‘Bad Planet’ Day

“Man as an individual is a genius.

But men in the mass form the

headless monster; a great, brutish

idiot who goes where prodded.”

— Sir Charles Spencer (Charlie) Chaplin

A nation announces ‘war bereavement’ compensation running into crores of rupees for a United Nations-designated terrorist, from funds received from an aid agency as part of a ‘bailout package’. A world-leader President makes a mockery of his post and country, staking claim for victories even in races he never took part in. A nation that thumps its chest for being a world-beater ridicules and lampoons a terror victim’s widow, rather than stand by her like a rock. A war heroine charting out the path for others to follow is rebuked and called unprintable names – by an MLA, a minister in a state cabinet, no less. A country at war claims 16,000 of its people have been captured by the enemy; worse, it says detainees are being raped, beaten and mutilated, even thrown against or stuffed into wooden boxes while still alive.

Mankind is a shadow of what it ought to have been at this stage of its evolution. The bare-bones examples in the lead-up above underscore this blunt reality. This is particularly distressing as the examples cited barely skim the surface – if we plunge into the numbing details of mishappenings infesting Planet Earth, there will be no column here, only pathetic tales that leave us red-faced.

How did the super-species called ‘Man’ descend to a level that even slobs and swine would avoid it, given a choice? When did a world that gave birth to Michelangelo, Bramante, Raphael and da Vinci stop its march to thinking, wisdom and creativity, to take a diametrically opposite plunge into decadence and depravity? Was there a perceptible tipping point, or is this a raw price that’s paid in any misplaced quest for progress, development and supremacy?

Species That Glorifies Vulgarity

Look at something as banal as social media, which is suddenly the yardstick for everyone’s core, visibility and self-worth. The world seems to have thrown integrity out the window, replacing it with the pursuit of virality. We live in times where fake acts of charity fetch louder applause than actual good work done silently. For instance, an ‘influencer’ recently faked the rescue of street dogs, only for views and likes. The videos were staged, animals drugged for real, and the blatant act rehearsed – it racked up millions of views. This is today’s post-modern ethical spiral.

Asked about this craving for visibility, Dr Rebecca Solnit at the University of California explained: “We have become an attention economy that rewards outrage, vanity and shamelessness. The result is a society where deception is not just accepted, but celebrated.”

The fetish for wealth and the fall in morality are equally stark, perhaps the most glaring in our collective character. We idolise the rich, regardless of how their wealth was amassed. Look at stock market manipulators like Harshad Mehta, who now enjoy a near-cult status in pop culture. Mehta was even honoured with a biopic that portrayed him as a Robin Hood-esque figure. Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi are seen less as fugitives, more as suave anti-heroes in expensive suits. A nation that glorified saints and sages now lionizes the corrupt, provided they smile into the camera lens.

Economist and former Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Gowda says: “Wealth is increasingly seen as a virtue, divorced from how it is earned. The moral compass is not broken, it has been thrown away.”

Justice is Becoming A Joke

The so-called ‘Developed World’ is no less culpable. Recall the 2008 global financial crisis, which was triggered by the unchecked greed of Wall Street bankers. What was done to them for throwing the lives of the common man and woman on the street into absolute panic and disarray? No, they weren’t jailed or blackballed; they were bailed out. Some leading bankers even received bonuses, ostensibly because they had “helped contain losses”. Nice, and ethics be damned.

Closer home, recall the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Thousands died, thousands more were scarred for life. But Warren Anderson, then Chief Executive of Union Carbide, was accorded VIP treatment by the government and allowed to flee, never having to face trial. Decades later, compensation remains a pittance, and those who fought for that cause are still harassed. This is the humanity we are used to now. As lawyer-activist Karuna Nundy said: “If justice becomes performative, it dies. What happened in Bhopal wasn’t a corporate crime, it was moral murder.”

Similarly, in the West, farce continues unchecked. The murder of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota in 2020 sparked global outrage, but the systemic rot in the United States that enables such incidents remains untouched. Institutional decay has been normalised. Activism is now a product line, comprising of T-shirts, placards, hashtags and Grammy Awards speeches. It changes nothing of import, but the optics are terrific.

Somehow, man has chosen entertainment over empathy, learning to consume tragedy with relish. During the Ukraine war, a young girl’s home was bombed in Mariupol; she died screaming. A few hours later, her picture was in countless memes, with emojis and captions, et al. I remember Indian celebrities who posted their own images and lit candles “in solidarity”. The pictures displayed their wine flutes too, which were gulped down with surreptitious aplomb at Cannes.

Leonardo da Vinci called to tell me this. Apparently, he found a mobile phone while turning in his grave.

India’s Own TV News Is Worse

A woman protesting for her raped daughter was recently mocked by a panellist on live TV. A dying farmer was asked to repeat his suicide plan, after the anchor adjusted the camera to get a better angle. Channels with a haloed status played and replayed the video of an MLA calling an Indian lady soldier “a Pakistani sister”, because she follows a particular religion. The same channels did the same with political wannabes when the latter were inciting people to embark on mass killings. The channels are still there, while the wannabes have become notorious, in some cases ministers. On their journey, they outsourced our humanity to their content managers.

Veteran journalist P Sainath says: “We have stopped reporting people. We report drama. Unless someone cries on camera or dies in front of it, they don’t exist.”

Manipur, 2023. Ethnic cleansing, gangrapes and arson at every street corner. But there was silence from our liberal stalwarts. Why? Because the victims didn’t fit any beneficial narrative. After we treated our own like this, what moral authority do we brandish to comment on Gaza or Sudan?

A former judge said: “Selective outrage is worse than apathy. At least apathy doesn’t pretend.” This apathy prevails in the West too. Remember Julian Assange, the man who exposed war crimes? For his service, he is now in solitary confinement; those that he exposed are on talk shows.

By creating an education system without any enlightenment, we were asking for trouble. Today’s students have limitless access to knowledge, but most prefer Instagram and memes over ideation. Schools push for marks, not learning. Students commit suicide over entrance exams, yet their alma mater chases rankings. Some in the US have been exposed for covering up rape allegations to protect alumni donations.

Historian Will Durant once said: “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians record. But underneath, almost unnoticed, is a silent movement of humanity trying to work forward by any means it can.” I have little to add, except that our stream is growing silent and drying up. We are now left with a lot of noise – vulgar, virulent and without conscience.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on [email protected]. Views expressed are personal