Fr. T.C. Joseph Sdb
Salesian College | Dimapur
With the advent of the twenty-first century we have already entered the epoch of omnipotent technology. The present generation is undoubtedly faced with the phenomenon of unprecedented technological progress sweeping humankind. The advances in electronics and telecommunications, combined with those in space technology, have transformed global realities. The world has shrunk because of the gigantic strides in information technology and the speed at which knowledge is both deepening and expanding. The spin-offs are mind-boggling. About every particle of life and living is revolutionized for those entangled in some way or other in the whirls of the technological revolution.
Methods and techniques are getting transformed beyond recognition with every passing day. New products are arriving in overwhelming flow. Innovations considered to be of path breaking character turn out to be hopelessly outdated by the dawn of tomorrow. Innovations follow innovations; the latest models are in no time evaporated by the supermodels. Technological progress is reaching such a peak that it is beginning to acquire, shall one say, an automatic, persona. Technology is becoming the king-emperor. It presides over the human race and regulates even its instincts and impulses!
In such a situation, human civilization is rendered into a helpless witness to the emerging cataclysm of occurrences. And often we become mute witnesses and victims of this ever unfolding and irresistibly incessant phenomenon. In this web of ever widening materialistic consumerism every moment of our existence is burdened by the frightening thought that the meaning of meaning is beyond our grasp; the world we seek to understand is getting metamorphosed at every instant and the crisis is beginning to acquire calamitous proportions. In a society dominated by information technology and associated activities, the human beings will certainly face the prospect of constant downsizing.
One of the grave dangers that we should be aware of in such a situation is the fact that a consumer society fosters isolation and loneliness in a special way because of its emphasis on the importance of things. People are encouraged to judge themselves by the things they possess.
We are so inundated by the absurd advertising that we fail to reflect on what such advertising really is telling us. They give us dangerously false self-image. It may be telling me that I am what I possess. A steady diet of such advertising can strongly influence both our consciousness and our conscience. We can start judging people, both others and ourselves, by their possessions, by their financial successes, their wardrobe, or the size and the price of their automobile.
It is a frightening frame of mind to experience but easy to slip into. Do we ever need to conform ourselves to a happiness that is approved and advertised by the media? To judge the value of personal existence by the things advertised and the possessions accumulated is to court isolation, enslavement, and ultimate unhappiness.
