Aware (adj): Knowing and understanding a lot about what is happening in the world or around you.
Yes, there is knowing a "lot" about what is happening because we are all bombarded with messages of all sorts in various media unheard in the 80s and 90s.
But do we really understand what is really happening around us? Let us check this tweet:
While most of the people will focus on the person mentioned in the tweet, I have a problem with something else. That is, someone has built a forest in 30 years. If a forest can be "built" in such a short period , it is really wonderful. But as an Environmental Studies student, I very well need to dispute this fact.
A forest is not a vast collection of trees in acres of land. A forest has a structure, patterns of growth and development, stages of ecological succession, and then something called ecological climax. The forests that we see in India or elsewhere took millions of years to reach this stage. One study estimates 4500 years for a rainforest to form. Destruction of forests is not just loss of trees or reduction in total forest ares, but loss of flora and fauna, with many animal species going extinct.
This is one example where the media fails to educate people. But, it is also a fashion that "understanding and in-depth" knowledge of issues is lacking in our day-to-day life. What I am saying is not "academic scholarship", but a better understanding of things around us from better and vast reading of issues or one's favorite topics. Scholarship is a burden now, whereas if you convince someone that you know lots of things, you will be considered "knowledgeable".
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