the elusive equilibrium

 

the elusive equilibrium 

 

November commences the wedding season in India. The previous two years had some high profile weddings which were followed by big time criticism on the amount of expenditure. Cut to 2020, the economy is missing the weddings (and events) that generate huge employment for decorators, caterers, tailors, beauticians, baja wala et al. Post-Coronavirus, the virtues of the bad guy have started becoming conspicuous.

 

So, which is the true face of weddings – A Wasteful Expenditure or An Employment Generator? 

 

Probably, answering it is as difficult as answering whether nations should aspire for equal distribution of wealth or should live with unequal distribution. Though majority would support the former but people with surplus wealth also have high propensity to take risk. And risk is key to innovation. Therefore, if all citizen have the same wealth, there will be no surplus wealth, thus no appetite for risk and therefore low levels of innovation. Such an egalitarian economy is likely to die a natural death. Again the bad guy here - unequal distribution of wealth -  is not without virtues.

 

Virtues exist along with vices. But it is unfortunate that the world is moving in a direction where one is forced to categorize every issue as Good or Bad. For every political personality, one has to be either his supporter or his adversary. The middle ground of supporting a person on certain issues and opposing on others does not exist today.

 

 

Middle ground is fleeting because extreme positions are easy gateways for attracting followers and therefore are more rewarding for leaders. Proponents of extreme positions work through identification of a bashing boy and symbolize the bashing boy with certain commonly accepted bad traits. Proponents take a strong position against these bad traits which becomes an easy bait to get followers. Many members of the Islamic world have identified liberal values as a bad trait. Anyone symbolizing with liberal values (read anti-Islamic values) can easily be identified as the bashing boy. So when an Islamic leader takes a strong position against liberal values, even the soft-Islamic nations find it difficult to oppose such a position and therefore, by default, they gravitate in support of that Islamic leader. 

 

Bollywood was another recent bashing boy. It was made the symbol of moral corruption and nepotism. Anyone speaking against these bad traits easily got support from common men.  This phenomenon resulted in large number of followers for people who took the extreme position that “Bollywood is Bad”. Yes, Bollywood does have vices but it is also not without virtues. The problem is how does one comprehend this middle ground.

 

This growing trend of leaders chasing extreme positions is being fuelled by various factors but a key factor is the increasing power of social media. For a common user of social media, extreme positions are easy to comprehend and speak about ; mid-positions are boring, complex and esoteric.  Therefore, supporting middle ground is not only difficult but also unglamorous. Restriction on text size in social media makes it furthermore difficult to talk about vices and virtues at the same time. Users, therefore, naturally gravitate toward extreme positions. As users display their likes and preferences, social media algorithms push more and more of similar content, thus converting “user likes” into “user beliefs”. So much so that today even if Sushant Singh’s spirit comes and tells that Sushant had committed suicide, chances are that many will not believe it. Social media algorithms bias user’s mind in a manner that users remain open to hearing only what they believe is truth and not what the truth really is. 

 

 

Further, since the support for this extreme position has been achieved through a large amount of angst and hatred against a bashing boy, it becomes challenging for users to alter their position in future. As a result, most users continue their loyalty to the chosen extreme positions.  And this loyalty of users provides furthermore incentives for leaders to propound extreme positions.

 

So whether the choice is about Capitalism v/s Socialism or Privacy v/s Free data or Religious Fundamentalism v/s Atheism, a middle ground would more often than not best serve the society. However, communicating and getting followers for the middle ground in a world - where quantitative targets remain the measure of performance - would continue to remain a challenge till people realise the real perils of extreme position. 

 

With almost no activity in this season, events and marriages have reached an extreme position and this is when the society will appreciate the virtues embedded within the vices of extravagant expenses. 

 

 

Hope every middle ground is not achieved after reaching extreme position. 

- Deepesh Salgia