Counting to 10

I just read a news item that came in from Singapore about a ‘scholar’ who had accused a Government minister of being an Islamophobe.

Of course this news item was deemed important by NDTV , the furnishing agency, because the offending person was of Indian origin.
(On a side note, it seems that we, Indians one and all, need constant assurance that we are some how important in world affairs, and even some trivia like this would be considered significant to us all. Not to mind, never matter that as a quarter of the world’s population, and as one of the top economies on the planet, we are significant in more ways than one. Maybe we feel, such news would indicate, that we are battling way below our weight.)

Anyway, ( deep sigh), it all resolved itself without much bloodshed.
She apologised. She should have . It was a stupid remark
He accepted. He need not have. But he turned out to be more of a ‘scholar’ than his accuser.

What got me thinking was not the actual story, but the shrugged-off remark made by the minister.

“People go and say things without really thinking about what they intended to say, and end up saying all sorts of things which are untrue,” said Mr Shanmugam. “We left it at that.”

Why did it get me thinking?
Because all of this happened on Twitter and Facebook.
( the actual resolution, craven apology and all, happened face to face. Which brings me to another side note. Facebook is an oxymoron. Nobody actually meets anyone face to face .)

And the minister’s magnanimous remark was actually very wise for our times.

No one sits down and counts from one to ten or in reverse which truly works better ( try it!) before they speak .
On trigger happy Twitter and FB etc we let our machine-gun mouths loose. Consequence be damned. Facts be damned. Reason be damned.
What is blessed however is the speed of our reaction, our opinion flying out at the speed of thought to millions. And we can cry, ‘we were first to say this very, very important thing.’

The urgency to say something , to have a millisecond of fame, the hope that we will emulate an airborne disease with external viral prejudice seems to possess us.
We start epidemics of opinion with an ill-thought word or idea. These assume the cloak of truth, and like shades are free to roam and kill and maim. At the very least cause hurt. At worst, despair.

We have lost the wisdom of patience.

If there is one thing which counterweights against the so called transparency of social media, it would be this: the loss of wisdom.

We may take heed from this very typical Irish quip, which my erstwhile boss used to great effect:
You can’t un-fart.