Imperfections in a broken world
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
Russell was right. We create the world as we perceive it and because collectively we are many a times ludicrous, we perceive at imperfections around as perfect scenarios and avoid contemplation of the reality as it is.
We live in a world that is ever changing. This is what the Business gurus say. Is it changing organically or we have some intelligent human beings who are driving that change? Yes, we had people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison and many more who patiently facilitated a positive change through their resilience, conviction, commitment and a powerful purpose. But did these change makers were enough and many? Unfortunately no.
We have had situations where people had to live in Countries ruled by Despots and cranky politicians who kept their people backward, poor and without possibilities of seeking opportunities for growth and abundance. Rulers like Hitler, Napoleon, Franco, Maduro, the Ayatollahs, Castro, Kim and many more have kept people out of a democratic or liberal political space since ages, hence stolen away a humanitarian right, to choose. One can only empathize with the people who have been enduring such malaise. Those who have been practicing democracy, barring few, have not been inclusive and equal opportunities provider either. The countries who gave modern democratic values to the world, namely the US and the UK are more identity driven and nationalistic then ever before. Britain, for example as a colonial power was brutal, divisive, diabolical and deceitful and as an occupying force (directly or through her agents), She ruled with an iron hand, taking away properties of Natives in the modern day United States, Canada, Australia, India and others and played a nasty and divisive role when it came to Indian Independence, creation of Israel or in recent past, allying with the US to bomb Iraq.
Few of my friends who believe in a “border-less” world say that ideally there wouldn’t have been any nation-states by now and that the world should have been too evolved by now. This is a hallucination and such things won’t ever happen. Even hypothetically if we give a 1000 years for the creation of a global village, it won’t happen in reality. External stimuli like the Climate change will take us all away much before that. Climate change is one major repercussion of our broken world.
All through the History, Nations have unleashed violence as a tool to control and coerce human beings and in the medieval history, violence was its peak. A powerful yet rogue king used to come, plunder a country, kill in scores of thousands, rape and enslave the women and would go back. In many cases the local kings offered a booty to the neighboring state if they got substantial military help from them. Imagine a state asks the neighboring state to help and in exchange offers few of its villages to be looted by that benevolent state, in case the war is won. These things have actually happened in our recent past. Statistically, we are at the lowest levels of violence. There are many places in the world where people can go to any location at any time without any trouble. But, it it enough? Apparently not. We have ISIS, Boko Harams, Taliban and such kind of outfits who bring the world close to danger. 9/11 is one representation of that.
Now, of course religion has a critical role (mostly in a negative parlance). Practitioners and followers of different religions believe that their particular religion has a superior ideology over that of others. In nutshell, the world suffers from “my belief vs your belief” phenomenon and that results in stereotyping others, treating people of other religions as second class and even persecuting people on flimsy charges. When a terror outfit says that it believes in a particular religion, we rubbish that off by saying that they are “misguided”.
Few days back, I had a conversation with a Sikh friend and we were generally discussing the Khalistan movement in Punjab (There was a Sikh insurgency from early eighties till mid nineties). The insurgents wanted a separate country to be carved out of the modern day state of Punjab. My friend said that it was not a good idea to begin with. The movement was started by fundamentalist Sikhs and he (the friend) said that hypothetically even if a new independent Country was formed, it would have been ruled by either the granthis (the Sikh priests) or the former militants. Similarly, the movement in Kashmir is flawed because the insurgents are fighting for either an independent Kashmir or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan. If there is a merger with Pakistan, how would it change the fortunes of people? Even from a business point of view, India has more people who would be willing to go to Kashmir as tourists then say, Pakistanis (if hypothetically it was to be a part of Pakistan). So being part of Pakistan would still mean a downgrade. Of course from religious point of view, it would make sense as India was partitioned on religious lines and for Pakistan it is an “unfinished agenda of partition”. If Kashmir gets independence (only for the sake of arguments), it would most likely be ruled by the people who are considered “separatists” by the Government of India and they are mostly religious conservatives and they may well fight for power as well through violent means. So, it may end up like a state based on religious principles, with dress codes and a treatise of an ideal life etc. And considering it as a tourism hotspot, it needs to preserve the gold standard. Iran’s tourism industry took a big blow after the Islamic Revolution. This doesn’t mean that their should not be ways and mechanisms to understand the alienation of normal Kashmiris and how normalcy can be restored through trust and empathy. I am also not trying to say that some actions can be justified. This is just an example. The idea of Religion mixing with politics is appalling and it always leads to a disaster. My point is that from despots to insurgents, every thing is broken and not repairable in many cases. We love patchwork but then leaks happen eventually.
No one knows what is right. We use our minds in a particular theater of thoughts and say or do what we feel like. Everyone’s brain is formatted in the similar fashion but our wiring is different and complicated. A nationalist Jinnah, for example subsequently converted into a religious zealot and was instrumental in dividing India. Someone is a conservative, someone a liberal and yet there would be some new paradigm. Hitler was a National Socialist and I heard a friend say that she is a “left capitalist”.
Besides this rant, is there a solution? Am I a part of a solution (again this jargon is very famous these days). I guess not. Sometimes when few good things happen, one feels good but in most of the negativity around, the brain forgets, accommodates new thoughts and forgoes some of the debris. We live in an imperfect world (although in many ways better than our ancestors, in choices we are able to make) and in these imperfections, if we find time to ponder, relax and create a basic level of happiness, we are surely fortunate.
