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8 years ago

Social media and the body politic

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The history of human civilisation is inevitably a history of 'thinking'. The day when man became aware of his thinking aptitude, he discovered an un-trodden domain before him. He got stunned, dumbfounded and excited at his discovery of a novel entity within him. And we do not know when this tacit phase of mind was first set in motion to stir up the physical and metaphysical facets of knowledge within him. 
It came straightaway to be known to him that he was not a combination of some peripheral physical organs which he had thought of himself. He had known for the first time that he was the sum total of some abstract ideas, signs and attributes. He subsequently ascertained himself to be the 'being' made up of subjective and objective, substantial and non-substantial, physical and metaphysical associates. He encountered his physical world after having come into his 'being', and his 'being' became an inalienable part of the external physical world around him. He had his thinking and intelligence to trace this reality. Following this logical process entails 'thinking' as the prerequisite for all realities. Let us keep this overtly debated, controversial, and dubious philosophical issue apart to be settled by the philosophers. What if this much-emphasised 'thinking faculty' of man is hindered from being revealed and exposed?
We, therefore, cannot help being concerned at the administrative pronouncement some time back for blocking the people from their access to the social media, including among others Facebook. The decision, although withdrawn subsequently on public demand, made one thing clear -- that there is  a road block to thinking and that it was initiated by none other than the state authority. 
Whatever be the political context of this country, we should not be deprived of the freedom of thinking, the most imperative essence of our being, that is, the revelation of our thoughts through expression in language. Language illustrates our thoughts and culture since one nation is separated from another on the basis of its language and culture. Language is the only means to let humans understand a tremendous range of attitudes and information, biases and truths. And it is deemed to be the key instrument in the building of a tradition through which a person's thoughts and actions can be influenced by the thoughts of someone who lives thousands of miles away or someone who lived hundreds of years ago. The thinkers of each generation pass the legacy of their thoughts on to the subsequent generations. All these observations, thinking, analysis and elucidation find expression these days in the social media in various forms. This is how, people learn to condemn and praise an issue, on the basis of their own judgment. With regard to this process, we ought to help the young as far as we can regardless of our ideological stance. 
Since the young generation is gifted with the avant-garde technology, the forthcoming leadership of the world is destined to be defined in their hands. Time has arrived when the young prodigies can come up with their ingenious, novel and pioneering thoughts to guarantee a noteworthy revamp in the domain of our outlook and thinking.
 

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