We’re constantly surrounded by jargon of all sorts, and most of us have learnt to filter it out by now. But what we don’t realise is that ignoring it does not mean that we do not pay attention to it in some way, shape or form.
In some ways, the constant amount of jargon we’re blasted with on a daily basis does more than just advertise or bring exposure. It seeks to wear down our defenses to the point where we’re not actively reacting and just dismissing it. Dismissal becomes a twisted way of submission. And from this emerges a particular thing which we’re very fond of naming yet often fail to recognise or differentiate: Narratives.
Of course, how a narrative is constructed varies wildly between many, many mediums. Jargon is just one of the most common ways we can really observe, or find them. But what narratives do very well is that they either reinforce or establish views, ideas or beliefs that would not exist otherwise even if such things may be hard to predict or speculate upon. News media narratives are the most common and the most widely known example of narratives in this case. To our joy, most of the time the youth are very quick to notice and even call out how blatant some of this can be with our news channels and how they choose to report certain events. Whether it’s plain misinformation, embellishments or even misreporting events, these kinds of narratives rarely slide by anyone who knows how to do their own research or doesn’t believe things at face value. But we still face a huge problem with these narratives because, no matter how much we resist or raise public outcry about this, we’re still very much in the minority in this context.
We can blame the rest for not having the same sensibilities as us or even the same awareness as us but what we fail to recognise often is that we’re at this stage because we chose to break out of the mould we were being cornered in. And once you do that, you start realising just how difficult it can be to find credible information in a consistent and well-reported manner. Not just by journalists but others as well, people like you and me, who oftentimes only have a phone on their person to record/report events and even after you sift through all of that, you still have to keep on doing that with everything. It is exhausting, and honestly, depressing at times. Human nature is such that we prefer convenience over action, familiar over unfamiliar. Simply put: people stay in their bubbles, in their circles, in their misinformed states because that’s what they’ve always known. So when we choose to hurl insults, snark and even curses at the rest, all we’re doing is pushing them further in their bubbles. We live in an age where narratives can form so easily because the media has taken the shape of attention-grabbing dopamine hits and something so annoyingly overwhelming that our minds and attention are constantly assaulted by them like a rolling barrage from WWI. Our way of informing others makes them resist because we speak from a place of superiority rather than understanding.
I am no saint in this regard either, I’ve had moments where I’ve felt like I am superior because I can decode some narrative in a way others can’t. Of course, that superiority is feigned and crumbles the moment you step out onto the street and see just the sheer volume of things they’re troubled and burdened with and suddenly, a narrative becomes something easy to ignore rather than resistt. It’d be so much easier to have others learn how to recognise and resist narratives if these things only existed in a vacuum. But they don’t. And each thing compounds the other.
Outcry isn’t enough. We must choose to inform people humanely. We must extend the kindness we were never shown in this regard, to others if we truly want to resist narratives. Badmouthing will create awareness but it does not guarantee action. Informing does. Teaching people how to do these things makes them better equipped to share this knowledge with others. We got here because we chose to look a different way and go down the path. Now it’s our turn to help others reach that point of clarity and undertake this rite of passage.
And this can happen. We got to see a live example of this during the Jharkhand and CJP protests a few weeks back. The CJP protests had all kinds of media scrutiny thrust upon it, some valid and some absolutely ludicrous. Accusations of foreign funding, conspiracies and who else knows what were thrown willy-nilly onto the protestors and for what? Fighting for something they had been wronged by? The picture painted by the media vs what was actually going on was so wildly different, it’d be something we’d make fun of in a movie or a show. But it was real. And it was happening. Then came the Jharkhand protests, and the media suddenly changed their tune. Did a complete 180. Suddenly these rascals were actually saints! Suddenly, what deemed you an anti-national made you a hero standing against a tyrannical entity. “This is how you protest” was the most common narrative in the media. But what was so different? Let me tell you: Very little. What you got to see on the ground was extremely similar to what had happened in Delhi not too long ago. But because of certain factors, the media narrative was entirely different. And people recognised this and lambasted all media channels for this hypocrisy and blatant misrepresentation. The solidarity found in people during this was truly a sight to behold.
It was also a reminder that amongst all the doom and gloom, these are the things which help us bring the change we dream of.
