Technology could influence crime

This year Covid-19 has paralyzed life. It has paralyzed our capability of getting together to work and paralyzed our capability of getting together to celebrate. Over a century, through hard work and inspired innovation, humanity has put brilliant minds together to bridge the distances between people, to bring people closer to work, leisure, to connect and increase our love. In these present days social distancing has become a daily norm, protocols for working from home (WFH) have been accepted as a Standard Official Procedure (SOP) and technology has facilitated this through internet apps. Our regular routine of binging on street food has ended abruptly and people are turning to the internet to remind themselves of the flavours they miss. Smart-phones and the internet have initiated online tutoring and even brought the school teacher home. People's need to visit religious places has been replaced with rituals being telecast on 'Youtube' and Social Media. Impositions of lockdown by the authorities have crippled our life and our freedom to venture into the buzzing streets. But our technology has brought graphic content of the world into our homes and in our hands.

An immense amount of information that includes graphic content can be perused through a smart-phone in our hands. This should empower humanity to try the impossible, including making viable the possibilities of the 'Alcubierre drive'. Productivity has become limitless while virtual entertainment follows. But where will virtual entertainment draw the line? Sometimes such digital facilities have been misused to take the obscenity from the brothels and direct them into the hands of adolescents and vile men. Humanity has innovated the smart-phone to enable people to stay connected and to procure all kind of information via the internet. The addictiveness to the media streaming on this tech can also alienate and pervert the minds and hearts of any person who decides to seek pleasure in pornography. So where did humanity cross the line? Is there a thin red line between information and infotainment? The smart-phone was designed for work as well as leisure. Yet, people who design pornographic content have made their lewd sense of leisure into work and reap profits from perverting the minds of otherwise productive people who fail to find healthy leisure. Before Covid-19 attacked our lives, sexual offences against young girls and women had already reached staggering dangerous levels that involved toddlers as well as infants. The statistics of reported offences show that a woman is being raped every few minutes across India and the records shows that in 93% of the cases, the accused is known to the victim. So, this form of vile sense of entertainment has corrupted the necessity to respect women? And why do we identify women as the weaker gender? Is strength only physical? And in which field are women found lacking? Women are equal to men and in many cases men would concur that women provide emotional stability in a relationship with a man. The man is no less of a requirement in a relationship with a woman for he brings the required sense of objectivity to the relationship. A well balanced level of hormones is important for emotional health; as two minds connect and interface through the sharing of thoughts and beliefs. The levels of these hormones in the human body are activated by the limbic system of the brain where the Pituitary gland acts as a trigger. The functioning of neurotransmitters like GABA and Serotonin that promote the feeling of well being and the motivating dopamine and Adrenaline influence the mood of the person while hormones influence behaviour. Neurotransmitters and hormones are two different types of chemicals that carry signals from one part of the body to another. Both chemicals play an important part in the body’s physiology. They control a variety of physical and psychological functions, including our mood, our eating patterns, our ability to learn, our sleep cycles and sexual desires. The sexual organs only respond to the final impulse from the limbic system of the brain that controls emotion and desire.

So, where does the perversion and violence initiate? Are humans born violent sexual predators? We cannot completely exclude women from sexual crimes because many times some deranged women have abetted men in sexual crimes upon innocent children. Yet, it is from a woman that both are born and it is in the love of the mother that all humanity is initiated in life. Every human being has a biological mother, though some are unfortunate to grow up without a mother. Nevertheless, there is no mother or sister who would tutor a child into sexual violence. So where and when is that perverted seed sown? People could generally agree that such perversion could have been initiated during adolescence when a boy is coping to understand overwhelming sexual impulse and at these times of adolescence the child's curiosity could be mis-oriented depending on what the child sees and hears. It would depend on the company the adolescent youngster keeps and the information the youngster browses. In such a situation it becomes imperative for parents and the society at large to control content browsed on the internet, movies and print media. Government could lend a hand by banning all form of pornography on the internet. Only what we see can tempt us. We cannot be influenced by the unknown. It is paramount that social-morality be introduced in schools through theoretical and practical curriculum inducing the general compulsion of respect towards all humans specially women. Hand to hand Combat training must be compulsorily given to all female students early on till pre-graduation school.

Social distancing because of the Covid-19 has not stopped this evil. It shows that perversion finds a way. News has come to light that a sexual predator abused a woman in a Covid hospital where both were admitted. Elsewhere, a patient was sexually abused by a medical worker. Only strict laws and education can control this evil.