Lost and floundering

You know, this brave new world of ours confuses me too much. Too often, I find myself totally lost and floundering when I try to make sense of it. (Yeah, yeah, I know you are murmuring, 'Why am I not surprised?')

I mean, take this climate thing for example. People are all groaning about our carbon footprint and all. So, I say to myself, 'Great! Now is when folks will be seeking people riding those scooters and motorbikes to switch to public transport or cycles.' And, you know what, within seconds of my thinking that, someone laments the fact that, because of the expense, people are not switching from scooters and bikes to CARS! Apparently, the auto sector is in a down spiral and it is important for jobs. Jobs beat climate change issues, I understand that. For, of course, it is more important to be able to eat even if you have to wear a mask to get out of the house. Begs the question, though, about what sort of species are we that we develop a system where jobs CAN come only at the cost of a healthy environment and we do not even start to search for an alternative system.

Then there is this whole brouhaha about plastic usage. There is hardly a thing that we use these days which does not have plastic in it, so I did think that people would start thinking about consumerism and its effects. Rank idiocy, I know, for the same chap screaming to stop using plastic is probably doing it on a brand new smartphone, which he bought because it took better selfies than his previous perfectly serviceable one. Apparently, reducing plastic usage only means taking a carry-bag to the mall. From chips to cool drinks, from shampoos to groceries everything we buy is packed in plastic but we will save the world by reducing carry bags. I mean, come on, if people stopped buying phones every other day, started consuming mainly fresh foods, juices and all, what would happen to economic growth? If we cannot grow without choking the planet with plastic, we will have to choke the damn planet. After all, the very chap pushing newer and newer products in your face, and enticing you with discounts, is building space habitats to which you can flee once you have gift-wrapped Earth completely in plastic.

I kept hearing 'Data is the new oil', a resource occupying the importance in today's economy that petroleum did yesterday. I was in awe about all these nerds collecting and analyzing data, possibly about the origin of the universe, possibly to efficiently use resources, possibly to pinpoint and solve critical problems. Some of that perhaps is happening but that is not the 'new oil' from what I understand. The really all important data that is collected seems to be about what shampoo I buy and how frequently, where I live and whether people in my area so desperately want to be fair or not, what movies I like, even perhaps when and how frequently I pee and so on. The most critical job that the top brains of the world are working on is how best to push an ad of the right product into my face at the right time, so that I buy it from that particular source. Though, to date, all they have managed to do is push the ad of the very product that I had just bought, twenty times a day every day of the subsequent week. They will get to when I get the ad from an Amazon or Flipkart, precisely when I am looking to buy the product and THAT will be the pinnacle of human achievement! The world holds its breath waiting upon whether I shall buy Sensodyne or Colgate Sensitive; from Amazon or from Flipkart!

But then, if you remember, I was the guy who never really got the seriousness of advertisements. An anachronism in a world which is run by ads. I mean, come on, people are running companies that are considered the most valuable in the world - Facebook, Twitter, Google, what have you - offering their ostensible main service for free and depending mainly on either advertising revenue or the data which helps companies target advertisements better. And, nowadays, they seem intent on converting everyone into an advertiser going by how much they pester me to promote my FB page or my blog or...

No wonder I am lost and floundering!