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By:

Anil D. Salve

21 March 2026 at 8:11:09 pm

A Drought of Wisdom in an Ocean of Information

We live in an age where information is everywhere. With a single click, we can access news from across the world, thousands of opinions, countless videos and endless claims. Knowledge has never been so accessible. Yet, in this overwhelming flow of information, something increasingly scarce is discernment-the ability to distinguish what deserves our belief from what deserves our doubt. Information and knowledge are not the same. Reading, watching or hearing something does not automatically...

A Drought of Wisdom in an Ocean of Information

We live in an age where information is everywhere. With a single click, we can access news from across the world, thousands of opinions, countless videos and endless claims. Knowledge has never been so accessible. Yet, in this overwhelming flow of information, something increasingly scarce is discernment-the ability to distinguish what deserves our belief from what deserves our doubt. Information and knowledge are not the same. Reading, watching or hearing something does not automatically make it true. We need the ability to verify information, understand its context, recognise its purpose and only then form an opinion. In the digital age, this ability has become one of the most important forms of wisdom. Social media has transformed the way information travels. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms have made communication faster, wider and more accessible. But the same speed that connects society can also overwhelm it. Information often reaches us before facts do. A headline is read before the full story. A short video is watched without knowing what happened before or after it. A photograph is circulated without its original context. A message arrives with the familiar words, “Forwarded as received,” and within minutes it may reach thousands of people. By the time the truth catches up, the rumour may already have done its work. The problem becomes even more serious when misinformation is deliberately created and circulated. Rumours may be planted not merely to mislead individuals but to divert public attention from an important issue, create suspicion, damage someone's reputation or push society towards a particular narrative. A distraction does not always need to be completely false. Sometimes a small piece of truth is mixed with exaggeration, selective facts or emotional language. The result can be more powerful than an outright lie because it appears believable. This is how narratives are manufactured. Social media platforms can become powerful tools in this process. A repeated claim begins to look familiar, and familiarity is often mistaken for truth. A provocative post attracts attention. Thousands of reactions create the impression that “everyone” believes it. One emotional video triggers another, comments intensify the mood, and before facts have an opportunity to speak, public sentiment may have already shifted. This is where mob psychology enters the picture. A society can move from calm to anger, suspicion to trust, or optimism to fear with surprising speed. People who would ordinarily think carefully may react differently when they see thousands of others expressing outrage, fear or hostility. The individual begins to follow the crowd, and the crowd begins to reinforce the individual. The danger is not limited to negative emotions. The same mechanism can also be used positively-to mobilise people for social causes, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, public awareness and community action. Technology itself is neither wise nor foolish. Its impact depends on how information is created, amplified and consumed. The greatest danger, therefore, is not that we have too much information. It is that we may lose the habit of thinking while consuming it. We are increasingly becoming consumers of information rather than creators of thought. Everyone has access to information today, but access does not necessarily mean understanding. The boundaries between a rumour and a report, an opinion and a fact, popularity and truth are becoming increasingly blurred. A post does not become true because thousands of people have liked it. A video does not become evidence merely because it has gone viral. An opinion does not become a fact because it is expressed confidently. An idea does not become correct simply because it confirms what we already believe. This last point deserves particular attention. We often accept information not because it is accurate, but because it is comfortable. We are naturally attracted to information that confirms our existing beliefs and suspicious of information that challenges them. In the digital world, this tendency can be amplified by algorithms that repeatedly expose us to content similar to what we have already watched, liked or shared. Gradually, we may find ourselves living inside an information bubble where we hear many voices-but mostly voices that agree with us. That is not diversity of information. It is an illusion of certainty. Discernment does not mean doubting everything. It means thinking before believing. It means asking simple but powerful questions: Who is saying this? What is the evidence? What is the context? What may be missing? Who benefits if I believe it? And have I heard the other side? These questions may take only a few seconds, but they can prevent hours, days or even years of misunderstanding. This responsibility is particularly important for the younger generation. Children today are growing up in an environment of unprecedented information exposure. They can encounter more information in a few hours than earlier generations might have encountered in weeks. Therefore, education cannot merely teach students how to collect, remember and reproduce information. It must teach them how to question, verify, analyse and interpret it. A student who can write the correct answer in an examination may be academically successful. But a student who knows how to ask the right question is better prepared for life. The classroom of the future must therefore produce not merely informed students, but thinking citizens. They must learn that forwarding a message is also a form of responsibility. Sharing a post is not an innocent act when it can affect someone's reputation, create public fear or influence social behaviour. The challenge becomes even greater in the age of Artificial Intelligence. AI can generate information, images, audio and video with extraordinary speed and sophistication. The distinction between what is real and what merely appears real may become increasingly difficult. In such a world, human judgment becomes more valuable, not less. Technology can produce an answer in seconds. It cannot automatically tell us whether that answer deserves our trust. Some answers require experience. Some require context. Many require the ability to think independently. We have more information, more technology and more connectivity than any previous generation. Yet our real challenge is to preserve something technology cannot manufacture for us: the capacity to think for ourselves. The ocean of information will only become larger. The question will no longer be, “How much information do we have?” The more important questions will be: What should we accept? What should we question? What should we verify? And what should we reject? No technology can completely answer these questions for us. No number of likes can substitute for evidence. No viral trend can replace judgment. No majority can turn misinformation into truth. That responsibility belongs to human beings. Information can tell us what happened. Discernment helps us understand what it means, why it happened, what may be missing from the story and how we should respond. Perhaps, therefore, the greatest educational challenge of our time is not to teach people how to find more information. They already know how to do that. The greater challenge is to teach them how to pause-to pause before believing, to pause before reacting, to pause before forwarding and to pause before joining the crowd. Because sometimes the most intelligent response to information is not an immediate reaction, but a moment of reflection. The ocean is already around us. It is growing deeper every day. What we need now is not more information to swim through it-but the wisdom to know which direction to take. (The writer is the Principal of Podar International School, Ausa, Latur. Views personal.)

Dead Reckoning

Writer: Vishwas Pethe
Vishwas Pethe
Sep 25, 2025
3 min read

The Charlie Kirk killing underscores America’s uneasy balance of free expression, political violence and identity.

The murder of firebrand Conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking event at a Utah college was much more than just a tragic episode in America’s long saga of gun violence. While Kirk’s audiences consisted of those who largely those who shared his outlook, the suddenness and brutality of his killing jolted even the indifferent.


Violence, it must be said, is indefensible. That point is not up for debate. But neither can Kirk’s ideology be separated from the response to his death.


Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012, when he was barely out of his teens. Within a decade it had become a juggernaut of campus conservatism, bankrolled by wealthy donors and amplified by Fox News. His message was tailored to a generation disillusioned with liberal shibboleths, railing against ‘woke culture,’ denouncing immigration as an “invasion” and dismissing LGBTQ+ rights as a threat to the republic. To admirers, he was a fresh-faced tribune of unapologetic conservatism while to his critics, he was a provocateur trafficking in bigotry.


American politics has long produced firebrands whose words divide more than they unify. In the 1960s George Wallace galvanised white resentment with talk of segregation. In the 1990s, Pat Buchanan (Nixon’s speechwriter) had railed against multiculturalism. Kirk’s genius was to package similar sentiments for a social-media age, combining meme-worthy provocation with a relentless denunciation of liberal elites.


The reactions to Kirk’s death illustrated the difficulty of separating man from message. Barack Obama called the killing “horrific” while pointedly defending the right to challenge Kirk’s ideas. Hollywood actress Amanda Seyfried posted condolences but reminded her followers of the “hateful” impact of his rhetoric on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.


Such responses highlight a moral balancing act: it is possible to mourn a life lost without airbrushing the harm of words once spoken.


Marginalised groups, long the targets of Kirk’s fire, voiced a similar duality. GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, condemned the shooting but noted that Kirk “spread infinite amounts of disinformation about LGBTQ people.” The Human Rights Campaign insisted that “political violence has no place in this country,” while reminding the public that rhetoric has consequences.


Black church leaders in Houston issued carefully nuanced statements. Bishop James Dixon II stressed that every life matters, yet Reverend Frederick Haynes III observed that Kirk’s dismissive comments about Black Americans could not simply be erased in the wash of mourning.


In South Texas, an artist painted a mural of Kirk as a gesture of unity. Within days, it was vandalised with one of Kirk’s own quotes: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act.” The defacement sparked debate - was it sacrilege, or an uncomfortable act of historical memory?


The shooting has since acquired a second life in the culture wars. Universities and media figures came under fire for posts deemed too critical of Kirk in the hours after his death. A handful of employees lost jobs over celebratory remarks online. America’s vice president, J.D. Vance, urged citizens to report such expressions to authorities.


The deaths of polarising figures, whether George Floyd in 2020 or Ashli Babbitt during the January 6th riot, have repeatedly become contested symbols, claimed by rival camps to reinforce their narratives. Kirk’s fate seems destined for similar treatment: martyr to some, menace to others.


Underlying the wrangling is a profound question: how does a democracy uphold free speech while also recognising when speech marginalises? For those on the receiving end of Kirk’s words, the stakes are hardly ‘academic.’ When immigrants are portrayed as ‘invaders’ or gay Americans as a social contagion, the line between rhetoric and policy can blur.


Yet acknowledging the danger of words does not justify violence. That distinction is crucial. America’s liberal tradition depends on resisting the idea that bullets can resolve arguments. But it also demands honesty about the climate created by inflammatory speech.


The temptation in moments like these is to reach for easy binaries: Kirk as martyr or villain, his killing either proof of left-wing intolerance or a tragic inevitability of polarised politics. The truth, however, is untidier. It is possible to hold two truths in tandem: that violence is wrong, and that rhetoric matters.


How America remembers Charlie Kirk will shape more than his legacy. If grief slides into sanctification, exclusionary ideologies may gain fresh legitimacy. If his death is dismissed as simply another casualty of gun violence, the human tragedy is lost. The wiser path lies in resisting both amnesia and absolutism.


(The author is an Indian origin US citizen, residing in Washington Dc. Views personal)

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