Muddling through...

      People often criticize me for not having any patriotic attitude. Some consider it  ignorance, and some laziness, even once I got into trouble for criticizing soldiers. Though I didn't actually criticize any particular figure, rather just bragged about the idea, the idea of dying for the community. At a point, I lived in a society that was so cynical that I can't imagine joining the army to die for this shit cynical society. And besides the justification they give you about saving lives, well, if I think about it from the top, isn't it a bit ironic? Killing or rather dying to save lives, and that too for some egotistical reasons. Patriotism is even okay sometimes but only if it doesn’t come forcefully onto you, but nationalism is worse. Patriotism is nothing but some love for your country, the homeland, but nationalism demands a strong nation, it demands loyalty towards the nation, it demands no criticism and the nation always comes over one’s interest or choice, it has zero places for individuality and it is often driven by one idea, one community, one religion, one language. But still, the idea is a bit hard to comprehend; the idea of humans living in a finite boundary with rules and regulations and some mandatory love for the idea and for some random sign created to signify the idea; with of course a strict action taken against the defamation of the sign and the idea, is more important than an individual human's life.

      I really love Tagore’s views on this, and here I quote him, “I am not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations. What is the Nation? It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength and efficiency drains man's energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative. For thereby man's power of sacrifice is diverted from his ultimate object, which is moral, to the maintenance of this organization, which is mechanical. Yet in this he feels all the satisfaction of moral exaltation and therefore becomes supremely dangerous to humanity. Nationalism is a great menace(danger). It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India's troubles.”

      Perhaps, man is born in this world to find himself, to understand the world from his own perspectives, to live his life with his own ideology and not only to serve the community, but somehow he gets sucked into this pre-setup where he believes that it's better to walk on the road paved by his ancestors rather creating a new one. But at a point when he gets the idea of this structure; he has no other options but to accept this, because the setup we have created is a hell of a complicated thing, and one cannot live abandoning it entirely, though some still try to leave all of this behind and prefer to continue their journey onto the mountains covered by snows or somewhere in seclusion between trees and animals in the name of finding the meaning of life which is a bit absurd because sometimes I feel finding the meaning of life is nothing but calculating a perfect value of pi, it has no end to it. (And the pre-setup which we've created always demands something fruitful out of you which defines your meaningful life. You don't have to be anyone or do anything to give your life meaning, because your existence itself has a huge meaning. You can simply be an observer of this world, a true audience of this priceless show, and enjoy every bit of it. You can watch mountains and feel the sunshine and cold wind over your skin and sometimes enjoy the shadows after lights and the falling of leaves, yes, you can watch all of this and enjoy it, and be happy, and give your life a meaning, and don't listen to them, they're always busy making something productive. And you are not wasting your time when you aren't doing anything, beware, they'll threaten you, but you never waste your time because you are breathing every moment, so don't let others destroy you by saying something, "oh you've wasted a month or a year," it's not like you died for a year and then became alive, you're there, living and breathing. The time is yours, the life is yours, and the world is yours as much as it's theirs, so you do what you do. But I wish, I wish I could do this only. Unfortunately, I can't do this because I’m involved in mankind, where I’ve to find something to feed myself.)

        So, as I think to myself is it too hard to achieve peace among humans? Do we really require armed forces? Let me at least think about India. Why can't we spend more on education and cultural development like Japan and Norway? Is it really difficult to achieve the reality of a society where people live in peace, where there is no discrimination based on race, caste, gender, and wealth? Where everyone earns equally and spends when it's necessary. Well, this is nothing but a standard concept of Communism, and of course, a failed one. Because whenever it had been tried on a practical basis it always had been taken over by dictatorships, and those dictators taking the ideology out of its context have created some sort of an environment where they forced people to be equal, to live equal, even to look equal. Now that is not freedom.

       Is Religion something that gives us true freedom? Well, again it has gone out of context on many levels, so it gives us freedom as much it confines us, I mean you can't eat/drink certain foods but you can literally walk naked on the street. And there are many religions; fighting with each other about which one is better.  

      But still, considering now, today we have democracies? Well, there are many reasons, and somehow my over-optimism and utopian thinking have forced me to forget reality, because there is no history, almost no history without war and violence, and it goes way back; way too back that now it's an inherent part of our culture. And we are keeping it. Ok, forget about the history and philosophy, consider the geographical locations too. Iceland doesn't even have an army. Wouldn't that be cool to live there? Well not cool, but really really cold that nobody wants to live there, and perhaps people live there battling with nature rather than with each other. Vatican City too neither have any army and that country is really spending on their culture, but I'm not sure about their culture though, It's controversial. Once again consider the geographical locations. Those countries are mostly away from the mainland, the mainland which most people consider has the culture, and those countries have really low population, and most importantly they aren't surrounded by idiots. Now forget about Philosophy, History, Geography, and let's come onto Psychology. Japanese people die, literally die because of overwork, that their government literally lowered their working hours and forced them to take holidays, but many people denied it. Because it's rooted in their blood. Where Indian people spit on the wall especially where it's written DO NOT SPIT HERE. That's so, that country's cities and roads are very clean. It's something that is rooted in their culture and mentality, and you can't easily change that. It requires revolution, an evolution from the bottom. But let's say you are ready to clean your house, but you can't clean other's especially when the other one is ready to blow yours. You can't easily change someone else's thinking. And morality doesn't work always, Gandhi tried though, using his ideology of non-violence to change others' mindset, but I think it didn’t work out. Because there are people who will slap you, again and again, no matter what. So somehow it makes me think that perhaps violence is necessary, not to cause deliberate pain to others, but just to save yourself. So at least for now, we can't abandon the entire concept of the military. Because there are people who only prefer violence, even inside India, there are people who spread shit with their shit mentality, but from their perspective, the one who thinks rationally is the one with shit mentality. There are different people with different ideas and they aren't ready to accept others and some aren't even ready to listen, and when ideas go to an extreme level, then the differences between them can cause a war. Idolatry is another and major factor. But the most important one is the lack of understanding. Religious people are so stupid that they'll never accept rationalism, while rational people want peace and love wiping out the entire idea of religion, and they both try to promote and impose their ideologies onto each other; this only brings chaos, not peace; and so many people out there trying to understand both the sides and finding a perfect balance betwixt them always get criticized by both the sides while some amidst them deliberately try to put themselves into one of these categories; though there aren't just two, but many more categories and the world demands a tag over your head, and eventually if you couldn't find one or decide for yourself, the world does it for you. And what I feel the world is always busy dividing us rather than unit us, it tries to separate us with ideologies, race, caste, and gender. And why not, since we already have separated ourselves with borders. And while thinking about it, it strikes me so hard that this is the reason why Emily Dickinson would have thought about writing"I'm Nobody, are you nobody too?" Because she knew, she doesn't want to be the One, to get ridiculed by another.

            Many dystopian writers believe that man is the one who destroys himself. It’s man’s psychology to create a monster and run away from it, and let him mess up everything, and then chase him, hunt him, and triumph over it. The exultation over a defeat of self-created destruction. Really? So to whom should I consider responsible for everything and whom should I blame? I guess, it’s me, who is writing this without having any idea for the conclusion because there is no conclusion. But somehow I wanna separate the individuals and blame them. I don’t know how fair that would be, but when an idea begins it always starts from an individual, a singular, and then spreads like a virus and becomes plural. (Thank you Christopher Nolan for giving a metaphor of virus.) But I can't blame someone who has created the idea, because individualism gives him the liberty to do so, and an idea is nothing but a theory that cannot harm anyone unless used in a practical application. So blame people who prefer the idea and for the usage of the idea in actual life. Blame the people who prefer violence, blame those who prefer patriarchy. But this somehow leads me to think about some unusual thoughts. Like I previously said, some people just prefer violence, and similarly many women just love the idea of getting destroyed by toxic men, Idk why, it's how their psychology works or something else, Idk, so they prefer living with them, chasing them, loving them. And when one chooses to live in a certain way it's that person's choice. Like if a person with the Patriarchal mindset abandoning a concept of one's choice of living, then he's targeting individuality and comparing it with his individuality or perhaps the pre-setup, what I was thinking is you could do this with reverse way too, and blaming patriarchy is like blaming the concept. Like if one loves to spread violence or create it, it's that person's choice. Violence is not responsible for it. Even tho the one who created the idea of violence isn't too. Because it's an individual's choice to prefer it or not, because if someone can go against it with his individual ideology/morality, then one can support it too. So the blame goes solely on the individual and not on the universal setup, and the universal setup could also be developed by an individual, and many might have decided to prefer it and many not, so It's the matter of ideologies and matter of choices rather than genders. Because as far as I've experienced men suffer much more under the patriarchal conditions than the thought of patriarchy benefits them, and somehow opposite in women's case, cuz, even think about how it would have started; humans used to hunt and live in the caves, and as  biologically superior to women, women might have decided to stay in the caves and men would have decided to go hunting, which conjures a weird thought in my mind that there could be a tini tiny possibility that women might have invented the Patriarchy, so they could control men and put them as a victim of Misogyny, so they could be at ease and men could do all the work with responsibilities and fulfill their needs. And if women wanna control women, then control men and let those men have control over women. You might feel this is laughable, but in many cases, If a husband suppresses his wife, it's because his mother wants her to be subdued, possibly because she has gone through the same because of her mother-in-law, and so it goes, and these are true cases, and also so many cases of break down of families because a woman couldn't stand another, and many cases of women in the need of a male child, and on the other hand many men want a baby girl, so these are personal choices too.

       Damn! Did I just blame women for creating patriarchy? That’s stupid ain't it. Besides, I don’t care who created the idea, but the problem lies in the usage of this idea by both men and women. And that’s because I am looking at it from one perspective which is Individualism, and things might look different if I consider any of other theories, and that’s the problem, that everything doesn’t run on one particular way of thinking. Perhaps, it is not about preferring one ideology but applying one of many whenever it's most necessary. So here I quote Margret Atwood, “life isn’t run on principles but by adjustments.”