An Uncivilized Society

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

For centuries, the human behavior has evolved into what the dictionary refers to civilized.  Simply put being civil (nice, respectful, mindful, attentive, caring and many of the words and actions) that are consistent with a lawful society.  Whosoever makes the rules, the entire society follows the, thereby all citizens in the society become a civilized society.

From small groups of people, to congregations, colonies, villages, towns, cities and countries; whatever type of living we belong to they have a set of rules to follow, and we follow them.  Democracies, dictatorships, communists, whatever the ruling constitution of a nation, people simply choose to follow the rules, and if not, they mostly migrate to some other place where they believe the rules of life is more conducive to their liking, and make a new life.

The last part of the 20^th century has been an age of communications and information technology, which has driven more relocation of people as it offered a separate set of competence and people who were ready to learn the recent technologies, and relocate to find employment.  It also afforded remote working environment that allowed people to stay where they are, and contribute to the business requirements on a global scale.  Remote support, work from home, offshore support, temporary relocation, and various technology related work forces have become a part of the IT industry, and continue to drive the global workforces.

The 24/7/365 cable networks, email, texting. Internet, mobile communications and various mode of instant communications have quickly evolved and very quickly have become standard tools to work, communicate and connect the world.  In fact, the technologies have evolved faster than the human reaction to how to use them, and the communications tools being developed at a rate, we simply are unable to learn the etiquette of how to use them in a civilized way.

Many of the social media platforms allow us to connect with thousands, if not millions of fellow netizens, and with a few clicks say/share/opinion/simply throw stuff at them.  Certainly, the new ability to mass communicate has not put everyone in a tizzy to start blasting the user groups with nastiness, but you only need a select few to start the net frenzy.  2016/2017 has reached a new frenzy in bots and fakes.  You can simply create anything you want to say, and start spreading it to the www.  Within minutes someone who likes the crap, will pick it up and start spreading it a sources fact.  In the olden days (before www) it took a lot of time to spread rumors, but with www, only a second.  Nasty stuff also gets more attention, as people like dirt.

People have politically forgotten to respond to each other in an organized and civilized way.  Although we don’t see politicians throwing punches at each other (this is quite common in many places), they are more than insulting to one another.  A definition of a civilized society is no longer existent in the 24/7/365 age of TV and instant internet.  Moving away from just the morning and evening news for 30 minutes, now someone is covering the happening 24 hours, and our leaders are ready to provide sensational material; constantly.

With each election cycle, all people get to hear is how bad the other administration is, and offer nothing of consequence with the new administration.  The only constants are growing debt, failing infrastructure and SOS.  The latest fad is to simply divert the issue to the opposition and how obstruction will not allow policy.  Whenever we think we have seen the worst, something worse comes into the view.  And we are really at a point that anything that transpires in governance and how the society is accepting this as a norm will continue to be normal.  Although our history recorded uncivilized and barbaric societies, we are not far from going back in ages.