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Fragments of Society in Post-Social Reality


Portrait's Credit: Jaron Su

Social media is not so social, it is anything but a social reality. Aristotle was right for his age that Man is a social animal and for him life is nothing without society and politics. But his statement seems to be bizarre in a world of social media. Social media is a good medium to connect a person living too far temporally and spatially. But that kind of connection is anything but social. I was once upon a time suffering from fever. Whole day was creeping like Einstein's relativity theory became true to my case, i.e., a painful day is as long as a year has passed. Meanwhile, my facebook account was flooded with my birthday wishes. Everybody was wishing for me a good day. But it wasn't joyful as people wished for me. Whole day I was engaged to reply thankful message. I was grateful towards people for their kind behavior towards me. But the pain was not relieved anymore. I was wishing at least one person to come forward for medicine and food. In fact, a near relative visited my place and fulfilled my requirement. That was purely a social gesture. Social media didn't help me in relieving my pain and suffering. However, my case is not entirely universalizable. There are many people around the world who have been benefitted by social media, which has been used as a medium to make social awareness about Covid pandemic and many other social and natural disasters. But mostly social media has alienated human's lives from natural and social bonds, without them life isn't so alive. I watch people around with a curiosity if people are attentive about anything except digital screens. Gennext is mostly busy folks who perceive reality only if it appears at the screen. Real world for them isn't real unless it suits the definition of new or hyper-reality, unless its experiences may be xeroxed or simulated. You ask a child if he remembers anything about society except the cartoon characters running around his head. You ask an adult if he can remember a moment too engrossed in watching a tree, mountain, or sunset. You ask an old person if he likes to visit his own quintessence, whether it is a plastically malleable stuff made of conditioning or it has got an specific soul meant to transmigrate in heaven or hell. If you ask a bureaucrat if he knows anything but rules. If you ask a corporate person if he is anything beyond sophistication, an artist without arts, a player without having an engaging game, a soothsayer who has sold everything for price without knowing what value a life has. If you ask a political leader if he is anything more than a symbol of rhetoric, a person having white clothes to create an extraordinary image, a class of its own, a totle sum of networking, a media manager, and what else? If you ask an artist if he is anything more than a proud egoist who romanticizes the aura of his form, a collector of emotional fragments, a deceptionist. People have no time to ponder upon. Visiting own self with tough questions is the hardest thing one can practice. There is no better work I know if it is not related to self-examination. There is no better escape but to go away and cover own face with stuffs made out for plaything. But we love to live under the skin of image and claims to be social. There isn't a social thing in a world of hyper-reality. Everything has become an image to be copied and Xeroxed. Human being is alive in pen-drive, hard-disc, in an image being posted in a timeline. This is in fact a post-social world. Here you find everything except society. Here everyone is master in multi-tasking but master of no art.

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