Society as a whole plays a huge role in determining the development of an individual or a set of people.
The vice versa of the same is also true, i.e. an individual and his/her actions decide which way society is going and how its future will be.
Even though both society and an individual play an important role in the development of each other, we don’t understand the seriousness of this codependency.
One result of this is that society has normalized several things that it shouldn’t have, including toxic behavior.
Here is a look at a few of them.
1. An addiction to anger
There is no doubt about the fact that anger is an extremely poisonous emotion. Even more importantly, it is very easy to redirect to some other person or topic. For example, you are angry at your boss and can’t do anything about it. So, you take that out on your wife or kids. Or get too angry on a completely unrelated topic. However, sometimes society glorifies anger through movies and stuff, which should not be done at all.
2. Cruelty
Cruelty towards animals, fellow humans, those who can’t speak or resist, or even kids – all could be found in society. Moreover, cruelty doesn’t always mean physically harming someone or torturing them. It could be mental, emotional, and psychological as well. Not understanding a loved one’s problems, being ignorant to wrongdoings committed towards anyone, seeing someone injured on the road, and looking away – all are a form of cruelty. We, as a society, need to be more empathetic.
3. Repression
Repressing our fears, insecurities, and weaknesses are seen as signs of strength in society. Those who manage to suppress them and put up a strong face are considered as “strong”. The biggest example of this is the fear of death, which is a topic no one likes to talk about. However, the COVID-19 pandemic opened our eyes and brought to light topics like death, grief, aging, sickness, etc., and how much we have been avoiding such topics.
4. The arrogance of one’s intellect
Not knowing everything is completely fine. But willfully ignoring important news, information, and pieces of knowledge that affect us directly or indirectly is arrogance. Day by day, thousands of people are sinking into various conspiracy theories, fake news spreading propaganda, some mystic’s unscientific claims, and whatnot. Not knowing something is okay. But knowing only one thing, and completely rejecting everything else is not going to take you a long way.
5. Shallowness
In a world that is too fast-paced and judges everyone every minute, FOMO or the “fear of missing out” is a huge problem. Thus, in order to not miss out on anything, people have resorted to having a shallow knowledge of ten things rather than having a deep knowledge of one particular thing. Also, with the spread of social media, knowledge of entertainment and ‘masala’ stuff has taken over actual pieces of news of information.
