DailyPost 2447
FAKE SERIOUSNESS!
When the seriousness displayed or projected does not match with the serious in action; planning, effort, execution and holding oneself accountable for the result, it is known as fake seriousness. Put people around you on this test and you would realize how liberally we are endowed with such characters. It has gone to the extent of it becoming the national character. Here fake it, till the time you make it, does not hold ground because the objective it not to make it. Most of the people who are practicing it, don’t even know they are doing it. They have been groomed into this school by the environment around them, so it comes naturally to them.
People in the public domain are badly afflicted by it, because they feel that a visibly serious stance, it good enough to pull off success and most of them have performed this act all their life. Unfortunately, they define their success themselves. Take an example; you have two personas before you, one serious, talking high flown duty, commitment and emotional stuff and the other talks dull and drab nitty gritty not making much sense to you, who would you go in for? As you don’t have the time and energy and possibly cannot follow it up, so you will go for the first one. In this manner choices are made in the country and that is manner in which we are ruled by them in the public domain.
How many of the powers that be, the peddlers in the public domain, have given you a plan, leave aside executing it? How many times from the beginning itself you were sure of the fact, that the guy will not deliver and he is just trying to create a perception, that he would deliver. The fake seriousness is a tool to achieve this impression. That is all he is bothered about. In the next instance, he will try the same stunt again. This has been successful now; it would be successful again. Indians are naturally wired to this fake seriousness drama. Maybe we have lost the knack of seeing through it or we are least concerned.
Either way we have mortgaged the public domain. The best way to exist in the public domain is to create an iron curtain around you, you close yourself to criticism. You will get tons of people who would do the batting for you, albeit for a price, that they know to extract, even without your knowledge and consent. If you are affable and discuss the issues, projects, successes and failures, you can be ripped apart. When the intention is visibly missing, fake seriousness is the road ahead. If by chance you are challenged, you can battle it out only because of that stance. This is the drama that sells in this country. Wit, humor, satire and sarcasm are abhorred, their direct connect with intellect has never been accepted. A fertile active mind having expertise and committed to delivery can turn the table. When will be understand that we are being duped?
DISPLAY OF SERIOUSNESS IS NOT WORTH A PENNY AS IT DELIVERS NOTHING.
Sanjay Sahay