This is a post different from what I usually write but rather something, I thought I should write about, after watching events, unfold in the last two decades, all over the world.

Looking at how humans have reacted to technological innovation and to the changes these innovations have effected in their lives, one is filled with a sense of fear and despair towards the future of humankind.

Even a minor yet revolutionary discovery of fire, lead humans to dominate the entire gamut of living life. With discovery of internal combustion engines and engine powered flights, humankind has united to dominate nature with an unheralded kind of brute force.

Then arrived Nuclear weapons and that changed everything. We had and still have, destruction of life in its entirety, at our fingertips. That threat still looms large and won’t go away anytime soon or in the imaginable future.

Then Internet came with social media hitchhiking on its back. Amongst many things this has lead to, one thing is extremely important. Democratisation of information. Everyone now has information at their fingertips and conversely can create information, as well as disseminate it with extreme ease. This democratisation is without any overseeing or supervising authority of subject experts. Creating a huge wealth of unverifiable, fake, muddled, opinionated and biased information floating online. From videos, news, websites to deepfakes.

That has changed the entire landscape of humanity’s problems. Gone are the urgent issues about global warming, nuclear disarmament, eradicating hunger, reducing poverty, tackling old as well as newer diseases, etc,.

Now the real danger to humanity’s existent is misinformation. Misinformation that can cause lasting damage to individuals, to societies, to nations and to humanity’s future.

Misinformation also has that unique ability to indulge people’s imagined victimhood, their imagined historical greatness and their entitlements. In fact misinformation is catered deliberately towards that purpose, effectively utilising their loss of relevance, in an increasingly complex world. People fall victim to it and add to the chaos by propagating it.

The damage to humans existence is not at all apparent now nor will be in the near future. For it is insidiously going on, in the form of change in peoples thinking, their opinions and their ideological inclination. Along with it, they have also lost their ability to listen to sane voices and experts in the field. For a deep seated distrust against the authorities, the governments and scientific people is increasing. Letting conspiracy theories take roots and thrive. Pulling people apart from each other. Pitting religions, races, classes, nations and even neighbours and family members against each other.

All the way long in our evolution there have been many crisis situations and many wrong turns. But this time the turn is exactly in the reverse direction taking us back to the dark ages. It will affect all, right from the self righteous clones gloating and and shouting from rooftops to the silent majority.

Looks like a dire prediction but then there’s hardly any alternative future that can be seen, at the rate things are happening around us.

We may close our eyes in the belief that there’s nothing wrong or that things are certainly bad but they will correct themselves or that this thing is beyond my capacity to act or that some messiah will come and rescue us from this situation. But then that is a classical escapist way of thinking. These escapist tendencies are going to lead us and our future generations to our individual and collective dooms.

©️ShashikantDudhgaonkar