Fifteen Million Merits

The episode “Fifteen Million Merits” of the show “Black Mirror” had presented the technology shaping people and manipulating them. The music, the imagery, color, and surroundings were controlling people through giving them false hope for the fulfillment of their desires which in reality never met. The individuals in this show had emotions but did not have them, means that the feelings which do not change people and make them better are pointless. This episode showed all kind of individuals like nerds, bad boys, intelligent people, passionate people and inferiors which were all responding same at the end like nothing has changed.

After seeing this episode, I could imagine how this technology has been such a compelling dystopia that even after Bingham expressing his emotion, accepted the reality. He wanted to go with the flow instead of walking away or having any rebellious thought because his desired goals like he complained about rooms to be small and screens etc. which were fulfilled by the authorities. One thing he didn't realize that cage is a cage whether it is big or small. There was no sense of freedom, the pornography, and hot shot commercials were something no one could skip until they pay the penalty, and they earn points if they accept that so-called utopia.

This show did present somewhat could be a future if people started to rely on technology and take the rule of cruel people. The term machine means reducing human effort, but as everything has an adverse way, this is also being used in today’s world. The technology is so abundant that it in every part of our life, people barely live without it. The psychology has presented it many times that how easy it is with technology to manipulate the mind of a human. Albert Bandura in 1961 conducted an experiment where he showed some children a short film to see the reaction or behavior the children had picked from that movie. It was very compelling that the majority of the children who reacted in aggression were who saw it happen before.

The difference between any wild animal and human is the mind which allows us to think and behave in more efficient way. The humanity rules this planet because they always have believed to make them better from every worse condition. Humanity has seen many standards and eras of cruelty and now in today’s world when weapons have not been an option of leading humanity to its end, instead the extreme technology has been doing that job. Everything looks good in its place, and every theory has some better purpose or is made to make humanity realize for better. The people who think technology is right are not wrong because now we can cure the diseases, go into space for discovering, travel fast and reduce distances using this modern technology. But as if it has good sides, it can be looked the other hand which is mass destruction by weapons, hackings, bioweapon and many other things which I might not know but do exist.

The technology should only be for the betterment of everyone, and the thought of competency needs to reduce as now in today’s world we have border’s which divides us and in history as well. Nowadays we have racism and in past we also had slavery. The famous quote which is learning from your mistakes, which is said quite a time, but it’s being practiced on a small scale which is not going to work out for humans. The society is getting closer to this reality if we keep on depending on the technology more than it is required. I think we should bear in mind that how we pick up good stuff from something and leave out bad or the day is not far when the existence of human would be history to no one.