Why Do We Need April Fool's Day When
We're Being Made Fools of Every Day?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not even a single day passes without ourselves
being fooled.Go to a restaurant, you are made to pay an enhanced bill
with wrongly calculated taxes;you are forced to enter untrue statements in the
mortgage application if your loan has to be sanctioned;. From the day the child
is born into this world, s/he is brought up among lies,lies and unmixed
lies..
Cheating seems to be a
part of life. Take the students.They download materials from
internet,exchange answers through smart phones and even become experts in
faking exam scores;This academic dishonesty is perceptible even in colleges and
Universities;They have unlicensed buildings,unapproved courses and unauthorised
degrees. Some institutions are noted for sellling forged degrees and
certificates.
The recent media craze
has created a blunder of epic proportions and mass cheating.They make you
believe the vilest of things. Advertisers ensure that you become the puppet
and retailers, the puppetteers who stealthily steer your hand into
your wallet where the credit card lies.You are manipulated into buying stuff
which you don't want paying a higher price too. They make you lost and confused
and you are made to load your cart .
Another big area of
making you fool is the Real estate.,.The 'real' in 'Real estate' is a farce ,as
the sector is notorious for lack of transparency..On many occasions
buyers find themselves stuck with properties with flaws,unapproved
land deals apparently looking normal..Even the elites and highly educated are
victimized. The vast financial houses too have fallen into the trap, being
fooled by the business lagoons like Vijay Mallya.
There is no end to our
being cheated..Even the simple vegetable and fruit vendors whom we sympathise
as they deal with perishable goods,don't leave us unharmed..They use various
green and yellow lights and trick us into believing that the products are fresh
and free from pollution.Carbide ripened and pesticide dipped veggies being the
most commonly available..
Everything is so
deceptive,even finding life partners has become a gamble.With fanciful
matrimonial advertisements misrepresenting facts, it results in conflicts and
early separation..
Knowingly or unknowingly
man is so entrenched in the lies,he/she tells ,and has to be
consciously aware of continuing different lies to different persons to escape
being caught and is unable to come out of the vicious circle.. S/he makes
a fool of him/her self and others
too.
‘Buy one and get two
free’ is just a tag line to empty the old stocks but we gravitate
towards shop windows displaying it.Even smart phone plans have the word
‘life-long’ embedded.I wonder whose life they refer to, most probably that of
the instrument which may be just one year.
Conmen entering your
house and fooling you by glib talks is old school.Now a simple flash in
your PC’you are the lucky winner of millions of dollars'’- is sufficient
to get you into trap.Advertisements from multinationals just brain wash even
the intelligent people and make them gullible idiots falling a prey.
Not to talk of election
promises which are nothing but lies wrapped in pretty packings of emotional
speech.Knowingly the voters get into the trap of being fooled.
Medical professionals
give false hopes to the relatives of the terminally ill patients, extract lakhs
of rupees within a week, only to convey God’s will and hand over the mortal
remains.
Some lawyers and judges
who belong to a higher breed of intellectuals consider it a proud privilege to
speak nothing but lies, which come under the ‘technically true’ category
in their profession..In reality they expertly mislead people with
impunity.
Alas! We are fooled by
Gurus, yogis and masters and evangelists in the name of religion.
When we become so much
accustomed to lies and deceipt,one feels as if he is committing a crime if he
starts telling the truth which appears false and dangerous.
A truth's impact
is indirectly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It was not the
world being round that agitated people, but the fact that the earth was not
flat .
When we are used to a
package of lies and being fooled, the truth seems utterly preposterous
and its speaker a raving lunatic.
Adolf Hitler is quoted
to have said"Lucky for the rulers,the common people don't think".
I believe that there is
no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth”.
April Fools' Day is
observed throughout the world. Practices include sending someone on a
"fool's errand," looking for things that don't exist, playing pranks,
and trying to get people to believe ridiculous things.
Psychologists use the
technical term'cognitive Dissonance' which is taken advantage of by
people who easily deceive everyone. Possibly every one we know has been made
fools sometimes or the other by different forces of the society.
Why then do we need a
specific April Fools Day?
--a
RB Kishore
VP,AIRIEF,
ED(Retd),LIC
Life
Member,Probus Club
044-2815
5810 & 098 4034 0591
No comments:
Post a Comment