Over last few days, I have set out on an attempt to understand others, to interpret the subtle cues of their conscience, to relate their personalities with their preferences and thereby come up with a seemingly flawless bouquet of offerings which would be optimum enough to satisfy a whole many of the intended recipients. While executing the required exercise I realised that people don't really know whats missing in their lives and hence are even many a times clueless of what they are seeking from it.... They appeared to me like a modified version of Nomads who are moving on in life without giving much thought to the final destination (any reference to some art/literary/entertainment form is purely co-incidental and unintentional)... Living each day as it comes, curbing the burried desire for a change.
Taking the simple example of entertainment say through the means of Television. Today many "dedicated" viewers are actually completely discontented with the kind of content they are subjected to but still love watching the same... When asked what makes them get glued to the appliance which delivers nuissance in their view, they have to say hope is what sustains their (already dead) interest in the show. This reply reminds me of the Mother India fame attitude "Duniya mein hum aaye hai toh jeena hi padega...jeevan hai agar jeher toh peena hi padega". Why?? Asked my inner voice? Why to drink this poison? Why to accept whatever comes to you in the same form? Especially when you have so many other and better options and choices to make. Is it because you have adapted your body to survive the poison or is it because you know of no other drink or for that matter you dont really feel anymore like trying any other drink.
How many of us who seek change are really open for the same and willing to take a chance and experiment with something new? Now deviating away from this anthropological approach lets try to look at this finding from a marketeer's perspective. Branding a product to appeal a consumer who is herself unaware of her needs is no kid's business. Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai ... just like the chicken-egg problem (as to what came first), one can even ponder over this thing that does the marketeer fill an existing need-gap or create one so that he has something to fill but then for a need-gap to be created even the need is required to be created. Can need really be created? Well I have seen quite a few of my friends get confused with this question. Need is something which has always been existant and requires a trigger that would stimulate it into a strong desire.
This need is also a variable factor at least when it comes to entertainment industry. Viewers expect different things at different time oblivious to the reason causing this change in expectations. The exercise I conducted was also to know these changing expectations and the factors causing these changes. Reading between the lines in a person's chat and thereby trying to study a person is such an interesting (at times time-consuming) task, for me at least.
After having interacted with some persons I asked my self as to how much of a justice will I be able to do to the task entrusted. A person like me who is unaware of her own self, who is yet to unfold the mystery beneath her character, will she be able to hear the unsaid and read the invisible from the minds of strangers ??
1 comment:
The article is a perfect example of writer’s ability to relate her daily life observations with the mind boggling philosophical questions.
The major question raised here: people generally don’t know what do they want. Yes, I do support this but is it a problematic situation....??...that’s needed to be explored.
I’d say that people know about their basic needs. While watching television show, they know that they want something which can temporarily take them away from the real life problems to provide complete entertainment. But now the beauty of the human mind comes into picture. Entertainment has different connotation for different people. Someone would call one hour of laughter as entertainment while someone would just like to cry for an hour in front of the idiot box. Now you will say why a viewer can’t provide the exact details of his need. You can say that this is a flawed system but I’d say that this is birthplace of the creativity. Art and creativity exist because we don’t know the exact dimensions of our sensual needs. E.g. A person can explain the exact power which he desire in a bike but he can’t explain the exact looks and design which will give pleasure to his senses. The real soothing beauty lies in arts and not in science and it’s impossible to bind art into words.
In the end, I’d just like to say that unawareness to one’s own self is bliss.
Everybody has desire/longing for something. It’s good to know the needs coming from the brain but most of the times its better not to know precisely about what the heart is longing for because you have something to explore creatively and a hope to achieve it one day. But once you get to know about the thing your heart longing for, you just feel powerless and baffled because you realize that you are bounded by so many meaningless constraints that you are almost sure that you will not get your longing fulfilled.
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