The Opinion Pendulum?

Kohli is a genius. Kohli is an arrogant jerk who needs to be sacked immediately. Pujara is our only real test batsman. Why are people like Pujara a fixture on the team when they deliver so rarely and so damn slowly? Playing a test match without Ashwin is insanity. What a stroke of genius to play 4 fast bowlers! Those following social media t during the recent India- England test series would be familiar with these kinds, of opinions that flooded our timelines. On twitter, the world can be described exclusively through exclamation marks.

On social media the world changes every few minutes. Heroes become dastardly villains, discards become saviours, and dire predictions turn into delirious celebrations. In part, it is the nature of sport, for in this reality show, there really is no script, and so anything, no matter how topsy-turvy, can happen. It is in fact, the reason why sports makes for such compelling viewing- in a world where we know how most stories play out, when it comes to sports, every story comes with a possible twist in its ending. Fortunes change in an instant, and spectators hang on this emotional rollercoaster by the white of their fingernails.. The experience of swearing at someone on your TV screen in the choices language one moment and then singing fulsome praises about the player or the team the next are experiences that are commonplace.

But there is something more that is at work here, this ability to move from swooningly admiring worship to bitter denunciation and back again in a very short period of time, without a trace of self-awareness. This hair-trigger volatility gets a residence on social media where watching the timeline move is sometimes more entertaining than the game itself as supporters go into paroxysms of delight and anguish, venting themselves uninhibitedly as the game goes about its way, unmindful of the emotional havoc it leaves in its wake.

In a larger sense too, it is sign of the intense involvement that we have with whatever is current. The oversaturated coverage of current events, accompanied by an easy amnesia as things move off centerstage. Issues that blow up on social media usually have a shelf-life of a couple of weeks. The combination of intense wall-to-wall coverage for some time followed by total forgetfulness is a pattern that we have seen get repeated far too many times to keep count. Ironically, it also creates an opportunity for the intense emotion to be ignored altogether, since one knows that it will pass. Keeping one’s head down and lying low is a reasonably effective strategy in many cases.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we also live in a time where opinions are completely impervious to facts, where no amount of evidence will change the minds of those who have taken positions. We see this in the world of politics, where having chosen a side, nothing will move people to even entertain another point of view. More surprisingly, we see this at work when it comes to vaccines and masks, where there is a concrete consequence to believing in the wrong bit of information. The ability to believe that scientists across the world are all of a conspiracy to keep people ill would belong to the realm of demented fantasy if so many people were not ready to subscribe to it. Impassioned pleas by doctors in ICUs presenting first-hand evidence, deathbed testimonies by the unvaccinated imploring others to get the shot- things that would ordinarily be considered chillingly persuasive bits of evidence seem to have little effect. People continue to believe what they do, till one day they stop having the ability to hold any opinion. 

We seem to live simultaneously in two worlds- one that is a fast-flowing liquid one where currents sweep us with inexorable force before expending themselves and petering out, and another where everything is cast in stone-cold certitude, where all objects are immovable, and all opinions are implacable. In the former, we allow ourselves to be led by whatever is immediate and uppermost- social media allows every fleeting tiny impulse to get expressed instantly; our timeline is plugged into the shallowest part of our brains and twitches spasmodically with every new thought. We feel compelled to record our views on everything that happens around us- it is as if without our certifying stamp, events do not have the permission to pass into history. Our attentions spans are small, the current of events is rapid, and our opinions are prodigious. Consistency of opinions is not a virtue, for really, no one really cares.

The other world comprises issues we use to define ourselves. Here the labels we use to describe ourselves are extremely sticky. Liberal, conservative, bhakt, proud sickular, Trumpian, SSRian, Social justice warrior, woke-basher, anti-vaxxer, Thala fan, Virat- hater- whatever be our chosen self-description, we are dead serious about our worldview. Nothing, no fact, however self-evident, can shake us from what we believe to be true. That SSR was murdered, that masks are the biggest threat to personal freedom since gun control, that Modi can do nothing wrong or nothing right as the case might be, that Virat fans are jealous of Dhoni and vice versa. Not all beliefs are false, but that doesn’t matter, for even if they were, nothing would change.

The world does not exist outside but lives within us. What matters is not what happens out there, but what we want to feel in here. The relationship between individuals and the reality outside is in the process of getting inverted. How I want to feel is more important than the world outside. The seeming contradiction between two diametrically opposite modes of reaction- one that displays hair-trigger volatility and the other immovable constancy, are actually aspects of the same underlying desire- to see the world not as it is, but as a mirror image of what we want it to be. 

( This is a version of an article that has has appeared previously in the Times of India)