Polarization, a reaction to Digitization, has made the World a difficult place to live in!

A lot has been happening in the world after the end of the second world war, and it is as if polarisation has always been with us. The arrival of the Internet promised to make the world a global village, but unfortunately, it has probably ended up with each one of us being as distant from each other as we would have been in ancient times separated by continents and oceans. The Internet and information technology might have shrunk distances in some senses, but then it has left humanity alienated, emotionally detached and dysfunctional, individual entities looking for an identity that makes us different from others. A student of mine, studying Economics at Berkeley who visited me recently, in fact, agreed with the idea that the Internet has indeed distanced individuals like never before! There is, today, a very strong tendency to compete, prove one's self better than others, a desire to compare one's beliefs with other beliefs, the world has become one huge rat-race in which one keeps winning. In the classroom or even out there in the world, we tend to exclude those who are different from us. You are either with us or you are not! There is, unfortunately, no middle path. We have become so binary that for every problem you have to have a yes or no. We have become so 'digital' in nature that we have become straight-jacketed in our beliefs, attitudes and even perceptions. Humanity, unlike the binary world, is much more complex. The polarization that is taking place in the social fabric is because we have begun thinking like machines. We have become so binary in our thinking that we can't see beyond black and white or even right and wrong.

The polarisation of people, communities and even countries has resulted in the growth of suspicion, intolerance, lack of patience and a feeling of grievance against almost every other person. We have become as a community, society, and even world so conscious of our own rights and identities that anyone who is different becomes an outcast, a usurper of our rights and thus to be excluded in all ways. What has triggered such exclusivity is probably Information Technology! The Internet has brought us closer in virtually but not in a social sense. Ironically enough, digitisation, data science, and information hunger have probably reduced each one of us into a mere data point. This increasing amount of intolerance in the society and even between different religious communities (countries included) is the result of the human psyche rebelling against what goes against human DNA! Digitisation is robbing us of our unique healthy individuality making us 'bricks in a wall'! One of the reasons Socialism petered away by the beginning of the 1990s was that it discouraged free enterprise, freedom of speech, and somehow promoted a very unhealthy unitary and polarised world. Human beings are designed for competing with each other, and we need to provide each one of ourselves a healthy competition, free opportunities, sportsmanship, sports and even the opportunity to travel, move around and socialize with each other. There is a great need for actual social interaction, proper social relationships, not emojis or even cryptic short messages. What is lacking today is a better understanding of each other, appreciating differences, tolerating dissent, respecting diversity, individuality and thus we need to develop a culture of inclusion. Information technology has brought us closer in a virtual world, it has enhanced commerce and communication, it has shrunk distances, provided us with information, catered to collaborative learning, but it has not made the world more inclusive. The Internet, Data Science, Information Technology might have informed us about our rights but at the same time, nothing much has been done to promote a duty consciousness. One might suggest, to this effect, the world has become a very sterile one, one that is devoid of values, ethics, morals and even, perhaps a healthy kind of Spirituality. We claim to be religious communities without really being Spiritual. We claim superiority on the basis of the size of the community based on caste, creed, language and race and try to exclude others who don't belong to us.

The World is fighting against an 'otherness' a 'distinctness' anything that threatens our beliefs, accepted notions, practices and rituals not just for a sense of identity, but because we are afraid of stepping out of our comfort zones, we are afraid of being challenged about all these things, we are afraid of what might be 'different'. Pol Pot pre-empted dissent by eliminating potential dissenters, this was because they challenged his belief in Communism, not that Communism was bad. Unfortunately, dictators like Pol Pot use a particular school of thought, a Philosophy as a tool to silence dissenting voices. Technology, unfortunately, has become a handy tool for oppression in the hands of those who would like to use brute force to force 'others' to follow them, their ideas and philosophies. You either belong to us or you are outcasts. Imagine how much more potent, Mengel would have been in the 21st century or how deadly 'the final solution' would be today, what with IoT, IT, and Data Science assisting such people. Technology in the hands of dictators can become a tool of oppression, brute force that promotes polarisation or compartmentalisation.
It has become perhaps more relevant for us today to turn towards the 'middle path' advocated by Budha, adherence to the Noble Eightfold Path as a middle way of moderation between extreme thoughts. There has to be a middle path for everything. There have to be grey areas. There has to be an alternative to black and white. The problem here is that we have, in the twenty-first century become rigid in our beliefs. We are not able to tolerate the 'otherness' of people, we don't appreciate diversity and we simply cannot accept a different point of view! We have become insular in nature, we don't appreciate colours, we don't respect nature, we don't care for ideas, culture and are not interested in the viewpoints of other people. We have become restricted, narrow-minded and blinkered. It is because of all this that we have become a polarised society, a society that accepts or rejects others based on its own narrow set of rules.
Perhaps the time has come for us to adopt 'digital minimalism' and step back from all that innovation and technologies that are shifting our values and belief systems. We need to go back to our 'collective values', maybe even revisit the teachings of our scriptures, ancient teachings, literature and art and see if they might not have some advice, some suggestions on how to combat this intolerance for 'others'. Human beings are not meant to be bi-polar, let alone live in a bi-polar, binary world because human beings are much more complex than machines. Human beings are creative, non-linear, multi-dimensional, they use both deductive reasoning as well as inductive reasoning. It is when you force human beings to think in a particular linear manner that things go wrong. It is quite possible that this lack of patience, tolerance for other communities, this fight against inclusion, this fight for identity, culture, creed, language and race might, after all, be a reaction to the digitization of the whole world. You don't want to end up as a mere data byte, a digit in the virtual world, so you mistakenly fight against people of other beliefs mistakenly believing that in this fight for individuality and freedom from living in a virtual world (where you are nothing but a slave), the 'others' are to blame. Bipolarity and polarisation are in fact 'back to the drawing board' movements where people try to go back to their scriptures, fundamental principles, beliefs and culture as a way of finding meaning in life. It is a way of finding identity, a sense of belonging, a sense of being wanted.