Nov 13, 2019

Freedom of speech and the current society


Freedom of speech and the current society

While Johnny was crossing the road, he accidentally steps on a cockroach and the cockroach dies in that impact. This is a small and insignificant incident in everyone’s life. We might have killed many such living things without our consciousness, we will never come to know the count. The passersby who notice and even those who don’t notice it directly will always judge us and make passing comments. This is how the society is and was. Thanks to the social media and freedom of speech as a constitutional right of every citizen in India, the words that are spoken are unlimited to even fit in the current Oxford dictionary.

It is said that people living in a joint family have a better memory power when compared to those who live in the nuclear family setup. The reason, as per psychologists and psychiatrists is that in a joint family setup, the family members speak about topics and share their memories time and again just like how it is played in a tape recorder again and again. This helps in people retaining their memories and moments better. Thanks to the social media, the nuclear family members are not left out. They get reminded about events, memories and instances in almost every site/social media app. Facebook is the frontrunner in such memory retaining technique.

Coming back to the above-mentioned insignificant incident, the passerby has plenty of options to express their feelings on the social media. Social media is filled with applications which gives users a host of options to express things in a catchy way. We have known that social media and the internet is a double-edged sword. Every innovation has both benefits and drawbacks. If the feelings that we share in the social media creates a positive impact on the reader’s life then we call it positive, else if it creates more hysteria and negative impression to life, we call it as negative.

Every government all over the world is suffering to cut down the nuisances and disturbances created in the social media. Along with the feelings expressed on the social media comes the issue of privacy and security. In the European Union, almost everyday the social media innovators are called for many kinds of discussions. These discussions mainly are to do with suppressing the fake news, privacy of individuals and the likes. The more we discuss the more complicated it becomes. Life comes to a full stop. Everything in the end stops at the point where it begins. It is the self, it is how we feel or express. It is how we perceive things. It is how tolerant we are towards each other.

There are plenty of pseudo intellects in the society who knows how to create disturbance in the society. It is a fun for them to see people taking up law in their own hands to seek justice to their own selfish emotions. I might be judgmental about this claim you may think. Let it be. I have been watching the trend of social media and the generic societal behavior. It is enough if everyone observes how the feel, react and express their feelings to others in personal relationships to find out who we really are. Then it is easy to follow the societal pattern and be judgmental about it. Without inner realization, we cannot realize the truth, the basics of human psychology and behavior.

“A moron has intentionally stepped on the helpless cockroach while walking, where are we heading.” – this is the trending headlines in Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps. This small headline grabs the attention of people. The reason being is simple, we are being fed with negative headlines for many years now and the media knows that what grabs the attention of the people is the negative story line. But has anyone even thought why we are so attentive the negative headlines rather than the positive ones that every media covers too?

If we start with exploring this point, then we will unveil the personality hidden in us. Once that is unveiled, we will start to question self. The things we like, we see, and we desire. Then it is easy to understand the whole psychology of perception. Our own perception would change. We will stop rejecting the societal headlines. We will stop rejecting the negative news channels and news creators in this world. That is the starting point of self-realization for me. The social media has positive news and content also, but many of us miss to see them due to the busy bombardment of reality shows, competitions like “America/India got talent” and etc. We get lost in the jungle. Someone rightly said internet is a jungle. We need to tread our path carefully and consciously.