Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover: A Bhagavad-gita Perspective – Chaitanya Charan
Hare Krishna. Question, what is the Bhagavad Gita perspective on Elon Musk's taking over of Twitter? Answer, the Bhagavad Gita is a book of spiritual wisdom.
And its primary purpose is to help us, ourselves, see things in a way that can foster higher consciousness, foster selflessness, and not only act in that way, but see social developments in a way, whether they are conducive or non conducive, for the furthering of the higher values and purposes of life. So, from that perspective, we can analyze Elon Musk's taking over Twitter. The Bhagavad Gita says that it is important that truth be spoken.
In talking about the discipline of speech, it talks about how speaking satya is important. And on Twitter, there was significant level of censorship or restriction of speech, especially for those with traditional and conservative values. And because of that, one narrative was being highly promoted.
And another was being strongly subordinated, but misrepresented and denied any space. So, one of the reasons which Elon Musk has given is that he wants the ethos of free speech to be restored on Twitter. That will be good if more and more people with traditional views, not just traditional in terms of condemning modernity, but tradition as relevant to modernity, if those have a space and a voice, then that is good.
A former head of Twitter actually openly supported anti-brahminical movements. And in general, any support of Hinduism is equated Hindutva and is labeled right-wing extremism and is often obstructed, if not silenced. So, that kind of censorship, Twitter, first of all, has no right to do that because it claims privileges based on being just a medium and not a publisher.
And then it exhibits censorship. So, if that can be avoided, then that will be a positive development. The Bhagavad Gita itself is about spiritual knowledge being shared.
And it says that ideally, the ruling heads of state and the state government should be facilitating order in society and facilitating the dissemination of spiritual wisdom, which can act as an impetus and foundation for establishing order in society. So, while Twitter is not the government of any state or country, but it is a transnational organization whose influence in some ways can exceed the influence even of governments of small countries. The fact that Twitter could ban the president of America indicates its power.
So, I'm not taking political sides in political debate over here. The fact is that if Twitter is biased towards leftist narratives and against religious and spiritual principles, then that is a problem. We may say that all social media is just a cesspool and why bother about what happens over there.
Yes, social media can be a cesspool where people can get sucked into. At the same time, it is undeniable that especially the younger generation, most people get their views and form their views based on what is present on social media, especially on social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and to some extent, TikTok. Although that is, of course, banned in India.
But the point is that if these social media giants are going to favor only a particular narrative, an entire generation can get cut off from tradition and traditional perspectives and can get biased towards a particular narrative without any significant effort also being made or needed to be made. So, if we want the spiritual traditions of India to at least be available for exploration for the younger generation, for them, their little universe is in many ways within the social media. So, these need to be available.
And in that sense, social media, the social media being unbiased and allowing free speech is important for the dissemination of spiritual knowledge. Now, of course, this is not to make an ethical statement about the ethics of Elon Musk or support him particularly. The point is that this development can help in establishing a more level playing field for those who are trying to preserve spiritual culture and share spiritual wisdom.
And, of course, how things turn out is something which only time will tell. But if what was the intent, at least the spoken intent in trying to take over Twitter is what is actualized, then that could be a positive development. So, from the Gita's perspective, this development could help in creating resources on social media by which human consciousness can be raised more towards sattva, towards goodness, where there will be more contemplative awareness, more awareness of the truth and then better decision making in pursuance of the higher purposes of life based on the higher values which come from spiritual wisdom and spiritual culture.
Thank you.