Price of liberty

October 9, 2018

Not a day passes without using the word social media at least once. A few years back, who would have imagined that people will be connected and communicating like this. Internet and social media have changed our world and it will never be the same. When we consider the adoption of a new habit is concerned, perhaps nothing can match the speed with which the world embraced the internet and social media. Like any new thing invented by human beings, social media too is passing through its critical juvenile phase. This post is about a different issue. The gullibility of human beings and the spread of falsehood across social media. This is a much bigger menace than we can imagine.
The Internet is largely a world without censorship. There is no editor to scrutinize what you write or share. You are a god there. Now, this is precisely the point. People believe very easily. An astonishing number of fake posts and visuals are exchanged across social media on a daily basis and the more worrisome thing is the potential damage it causes to society. Many are extremely polarizing and divisive and planted only to whip up passions. Fake news and post-truth have become part of our lexicon. People are least bothered about evidence or authenticity of the source. In this context, some writers suggest that we are all “ cognitive misers” – to save time and energy our brains use intuition than analysis. We are in continuous search of items which reinforce our prejudices and we are ready to lap it up. We invent our enemies and run smear campaigns. It does not take much time to spread any canard. Anyone’s reputation can be pulled down in a short span of time.

Perhaps a time has to devise a talisman on the similar lines of what Gandhi told about a talisman for action. He said. I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will, he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny!!!. Now I feel that we can apply something similar in social media too. Before we express in social media it is better to ask like this “is my writing conveying an honest opinion and truth? Or is it going to divide people? Do I have some evidence for what I write? Does it come from a credible source? Will my writing or sharing provoke people to do evil things? Etc I think these questions are very vital in an age of canards and gossips. When it comes to social media it’s very important that we remain a bit of skeptic. A healthy dose of skepticism is conspicuously absent from our midst. In the post-truth world, only such an attitude can guard against the rampant manipulation by media. As we have seen in various elections in the past, social media has grown to such a level that it is now able to tweak the democratic process in many countries. Ideally, social media can be the most powerful medium to cultivate a culture of debate and participation. In the issue dated 4th November 2017 Economist ran a cover story which titled “ Social media threat to democracy.” It concluded its editorial like this “social media are being abused. But with a will, society can harness them and revive every dream of enlightenment. The stakes for liberal democracy could hardly be higher.

“Popular historian Yuval Noah Harari devoted an entire chapter to fake news in his latest book” 21 lessons for the 21st century. There he takes us on a tour of the history of fake news and proves that it has been with Homo sapiens since long time. Something which was cleverly employed by many powers in history. Calling Homosapiens as a post-truth species, Harari says that the power of man depends on creating and believing fictions. Concluding the essay, Harari offers two rules of thumb in countering fake news. First, if anyone wants reliable news, pay good money for it. If one gets news for free, the person might well be the product. Secondly, if an issue is important to us make an effort to read the relevant scientific literature. I would say that this essay is an extremely illuminating one. There is no going back as far as technology is concerned. If our ancestors found fire to be dangerous, we would not have progressed much from our ancestors. Everything calls for proper safeguards, checks, and balances. Man is not born to be a peddler of lies but to search for truth. None of us want to bequeath a world where none can believe the other, to our children. Thomas Jefferson said , Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. We should be ready to pay this price to convert truth as the default position.