‘How do you think that we should resolve casteism?’ rather than ‘Do
you think that reservations should exist?’ Only then will the moderates start
speaking up, and we will come up with pragmatic solutions to problems. Attacking
each other from two ends of the opinion range is an act of cowardice and laziness performed in the knowledge that there will always be
extremists to support you on either side. The media loves to sensationalize.
Twitter loves to outrage. Should we not be more sensible than that?
