a.nihil

the utopian ideal

A service is a thing of value carried out because there is a demand for it. A service is an economic transaction, so the party that demands the service should pay for it. What is a government otherwise? A road is built when there is a demand/need for a road being built. There is a need that the populace be secure and healthy, so there is a force that takes care of security and health. There are much more complicated demands relating to scarce resources, trade and foreign affairs which the ordinary person cannot be bothered with – here jumps in the government to the rescue. What should we do in return? Pay for the services provided, in terms of taxes and once in a while do audits if everything is going ahead as promised. One of the vital elements of this transaction is trust, I trust the government that it doing everything as it promised and the government trusts me that I am conforming to my end of the contract.

The Government however is a super-human entity, a reflection of all our tribal selves. This tribal self assembles itself as a mass, averaging out everyone so that it can be an image of the people. This superhuman self of the government is also not directly dependent on the people itself, that would mean a failed state like Libya or Afghanistan has people with lesser average selves than say people in Switzerland or Australia. The foundation on which a government operates also is dependent on other governments and the time at which the said super-human structure was allowed to grow. A country like the United States has around 250 years of existence to its credit whereas Libya and Afghanistan dabbled with dictatorial and Geo-political disadvantages.

Let us for the sake of an argument consider a government in a relatively stable democratic context (even if a country is not democratic, the functions of the government remain the same. If the basic promises are reneged upon popular rebellions are waiting right at the doorstep) and see why the transaction does not appear to be like that of a service but one that is more aligned towards power centrism, elitism, influence and control.

One of the ideas that we believe that there is some form of the world which is perfect and that we should work hard and change things to get there and systems are created to motivate to do better. One such system is religion where a central God ordains people to do things in a certain way. It is essentially a control system for making everyone fall into line. The image of God falls onto the monarch, the dictator, the autocrat and your garden variety 'democratically elected leader. The other system which is more primal is the family. We are born and raised in families or in communities that value the familial system, where the child is constantly course corrected on a system of predetermined values deemed right by the parents and the immediate community.

When we grow up in such a system, it is hard to imagine a system different from it. There will be no radical new system that will eradicate world hunger, stop all wars and make people nicer to each other on a global level. This is an utopian view that is best discarded, the problems that persist today will persist way into the future and into infinity and understanding that is solving half the problem as it sets the expectations right.

Having this parental outlook to how we view authority also explains the suspiciousness that the system has back on us. This is very akin to a parent always having a close eye on their loving (or burdensome) child, to discipline him to go the way of community prescribed righteousness and whatever self-believed sense of truth they seem to possess. Every action is scrutinized to stop the child from falling into the vices though the parents eventually know that the child will always outgrow them. In the eyes of the government, the citizenry are the perpetual children, they will never outgrow them as the State and its machinery are always older and bigger than them. Politicians invoke utopias like priests promising gods all at the same time trying to see what you think and have the complete ownership of you are. The man on the high throne does not have anything to look down to if there are no people to feel small under.

How to break these bonds created through existence? One of the first things to do is to break the parental attachment while the emotional configuring is still at its immaturity. Break free and realize the relationship is essentially selfish and you were created to fulfill the needs of the parent and your obligation in the participation of the relationship is purely involuntary. Once that is established, the circle of dependency established for generations is broken down and it gives a small glimpse of the absurdness of the political systems outside.

This emotional break is not easy to accomplish and perhaps even impossible in the first generation but it is an important tool to raise future children on, where children are seen as propagators of a race and not as the selfish replication of one's own self. Once this relationship dynamic has been established and all the old rules of how humans have lived and interacted are decimated, it starts giving rise to further cycles of cold, rational beings for whom authority is not something that is seen as a given but rather life itself a series of arbitrary decisions to be made. This wholly independent society of humans can then establish detached political systems that do not focus on ownership and control rather focused on problem solving and rational justness. This is again a perfect worldview and this does not exist. This being's rationality will atleast not be tainted by the ideas which are not ours. We can atleast be in peace that our ideas have never worked anyway and the best way to go forward is to purge them.

The idea of a just government or a perfect democracy are not possible with the systems we have in place now or whatever that will replace them in the future. No matter what activists, journalists, thinkers, writers, politicians and army men scream about, the change will never come. Not now and not in two thousand years. What does matter is to extinguish all the millennia of useless thoughts pursued with their obtuse power structure. Eliminating them would mean starting with a clean state and paving the way for a purely transactional being for whom we have nothing but hope.

#society #governments #governing #utopia

Friends! My comrades in the War of Liberation! Today I demand of you one thing, above all. I demand of you blood It is blood alone that can avenge the blood that the enemy has spilt. It is blood alone that can pay the price of freedom. Give me blood and I promise you freedom!

The above words were said by Subhash Chandra Bose in 1944 to his band of extremist followers called the Indian National Army (INA). He is the darling of the Hindu nationalists in India along with Bhagat Singh, Veer Sarvarkar and Chandrasekhara Azad. Recent myth making also puts hitherto unknown names on the list – Narasimha Reddy from Andhra, the faceless soldiers from the surgical strikes following the Uri attack in Kashmir, the team that put the Mars probe on the red planet.. all of whom are eulogized by Bollywood and lapped up by the latent consumers of media. This brings us to the question, why does India need heroes? Especially, why does India need to manufacture heroes in the presence of none and glorify a powerful masucline personality not averse to war and surprisingly well endowed by Sherlockian intellectual abilities?

This is in line with the idea of the Western male, the all powerful white man who has fought two world wars and is right now on top of the global hierarchical structure, controlling the economy and the politics of the world. Though this narrative is faltering in the West, for the postcolonial populace it still remains the same dream thanks to the signs of marketing and wealth shown through the diktats of Trump, the blitz of a Hollywood campaign and the deep advertising campaigns run by American/Western corporations in the subcontinent.

How can a poor nation fight against the Big Man sitting thousands of kilometers away and earn his respect? Being meek is a way of going forward but also how long can this subjugation go on? There should be a sphere of life where the Indian is better than the Western man (and he is already better than the African or the Asian. Latin America is too far away to exist and Arabs?) and here comes the idea of cultural superiority. The cultural superiority talks about the greatness of the vedic era and vedic philosophy – which is stripped completely out of its social context and espoused with superior religiosity. Hear an Indian talk about philosophy and boast about the impartiality of the said philosophy while also denigrating the Abrahamic religions for their inflexibility of ideas.

This cultural superiority however does not have a global audience. It is limited to an elite few even in the West, that is people who can be bothered. How can the perception of the country and its men, no matter how little, be changed in the lowest common denominator of population in the Western world? The fight in their heads in not won by reason but by the show of might. The optics of violence has a greater impact, think how overestimated the fears of ISIS was to what it actually was, but when the enemy is made to look strong, you take notice.

But how can one show might if they do not have any muscle? This is the same reason the Hindu right loves to hate Gandhi, he was too soft and called for non-violence and divided the country. How dare he do that before we could spill any blood and have it on our hands to show the future generations and keep them in a subconscious check? This is same reasoning used by the United States, subconscious warfare. If you have the courage to ruffle its feathers, the mighty eagle will swoop down and whoop your ass.

The psychology behind how this masculine aspect of the Indian government (and if extrapolated to the global context, then every government) functions is the same as how a high school bully functions. Brutalized perhaps in another aspect of life, the kid tries to show-off before his equals and underlings. Usually the fight with the bully can be broken with the simplest show of might but most of us are even scared to shake up the status-quo. And what does the bully keep on doing? Inventing myths and creating more auras of power around him while the truth might be different. The mob always believes that all that glisters is indeed gold.

For example, check the Balakot Air Strikes and the Surgical Strikes both instances in the past years where the Indian Government tried to paint the world red. Misleading information aside, the attacks have been celebrated and as linked above have been made into easily consumable Bollywood films – amplifying the chest thumping into the farthest reaches of the country. The self-congratulatory nature of the propaganda can also been seen it being awarded the 66th National Film Award by the BJP government, hence finishing the circular logic of 'we did great actions because the film shows we did great actions and the film is great because here's the awards it has received'. The Ballot Air Strikes also conveniently took place under complete media frenzy just before the national elections in April this year. The projected success indeed helped coverup all other BJPs shortcoming with the ailing economy, the effects of demonetization (which also conveniently happened before the Uttar Pradesh election season of 2016) and general lack of things to show.

The bully wants to destroy. The bully wants to have six-pack abs to deter any opposition and appear sexy in the big boy's club. The bully is just starting to realign his perception in the rest of the class and if you don't stop him now, it will be much harder to stop him later on. Notice that the bully is exclusively a 'he' and notice that all his actions are cosmetic. The blood thirst from before the independence of the country is not fulfilled yet and they dream of showing might to the world. What remains true for now is that India is a poor country with very little to show as of now. More on these issues later, coupled with tactics on how to confront this bully and examining if there is any way out of this mess.

Until next time, stay angry and stay informed. Sleep with an eye open and be sensitive to any word or action. They take you by the finger throw you down to the lurches. Beware.

#fasicsm #india #balakot #rightwinged #hindu