Let me tell you at the outset that what I am narrating below is not what was planned for the second episode rather the topic was Fake news: Why it is so popular?
But I was detracted due to some comments that I received mostly through WhatsApp and some through email. Some were very interesting. For example, somebody said “Madam, have you remained a teacher for some time”? This was the most enjoyable comment. The crux of the other comments was since “the entire spectrum of news pouring in from all sources is taking us nowhere thus, some credible, honest, and informative analysis is urgently required which can be trusted. So, I decided to first clarify what is in my mind that prompted to start a blog.
The first and foremost reason was the digital age and the consequential challenges that we never thought off earlier. There could be many others who might have surprised on the questions that I posed at the beginning of the first blog as if I am a class teacher asking the students do you know this, do you know that? Be clear, there is no such thing. I am a researcher (I will soon write a blog “About me”) and thus have posed the questions because I have experienced the gravity of all these. Many of you might also have such experiences so, I decided let’s share. I am doing it through blog, you can do it through your comments. Together we may find some solutions to the fall out of what is happening around us and/or together we may clear our perceptions about certain phenomena? Agreed?
Have you ever thought of the challenge(s) that humanity has been facing? If we take a trip down the memory line, we will notice that from year 2000 onward, human rights & human security was emphasized., after 9/11, it was terrorism., between 2010-2017, it was pollution, gender discrimination, illegal immigration, and education., saving earth and sustainable development, climate change, and lifestyle were also considered serious challenges. Thus, it appeared difficult to predict what challenge(s) the humanity will face in the next 30 years because it kept changing during and after every decade.
Have we ever imagined that one fine morning, the entire world will become victim of COVID 19 pandemic? While going through the miseries of lockdown to control CORONA virus pandemic and listening and facing all sensible (occasionally) and nonsense (all the time) explanations, one may ask if, this is the biggest challenge the humanity is facing? Indeed, it is currently the biggest challenge the mankind is facing today after World War-II. Was the mankind prepared for it? Certainly not. Will it remain so? Nobody can predict because of so many variants that have been erupted and are still being erupting around the globe thus making everybody confused.
Has anybody in his/her wildest dream imagined the “Taliban taking” over Afghanistan after 20 years of American occupation? Everybody is shocked the way the Afghan forces have surrendered allowing the Taliban to capture the country just in 10 days leaving behind the mess of evacuation of American and other collation partner’s forces from Afghanistan. What the future hold for Afghanistan? Anything bigger than Taliban taking over that can enable the world to come out of this trauma? Nothing is certain except confusion, camouflage and propaganda and patience consuming “wait and see policy” as nobody was prepared for this eventuality.
Environmental change has also remained a serious problem but for some and not for others. Especially when on June 1st, 2017, the then-United States President announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, contending that “the agreement would “undermine” the U.S. economy, and put the U.S. “at a permanent disadvantage”. True or not, it did send a signal that climate change is more a “political” than a serious environmental issue. The signal thus created “uncertainty” in rest of the world. And now, when the new US president announced re-entry in the Paris agreement, it is expected that U.S, China, Japan, and the E.U will make commitments in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as an incentive for all other to follow the suit. This is “perception” and only time will determine if this perception will transforms into “reality” or not but, my view is that climate change issue will perhaps prolong till the end of time. Because there seems to be a consensus among most climate experts that it is now virtually inevitable that even if all emissions ceased tomorrow, temperatures will rise by over 2.5⁰C as net zero targets of 2050 are far too long-term, with potentially catastrophic outcomes for many countries in both developing and the developed world.
Food security, agriculture production sustainably, and feeding 8-9 billion population in 2050 is also a serious challenge and the list goes on and on with no end seen in the near future.
And now a new reality: The HAVANA syndrome first emerged in Cuba in 2016 affecting US diplomats, spies, officials, and family members, as well as a number of Canadian diplomatic staff deployed in Cuba. Those affected reported a range of devastating conditions including dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, cognitive difficulties, especially the difficulty in reasoning and thinking and memory loss of varying severity. In some cases, diplomats and intelligence officers have left active service due to complications from the condition which prompted the US Government to initiate a scientific investigation. The report of the investigation concluded that “directed pulsed Radio Frequency (RF) energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases, while some says that it is an anomalous health incident. Thus, the arguments proceeded by skeptical hypothesis like a textbook example of what is and isn’t known except confusion and uncertainty (I will soon blog on this).
Since I have been listening and debating (except HAVANA Syndrome) upon some of these challenges thus, the list does not surprise me but during the debate, some terms caught my attention which I shared as questions thinking that it might caught your attention as well (a perception isn’t?). Please be informed that I am using and analyzing the existing knowledge and not generating any new knowledge).
These challenges are around for ages and voluminous literature is available on the efforts made to solve them, but they are not yet solved rather the gravity of their impact is increasing with every passing day due to their changing dimensions, and challenges within these challenges that we never realized earlier, and which are now unfolding before us with a very rapid pace. In my view, all the challenges that I mentioned are linked and have potential to impact people, the society and both in turn can impact various human dimensions.
Why these areas/terms caught my attention? The answer is that I have experienced worst of its type in the wake of COVID 19 pandemic when tens and thousands of messages on WhatsApp consumes the memory of my cell phone everyday making me jittery to the extent of near madness. It must have been happening with everyone. Do this/do that, eat this/eat that, use this/use that, chloroquine/no chloroquine, use mask/no mask, lockdown/no lockdown, social distancing/roam around freely, curfew/no curfew, provide food at home/purchase online, open highway/closed highways, open intercity transport/close all intercity transport: all sort of madness. People have nothing to do while sitting home idly except sending miles long messages, case studies, individual stories with a title “must read” and “forwarded as received”: the very phrase is indicative of some unknown source. People are doing it nonstop without realizing if it carries some sense? if the source is credible? Besides, there were thousands of UTube channels, (disseminating the so called very “important and credible information), twitter accounts, touchy videos (often fake and cropped), sensational face book stories and what not? Spending time on their postmortem will force you to either bang you head into hard wall, through your cell phone into garbage, shut off your TV and lock yourself into room asking yourself a question “Am I mad, or have I lost my mind”? I will definitely kill the one who is doing this to me. Relax. Don’t do any of these things. It’s not only you, all others having mobile phones are facing this trauma and it is not only due to COVID 19 but were always there in one form or the other. Why? There is no definite answer to this “why” nor there any will ever be.
In my view, we are racing with time, an unknow fear forcing us to catch up with whatever our agenda is, the challenge of lagging our competitors force some to upload thrilling stories, fabricated news, Government’s scandals, mudslinging on and discrediting politician. Thanks to social media that in the lust of fame and excitement of being popular, some people have absolutely forgotten that we are human beings, the best and top of the list of all living creations. They forgot that the planet earth has been created for us, we have not been created to ridicule humanity and not for computers hence, social media tools and other data driven technologies cannot take humanity out of us. But before we realized this, humanity has already been taken away from human being by the two most powerful technological tools: artificial intelligence and robotics which work through the knowledge fed to them via computer chips that lacks human wisdom.
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Albert Einstein, Scientist
Enjoy reading this and please don’t forget to comment after all the purpose is to share the ideas.
See you next Thursday with “Fake news: Why it is so popular”? Bye
