You may not tell the truth, but does that mean you are a liar? You may not be happy, but does that mean you are sad? You may not be successful, but does that mean you are a failure? And, you may not be ordinary, but does that make you extraordinary?
There has always been a tendency to generalise. There has always been a tendency to choose one or the other. There has always been a tendency to go to extremes. Amidst all the hype and the hoopla, rational judgment and balanced opinion have become rarities.
What else can you expect, with a dozen TV channels, a score and more tabloids and periodicals, mushrooming online sites, and a dozen or so dailies, all scrambling day after exhausting day to grab headlines, make news, and embellish stories so that they shine?
It is not only the ordinary that become projected as extraordinary, in some cases, even the least ordinary somehow become more than ordinary. Nondescript looking politicians with their vapid outpourings of half truths, outright lies, and words learned by rote, these scoundrels, who without the hype would have been living lives less ordinary, suddenly have become much more than that. In many cases, seemingly extraordinary.
Bankers, industrialists, and businessmen, many of whom are just doing their jobs to keep home fires burning, some who are only carrying on legacies left behind by forefathers, and some who know not what else to do, they too have become miraculously iconic, genius entrepreneurs, and so called experts, thanks to wrongly placed and overtly eager media attention.
Artists and musicians, poets, and writers—a breed apart in the good old days—and now, what do we find? We find, very simply, a great lumping of all into one big heap of glorified cow dung, that’s what we find. In a mad rush to fill space, or for reasons both known and unknown, self indulgent painters become masters, bathroom singers become bards, me-too poets become, well, they become poets, and fly-by-night writers become authors of substance.
Out in the United states, a country on the verge of being overwhelmed by immigration, they have devised two special visa categories, EB1 and O-1, allowing for permanent residency to those deemed extraordinary and outstanding in their fields of endeavor.
Well, so many applied, and well, because so many became eligible, the US government is seriously thinking of doing away with these visas now. Trust those slippery US lawyers to bend, twist, and turn the facts regarding eligibility requirements to their clients’ favor, and transform the ordinary into more than that, and the latter, into truly extraordinarily gifted beings.
If not a Nobel laureate, for EB-1, all that is needed is to fulfill a few general criteria that somebody desperate enough can actually fulfill, and as for O-1, a PhD and some academic sounding papers published in some scholarly publications can assist in metamorphosing boring academics into outstanding professors and super intelligent beings. Some of our very own stars of the celluloid world have managed to attain the exalted position of extraordinaires out in the US, disregarding the fact that they couldn’t really make it here. Simple question—shouldn’t extraordinaires be able to succeed where ordinaries fail?
Point of the story is this: see how easy it is to bend, twist, and generally manipulate facts in one’s favor? In the good old days, there were something called public relations offices that ensured good press coverage for their employers. Nowadays, they have become quite redundant. Why? Simply because there’s no need anymore; trust the multitudes at the door desperately on the lookout to fill air and print space day after day, week after week, month after month, to do the needful.
All this might make you think that here’s one hell of a frustrated guy. Well, to tell the truth, I am far from satisfied. But, really, does it have to mean that I am frustrated?
Cover Image: DarkSirNobody/deviantart
