Unity in the Age of Divide

I believe our generation is the backbone of our nation. The earlier generations, in my opinion, have certain stigmas like susceptibility towards technology and lack of confidence in the power of unity, which held them back to themselves. On the other hand, our after-generations emerged themselves fully in technology and now dance and act in front of their mobiles (Tiktok). They don't care about what is happening outside which might obstruct our ways to make our country great. Only in our generations, I see the balance in accepting technology and using it to build a community. (I am just generalizing, and I believe there are exceptions in every generation). And seeing our 0806 batch in the Facebook (Containing almost half a million members), I now get what Rabindranath was trying to say when he said, "The significance which is in unity is an eternal wonder." 

However, this unity among us also calls for greater responsibilities: the responsibility to our country and our future generations. To fulfill our responsibilities, we have to understand what is happening and why it is happening. For that we need to reach to the root of everything that is happening around us. But can we? When only in Bangladesh, we have more than 22 news channels continuously feeding us the same news in versatile ways. On top of that, we have social media (like Facebook, Twitter) to fabricate news and spread rumors according to our individual preferences. More dangerously, now there are companies who would present news, ads and rumors to you in the way that you would most likely to believe which creates an immutable conviction on our false beliefs and makes us experts on everything. In that situation, we create an invisible wall surrounding our brain which prevents us from getting the real information which in turn makes it hard to change our opinions and follow what is presented before us by external sources. In this writing, to enlighten and inform my fellow group members about such mental barriers that we might have already created in ourselves, I would like to give an example of such a company which has literally changed the world in an unthinkable treacherous way. 

In 2010, Trinidad and Tobago, a country like ours, was on the verge of their national election. There were two political parties, the United National Congress (UNC) and People's National Movement (PNM). UNC was an Indian majority parity and PNM was favored by Afro-Trinbagonian voters. Before the election, an anti-voting campaign named "Do So" spurred on social media focusing the young black Afro-Trinbagonian voters. Most citizens thought it was just a way of showing apathy towards the election by crossing their arms in front of their chest (like shown in the figure). It became so popular that in the end, the young black Afro-Trinbagonian voters didn't turn up for voting, but the Indian people did. Eventually, the UNC which was the Indian majority party went on winning the election. Nobody could even suspect that this whole thing was orchestrated to deter some particular voters to vote and let the other party win. None of the voters perceived that their right to vote were taken away from themselves by themselves.

We have heard about the Brexit, a decision by the people of Great Britain. But this election was also hijacked. Before the election, fake ads showing fake information about EU was spread among the young UK voters. Before the election, these young voters were exposed to nearly a billion such targeted fake digital adverts. We know, UK citizens are more literate than us, even after that without fully knowing the repercussions of exiting the EU, those voters got victimized of this ad campaign and voted for Brexit. So, it won't be incorrect to say that it is not the opinion of the voters which elected Brexit but rather these ad campaigns. Now it is the third UK Prime Minister who is working to get a deal from the mighty EU and remained unsuccessful yet.

A more recent incident is the 2016 US election which, according to the experts in the field, was also rigged. By targeting a mere 45,000 voters in a handful of swing states, the result of that election was nudged in favor of the current administration (For your understanding, there are some states in the US which are always republican, and some are always democratic. The states which change their opinion in each election are called Swing States. The young voters, who could be persuaded, of these states were targeted and bombarded with political ads showing the negative sides of the opponent political candidate. The goal is to influence their political opinion which would ultimately alter the whole election result). This is a great example of political opinions being reprogrammed and neither the targeted voters nor the rest of us had any inkling what was going on.

This whole orchestra of influencing our opinion is not only applicable to elections but also applicable to mutate our beliefs and traditions. The profit-making company behind all of these epoch-making incidents is Cambridge Analytica, many of you have heard of this company, already.

My point is not to highlight this company which did all these but to prove that our standing in terms of our culture, religion and political opinion can be altered without our knowledge and turned against us. We live in the middle of this info-web and we cannot avoid it but since, we are trying to build a community which would in the recent future operate the whole economy and politics of the country and take the responsibility of taking our nation to a respectable position among other nations, we need to remain careful of any such orchestra. In our journey, there would be situations when we might get divided in our opinions. But we cannot afford to remain divided and we want our unity to be real. I would like to mention another great saying by Mahatma Gandhi in this regard:

“Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking.”

I believe at the end, only thing that unites us is the respect and well-wishing towards each other and the nation. So, whenever any moment of divide comes among us, we must find this common ground of respect and trust, to resolve the obstacle and remain united always in real sense.