Technology drives and gullibility thrives -By Micheal A. Adeniyi

From many cases of national elections and political discourse birthed from wailing and hailing at many places we have seen this. But this is not about Politics elections and democracies only. It is about everything and everywhere. More so, in the information age in which one clever charlatan with mischievous intent can fool all the people for some time. This is not in any way to discount the possibility of the some who can be fooled all the time. As post-truth, xenophobia and surrealism abound what is happening is that the gullibility quotient of the people is on the rise. And it is not just about those who can be fooled all the time. It is about all others who are joining this tribe. In
classical psychology, intelligence quotient was supposed to be the measure of ability to guard against gullibility and reduce vulnerability to get fooled. With more and more knowledge about the essence of the so-called intelligence getting discovered, it was assumed that it is not just a score on a battery of tests comprising items from several
subjects.

You can fool all the people some of the time, some people all the time, but not all the people all the time.” This was what Abraham Lincoln thought would ensure probity and fairness in society and act as a check and balance over those who unscrupulously tried to achieve success by making a fool of the people. What Lincoln, however, did not realise was that there was an underlying assumption behind this and a crucial one. That to succeed you need to fool all the people all the time. And that is where his rationality floundered. Take democracies, for instance. Obviously, because this was the context in which US President Lincoln made the statement. Do you really need to fool all the people to succeed? Certainly not. Democracy is a majority rule and success can mean anything from as close as 51:49 to even much discrepant ratios in case there are dissensions on the other side, which may add up to
much more the 50 and still fail to succeed.

Thus, intelligence symbolised that uncanny ability which would help a person separate wheat from chaff. And we could conclude that intelligence had nothing to do with information, knowledge or even education if abilities of people like Edison, Dickens, Bill Gates or even our own Hazari Prasad Dwivedi were any indication. So Western psychology discovered much later what was already there in our ancient Vedic literature. The critical ability to discriminate was the essence of intelligence which was mentioned as viveka. In the modern times, as we find the society marching back to the dark ages with social and religious dissensions rising and witchcraft and voodoo-like beliefs resurfacing, the greatest causality seems to be viveka, the ability of discrimination. From monkey man to the witches sucking blood to the braid-cutting vampires, the Indian society is seemingly going back to the age of
the snake charmers and thugs. Mass hysteria, that was once the bane of the dark period, seems to be reappearing at a nagging pace. The unfortunate part is that modern technology is aiding and abetting this.

From politics to business to media, all are contributing to the rise of gullibility, while we boast of a knowledge society. The villain of the piece today is the social media that goes viral without rhyme or reason. The crooks are having a field day as technology drives and gullibility thrives.