Recently one of the leading magazines in India published an article which brought out the fact that gossiping was a favourite pastime of most of us human beings and it added to social networking abilities of human race. While social networking may be one the fallouts of this activity the reason for the indulgence into gossip seems to be something beyond this analysis. Close analysis of day to day human behaviour appears to lead to the inference that human brains appear to need regular dose of stimulation in order to keep us in a state of positive thinking and survive against ups and downs of our struggle for survival in a harsh world. Different members of human species have in the process developed our respective opiates on which we depend for doses of happiness or excitement .
Take the case of cricket lovers. Nowadays since the game is on round the year in one or another part of the world and innovations like the T20 format of cricket offer instant results, the cricket lovers seem to have evolved a continous source of stimulation in shape of ball to ball commentary, accompanying fanfare and analysis . Other joys and sorrows of day to day life have secondary importance in life of a genuine cricket fan whose brain cells are regularly tickling with the details on tumbling records and updates on fluctuations in fortunes of teams and the men who toil between the performance of cheerleaders.When it comes to minute to minute account , another breed of human beings are those interested in ups and downs of share market index. Far too many of us keep track of online tradings without having any worthwhile stakes in the share market.The thrill of being a part of speculation keeps a good proprtion of us glued to laptops when life becomes less exciting for a while.
Not close behind in the reliance on stimulants are the human species practising the avocation which is branded as last refuge of scoundrels. Sheltered behind dignified terminology of politicians these men and women need continuos injection of ego inflating monuments and statues which give them a temporary impression of towering over ordinary mortals. Take away the stonelaying ceremonies and public felicitations from a politician and the person sinks into depression , becomes social anarchist and tends to attack everything within sight whether it is a railway budget or a photographer taking snaps.
Religion -another widely used source of stimulation offers allurement of having higher quality of life after death or in rebirth. That keeps so many of us professing different religious beliefs, busy in continous process of offering our prayers to whichever power we consider to be supreme. In practical terms it gets translated to sporting prominenetly one religious symbol or other and considering religious duties as something which should take precedence over our professional commitments and social responsibilities. But it does surely keep a large chunk of humanity in state of contentment and sometimes also busy in dreams of conquering all other religions to establish a supremacy of our own religion.
This discussion cannot be complete unless we think of those for whom pay revisions , promtions and transfers are the opiates which keep their minds and hearts preoccupied on 24X7 basis. The Govt. servants of all hue survive on calculation of pay benefits, discussion over supremacy of respective service over others and the unfair treatment meted out to them by the employer . Hoping for a better posting, anticipating release of next installment of DA or awiting the meeting of Departmental Promotion Committee keeps our brother hood in a state of intoxication which makes them tick in a otherwise treachorous environment.
Bloggers have their own galvanising force.When I statred blogging, the first thing which I usd to do in the morning was to check the hit counter and accordingly would feel happy or depressed if hits were too many or too few during the night. For months together I kept analysing the statistical details to find out as to which readers came from where and read which posts. Thank god I ultimately realised the absurdity of all this analysis and gave up blog writing for a long time in order to become deaddicted to hit counter.Things are back to normal now i.e. I am more preoccupied with routine addictions of Govt. servants mentioned above.
While opiates certainly seem to have taken a firm grip over our intellectual behaviour, this situation has thrown up some complications and challenges too. The recent tragic end of a famous Pop star has exposed the risks involved in taking of too many anti depressants since the combination produces unpredictable outcomes.The same complication sometimes occurs when a peron gets addicted to more than one opiate like a govt servant getting interested in politics or a politician becoming deeply religious .The system and society has to then put in extra efforts to survive the mutants.
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