Issue 12 | 3 Feb. 2007

Garbage in, Garbage out
By Ajit Kaikini

While money and the material world is becoming bigger and bigger, true happiness and the world of relationships is becoming smaller and smaller.

The media feeds this consumerist spirit and influences our way of living. Advertisements goad us to buy the goods showcased for us as respectable and acceptable. The media, by and large, promotes negative relationships. For instance, observe how all the TV serials (at any rate, most of them) are centered around families that are in all sorts of problems. Life, is not just about moving from one problem to another. But watching television will have us believe as if life is just that. The Internet too is home to all kinds of negative websites that fuel a cynical mindset on us.

With a majority of us having turned into couch potatoes, we spend so much time watching TV and surfing the Internet, and thus are exposed day in and day out, to a lot of damaging and destructive content about relationships, happiness and marriage. Be it a newspaper, a magazine or TV, the media has a predominant and powerful influence in shaping our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes to life in general. Thus, there's a surge in old age homes, divorce and conflicts at the home front, on roads, and in between countries.

However, how do we make our purchase decisions? Don't we choose the best potatoes available? Don't we choose the right clothes that suit us? We ruthlessly eliminate the unwanted and the undesirable. Then why can't we choose the best out of the rest in the media too? It is easy to blame the world around us ," instead, can we be mindful of what we put in our mind?

Let us learn to choose our inputs ," what we see, hear and feel; we are sure to have a good output in our life too. Otherwise, it will be merely garbage in, garbage out