On Social Media Again

Social media has emerged as a colossal phenomenon. The way it is taking society along is a phenomenon in itself. It gives a voice to those who never had one before. Most surprisingly, it is now challenging the handiwork of intellectuals and ideologues who divided commoners into their fiefdoms of thought to secure their positions as high priests.
Commoners are not only speaking for themselves but are also seeing through these designs. Strangely, the intellectuals did not do so intentionally but instinctively. They themselves now need to re-educate themselves and learn to speak for the commoners in a true democratic spirit.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Myth of Naive Commoners

A commoner is an abstraction for the top-notch public intellectuals that hardly account for a real commoner. The prime reason for my observation is that a general feeling among professional intellectuals cutting through diverse ideological persuasions is that they feel that commoners' political and social perspectives can be manipulated. This is true to a certain extent but to regard commoners as they do have not a mind or understanding of their own is a gross misconception. Commoners effectively process all ideas thrown at them and have their worldviews quite independent of all ideologues working to influence them.

This is not to say that the common imagination is right or wrong. It may also be grossly mistaken, but for historical and sociological reasons, which one cannot help with. This is the first error on the part of general intellectualism as they can not discern that.

Another but bigger challenge is that people may not imagine and ideate functionally, the way that helps people towards the common good. That is due to the unavailability of a functional, not dysfunctional or malfunctioning, template for people to imagine properly. That is a failure of intellectualism, which the professional intellectuals fail to see.

Niraj Kumar Jha