Intellectuals Can Dance

Do intellectuals condone honour killings? Is peer pressure the key to curb social tribulations?

Often when confronted with social issues like honour killings, intellectuals tend to equivocate or digress.

Why is it that they diligently excoriate political matters, bewail sufferings in distant corners in their moralistic discourses and yet brush the carnage of honour killings under the carpet?

Intellectuals may not be able to make sweeping changes in international politics; they may not be able to emancipate the oppressed but they can drastically curb social ills by wielding their didactic prowess. It’s a big waste of influence. Are intellectuals more concerned about protecting their “vote bank”, a chunk of which comes from perpetrators and apologists of honour killings? Or do they really underestimate themselves?

In symposiums, theorists proffer ways to curb teens’ violence and other social tribulations. The discussions are full of platitudes emphasising the role of parents and teachers. They fail to recognise the two key factors that influence people: peer pressure and snobbery. After all, diamond cuts diamond. Advocacy from parents and schools isn’t enough. It has to go beyond that. As bizarre as it my seem, the elixir lies in indoctrination through peers, MTV, media and intellectuals. If parents or teachers try to influence them, they would be snubbed as “preachy” or “boring”. But if their peers and “popular” kids do the same, they would have a much better chance of acceptance. The onus is on media and intellectuals to scout such popular teenagers from various groups — making sure they have horses for courses — and mould them into brainwashing their respective clans.

Media plays a vital part in shaping people’s opinions. If they can post cheesy articles describing the shopping habits of nitpicky six-year-olds, if they can write about their utopian state, Youngistaan’s objection to Lata Mangeshkar’s usage of Twitter, they can also blend in interviews from their hip-and-happening contemporaries, lambasting violence and drug addiction. That way the message comes across from right sources without being construed as didactic.

MTV culture has a humungous influence on kids, which must be respected. There is a lot more to MTV than music: it’s about style, yuppie culture, interviews of trend followers who discuss their predilections and lifestyle. Imagine if an exponent of MTV generation talks against drug addiction, violence and labels them “not cool” and stigmatic, it would have a profound effect on the young viewers.

Religious scholars too can make a difference. With the amount of reverence they draw from hoi polloi, they certainly have it in them to render the ills verboten.

Intellectuals have a wide reach of followers from yuppies to hidebound traditionalists. Take for instance, Noam Chomsky: a well-respected human being, an invincible debater and an influential moral guru. If he morally instructed people against honour killings (or any social ill) using his critical analysis based on corroborated facts, he could turn it into a moral and intellectual anathema. Masses would follow the lead and defaulters would be ostracised.

It is time for the divergent influences of society to bury the hatchet and work together — using horses for courses is the key. After all there is a reason why Chomsky is considered the rider of people’s hearts.

Glorification of Mediocrity

Much has been hyped about the trend of Internet English. Lobbyists have called it a linguistic phenomenon, a boon to the linguistically underprivileged. 

Everything doesn’t either “suck” or “rock”.  A broader vocabulary isn’t detrimental to one’s knowledge. In the words of an eminent intellectual: “The day we stop learning, we stop living.” How can a blinkered, Philistine outlook boost a yuppie society’s intellectual capacity?

The Internet acronyms have become a part of our day-to-day correspondences. There is nothing revolutionary about it. Their usage doesn’t mandate departure from eloquence and propriety. It’s not Shiv Sena’s hidebound fundamentalist world, which has no room for coexistence. Contrary to the harbingers of lifestyle gurus, the so-called revolution will not render Charles Dickens’ literature incomprehensible after a couple of decades. 

The lobbies proffer theories that ascribe attention deficiency to intellectual superiority and long attention span to slow wit. No wonder why an advertisement touts impatience a virtue, the reason behind momentous discoveries.
 

The betoken revolution of Internet English is just a pseudo-intellectual propaganda by media and corporations to sell mediocrity and keep masses receptive to their inculcations.  Ultimately, it’s easy to excrete mediocrity and sell it for great profits. 

The ostensible rationale behind it is that it’s a godsend for promoting the language globally. In truth, those who intend to learn or at least have the know-how of English (or any language for that matter) would do so — with the same or greater effect — even without the aid of Internet English; novices did so for centuries. And for those who grew up speaking English, how could fine-tuning it be such a dreadfully arduous task? I was under the impression that only maths and science were considered difficult.