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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.)

Hi furries, what’s your fursona?

Writer: Aditi Pai
Aditi Pai
Jan 15, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Jan 16, 2025

‘Hi there; woof woof; I’m a dog’—have you ever met anyone whose introduced himself as that? Or maybe met a lawyer who thinks she’s actually a mermaid and spends most of her free time dressed as one lounging in the water? Shocking and funny as it may sound, such personality and identity choices may be exceptions to are not impossible to find. In some such ‘communities’, people are increasingly identifying themselves as various animals, insects and even inanimate objects such as pillow, table lamps and balls.


There’s a new sort of ‘coming out’ that’s happening in different parts of the world. Once a term dreaded by parents who were told of their kids’ preference for the same sex, children, teenagers and adults are now ‘coming out’ as animals trapped in human form. Cursory research told me that these people are called therians—those who feel they are other animals trapped in a human body, a realisation that dawns on them at a young age. The definition of therian may be simple but the actual concept is hard to understand. Most, however, don’t start walking on fours or retreat into forests. They study, take up professions, marry, have children and live-in social set-ups like the rest. But their inner voice tells them that they belong elsewhere.


This surprising phenomenon led to the office of two social psychologists based in Mumbai. One dismissed it as a passing trend among teenagers without much credence while the other accepted it was for real. But there’s no study or research on this phenomenon in India as yet, they said. It’s fashionable for kids to say I am a ball or I am a cat. That’s it! With google at hand, it’s possible to find anything. An online article that I dug out details what social psychologist Kathy Gerbasi says on her study on therians. There are therian platforms that urge members not to have untrue or illogical ideas of a certain animal which can be called out as a bluff. The person must feel the animal in every bone, she said.


A young man in some part of the world feels like a bear in every bone of his body. He feels the strength and the personality of a bear. Then there are others who feel like cats and dogs. In 2023, more than 1000 people gathered in Berlin and howled like dogs; because they identified themselves as four-legged canines. I recently chanced upon a social media reel where a woman jumped over tables and beds because she thought she was a cat and even painted stripes on her face and stuck whiskers on her upper lip. A professional lawyer, walked through busy city streets dressed in plastic and metal because she thinks she’s a robot. The topic was so intriguing that I couldn’t stop reading about it. A media report spoke about schools in the UK allowing students to identify as anything besides boys and girls. A government survey was also initiated after a teacher called her students’ attitude “despicable” because they didn’t accept a classmate’s contention that she was a cat. This new identification goes beyond animals, fish and birds. Inanimate objects can also catch people’s fancy enough for them to identify themselves as lampshades, robots, balls or even the moon.


Furries, or people who identify as animals, have their very own fandom. They have ‘fursonas’ akin to a persona and have friends from the anthropomorphic kingdom. India is probably a long way from accepting this kind of ‘coming out’. Until now, parents only loving called their kids by names that sound like cute puppies, cats, birds, the moon or the sun.


It isn’t only a ‘western concept’ as one would think. Affluent schools report seeing such identity choices among students, which are ignored or dismissed. An advocate in Ahmedabad recently had a teenager approach her for legal help on changing her identity and gender on official documents and to demand that such choices be considered legal.


Even as it sounds ludicrous to many, the question is eventually about identity. Identity isn’t a simple concept. There are several external factors like society, family, loved ones, ethnicity, race, culture, location, opportunities, media, interests, appearance, self-expression and life experiences that form and shape our identity. The freedom of choice allows people to feel, act and say as they please without infringing on the safety and freedom of others. May be the day won’t be too far when we meet Mr Ball or Ms Cat in cafes or offices.

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