All of us tend to form a perceptions of people & organisations based on most recent happenings & tend to forget incidents in the past. Here I would talk about the effects such short term memory losses have had in recent times., either on people in specific cases or in general,
Gentleman’s game: Guns & Roses for our players
It pays & pains to be a cricketer…It feels it was just yesterday that the Man with the Midas touch hit that mammoth six, sealing off a famous win, & giving a perfect birthday gift to me..But now the same fans, who danced on the streets after the WC win have now set their guns onto the Captain Courageous, the “King” opener, the GOD, et al for their laughable performances in the current series., The rise of the team to #1 position in the very first place is now being questioned..There is talk of the players giving more importance to auctions off the field than action on the field..Creativity is being amply manifested by fans through mockery & criticism of the team in social media space..The WC win has become a thing of the past now..The players have turned from heroes to zeroes in no time, in line with what I have mentioned in Nothing succeeds like success: Good things get forgotten very quickly & bad things remain etched in memory..
Double dip recession: Was it Avoidable ?
The ugly recession that hit us 3 year back left many jobless throughout the world..After the guys in power made a “Self declaration” that the recession was done & dusted with, the world swung back to its old good days of reckless spending, hiring, offering mammoth salaries & perks to its top bosses & so on..Sad days are ,unfortunately here again..The world seems to have forgotten the pains of the previous recession & now 3 years later, finds itself, yet again at the bottom of the roller coaster ride..
Voted for the corrupt..
November 2008 saw one of the saddest incidents in the country wherein unfortunate & deadly terror attacks stuck the maximum city..There were candle light marches,angry protests against the government, accused for its inaction & corrupt ways of handling the defence of the country….Yet, general elections held 6 months after the incident saw the same party gain even higher number of votes than it did in last elections..Did we forget the incident within 6 months & forgive the corrupt government or did we vote for the party which we thought to be relatively better & less corrupt than the toothless & spineless opposition ?? There may not be a single answer to this question, but one thing’s for sure..Since then, we have gifted the government complete independence to indulge in all sorts of corruption at all sorts of levels by all sorts of officials..The instances of corruption stated by my fellow blogger in the comments section below are great manifestations of effects of our “forgetting & forgiving” nature..
One legendary cricketer has said that what matters is how much you score in the last couple of matches & not in the beginning matches….Films released in later half of the year tend to receive more awards as they are still “fresh” in our minds..Incidents, good or bad happening relatively earlier tend to get forgotten. All of us need to work on this universal problem of short term memory loss..All relevant events of the past should be given adequate weights while forming perceptions & arriving at hypotheses, leading to better decision making…
Kudos Shekar for a thought provoking psychology of the public, after all the saying goes, there are plenty of fathers for success and failure is an orphan. When CWG turned out to be a success everybody was basking in glory, after the event the blame game started. Majority were against Bangalore International airport at current location, but it is one of the best things to happen.
Thanks a lot Umesh for your comment & for the illustrations of CWG & Bangalore airport…
Brilliant post at a very good time, agree with you totally, people have forgotten that these are the guys who won us the world cup just a few months ago. India has a challenge with thinking for the short term and this will lead to our downfall eventually
Thanks a lot Dr Vikram…hopefully we give due consideration to events in the past as well before forming any perceptions..
Pingback: Rise & Fall of superheroes | Shekhar's Blog
Pingback: And another one | Shekhar's Blog