I remember reading an anecdote long ago about Thomas Edison. Here’s a highly compressed version of the same: Young Thomas receives a piece of paper from his teacher. He hands it over to his mother. His mother’s eyes swelled with tears while reading the paper. When Thomas asked “What does it say?”, his mother replied “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.” Years later, after the demise of his mother, he discovered that it read “Your son is mentally deficient. We cannot let him attend our school anymore. He is expelled.”
Although this story itself is false; it made me think. We are often taught to ‘never lie’, but is lie intrinsically evil? After all it supposedly turned a hopeless kid into an inventor.
See, I don’t have an answer here. However, I do suspect the answer can’t be simple. The dichotomous approach of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ frequently fails on closer inspection. What are lies anyway? What is the truth? Is keeping a secret lying? My truth can be your lie, your lie can be my truth. The generalisation is another thing to take into account. The statements like “Everyone wants more money”, or “Chinese products don’t last very long.” surround us. Of course they are not truths, neither are they lies, they are opinions. But sadly we seem to value opinions more than knowledge.
Humans were always influenced by opinions, and we always will be. After all, usually the good opinions survive right? The gene of the person who held the view “facing a lion head on with bare hands is a good idea” is long gone. The descendents who believed the wise old man’s advice to “hide, run, and always take advantage of the surroundings” lived to pass on the opinion. And so was also passed, I like to believe, the “gene” of kindness.
Religion is set of opinions we value highly. The correctness or wrongness of religion will perhaps make this article a branching tree; Let’s not do that. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to notice how religions differ, and how most people are absolutely sure about the validity of their opinion, shutting their eyes to reason. Numerous great artists, scientists, thinkers literally lost their head because of this stubbornness.
We live in fundamentally different times than our ancestors. We don’t have only a handful of scriptures and commentaries to make sense of the world. The advent of internet arguably changed the lives of common folk more rapidly than any other invention. That the great library of Alexandria, one of the grandest collections of written text to have ever existed, can be stored on a chip that could fit on the tip of my finger is just mind blowing. The fact that we can broadcast the content of chip to the whole world is even more mind blowing. Constant exposure to this fact makes us numb to it. Like standing in the sun for hours, not feeling the glare anymore.
Internet has brought billions of opinions within our arm’s reach, quite literally. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it sure is overwhelming. We need to have the judgment and critical thinking ability to process the opinions. To take time and research about the facts. To check the source, the credibility. Kids cut their veins taking internet challenges, teenagers jumping off tall buildings because the world made them believe they weren’t good enough, and adults justify smoking citing new studies that found smoking is harmless. Most people don’t even open that link. It may be about how smoking doesn’t affect unicorns if they travel at the speed of light.
Everyone lies. Sometimes to ourselves, sometimes to other. Sometimes to soothe, sometimes to harm. Knowingly or unknowingly. And we all have opinions. It is absolutely crucial to have them. Just make sure they are your own. Or at least make sure they make sense. Always, always check the source of information. Crosscheck. Reject. Accept. Be open to the idea of being wrong. In the pursuit of portraying our best self, hiding behind the scenes, we often edit our mistakes out. Embrace them, accept them, forgive yourself and others for being wrong. Say sorry and try to correct your mistakes. Your opinions will be passed on to the people closest to you. No man is an island.
This article made it seem like I live my life on the net. That’s right (dang it!) . Please don’t be me. There is a beautiful (less entangling) wide world outside of world wide web. Read books, laugh, mispronounce words, run, make mistakes, basically be a nerdy 6 year old kid. Experience the complexity of human behavior and realise you can never know a person from that one comment you didn’t agree with.
Okay quick recap. Think.
Leave a Reply