Our proclivity to tell tales and be pleased to see the hearer amazed offers zilch when we venture to find unenthusiasm in that proclivity. It is definitely a cornerstone of our nature. Our propensity to utter and be listened to has provided the pedestal, upon which we stand and see what has happened before. Hearsay and gossip has been cultivated into daily lives of common people very carefully and it has helped shape a narrative, which provides a course of action for future generations, monarchs and military generals.
Like a rooster who can’t keep himself from crowing in the morning, we humans like to delineate and gabble and that is how we keep our sanity. Our emotional and psychological hiccups are only resolved when an audience is provided otherwise the strain is mired deeply into our consciousness.
A lot of innately good outcomes are associated with storytelling and narrative building but it is not without its sinister effects. In today’s massively populated world, one of the things which cripples the oppressed and keeps them from picking up arms against the oppressors is lack of decisive power. That is usually a hindrance gifted to them by the propaganda of the powerful and mighty. Although social studies is not deemed to be the most important subject taught to the primary school goers when it’s compared with science, mathematics or languages, sometimes there is a piece of insightful information in there which stays with you for the rest of your life. Somehow, I remember this lesson from 3rd grade social studies about false information and mass rumours. At that time I thought people who spread mass rumours are obvious villains of a society. I could not fathom the idea of misinformation spread by people in public space like governments, news agencies and media. Of Course at that age every opinion you hold is very rigid, either something is bad or it’s good. There are no grey areas. You look at the outcome, not the source where the information is coming from.
Nowadays, narratives are built to kill the competition. You could skip channels on TV any day and the same event is being reported in a vastly varied manner. Anyone with the power to influence the public opinion has already picked a side and they are sticking by it no matter what. The common practice is not to report what has happened instead it is to report what they had wished to happen. There is nothing poetic about it though because when a poet makes something up, he doesn’t stand to gain anything by it. It’s just a wishful fantasy for him but the narrative builders of our day are more concerned about cornering their foes into a dead end street where nothing good they do should matter. The problem isn’t that it did not used to be like this but it’s the fact that we look down on our collective history and call the past men savages very proudly yet we do nothing to differ from that behaviour.
We would be here all day if we tried to analyse status quo narratives and their opposite counterparts in each country but there are numerous practices which can be found in each region and country. Too much loyalty to the bipartisan way of thinking has produced divisive narratives. The implications of such practices are horrendous and work in extremes on the minds of common people either crippling them of taking any action at all or turning them into violent narcissistic sociopaths.
In the end we are all victims of somebody’s propaganda. Although certain individuals have tenacity and critical thinking ability to fend off propaganda yet we are all somehow vulnerable to the influence of information encumbrance.
It is important to remember that the media plays a critical role in shaping public opinion and can have a significant impact on society. As such, it is essential to be informed and critical consumers of news, and to seek out diverse perspectives and sources of information.
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