I am surprised that Krishnan and I never saw nor heard about this movie titled “The Truman Show”. With Mask (1994) becoming a super hit, Jim Carrey had become quite popular in India. Later once OTT became a defacto option in many city homes, we could access virtually any movie that we wanted and we did watch quite a few movies of Jim Carrey including Mask again.
A few weeks back I saw “The Truman Show” pop up on Netflix and put it on my watchlist. Don’t remember when I finally watched it, but am glad I did. Am still thinking about it..
Aren’t we all are actually living like Truman Burbank in The Truman Show ?!!!… Every minute of our life is captured by social media or an online seller. We happily post thousands of photographs online, privacy be damned, and if that is not enough, we keep chatting over WhatsApp. As my ex-boss Troy would say, “Make no mistake”, an algorithm somewhere is making all our decisions for us.
With Google/Amazon/FB/Meta/X etc all tracking our mood, spending patterns, etc there is very little that we independently decide on. We feel we are free and that we choose a certain restaurant or apparel, but well, our “type” has been identified and we are served adverts according to our type.
Every Social media platform is generating mountains of data, all PII (Personally Identifiable Information). We are happily subjecting ourselves to scrutiny and study. Even the protests that we participate in are orchestrated. Whether it’s the good people or the bad people, right wing or left wing, no wing…… we are all part of a big social experiment and one which we dived into headlong.
When Krishnan and I switched off our phones for a month in 2015 – to celebrate our 25th anniversary, our friends were surprised that we could stay away from news and WhatsApp that long. Since September 2015 though, we haven’t managed to switch off completely. Maybe now I can and I will …
The Truman Show – quick recap
Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lives a normal life, works as an insurance salesman. He doesn’t know that his entire existence is broadcast live 24/7. Truman is an unwanted pregnancy and is adopted by a corporation. He grows up on Sea Haven island … which is actually a movie set with a dome and an artificial lake. All other characters are paid actors, except Truman.
Truman’s wife, his best friend, and his parents are all paid actors. They even pitch products on reality TV !!! To make his life seem real, the director “fake” kills Truman’s father in a boating accident. The director in fact makes him an insurance salesman to heighten his fears and highlight the risks involved in going out of Sea Haven.
But Truman is smart and resourceful like every human being is … he quickly figures out that something is amiss, when a studio light falls from the dome, and a radio frequency tracks his movements. When he tries to leave the island, the way is blocked by construction work…
Finally he escapes through the exit door at the other end of the large lake.
Don’t you feel a sense of deja vu as you read the plot … even though we aren’t on a TV set and we don’t act in a reality show, it does feel like it. Forever tracked, forever connected to some device and someone is watching all our moves, …. and it’s not God.
Exit Strategy
For me the way out is “MEDITATION”. Every app, every coder, every AI engine wants you to go “out”, and you can buck the trend by going “in”. Meditation breaks patterns, helps you understand yourself better and as you go deeper, you may just transcend the mind and the marketplace.
Osho developed a series of meditations for the modern man. The Master of Masters knew that Shiva’s 112 meditation techniques shared through the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, will not work instantly on the modern man because we are loaded with “mental garbage”. We have an information overload and our minds are overactive.
If you would like to try Osho’s Dynamic Meditation use this link – Dynamic Meditation.
Exit the show and try your hand at direction. Make your life the way you want it to be, not with thoughts and ideas that have been implanted in you by some algorithm.
Ok Krishnan ? So glad that we are amongst the minority who haven’t watched Big Boss !!