The Other Path?
The other day, I was trying to comprehend several current happenings around the world, also reflect back a bit in history and then this thought just occurred to me...
Are we just entertaining our own big fantasies? All these brilliant concepts and ideologies... civilization, democracy, etc.... were these just some notions, derived out of the urge to bring harmony to the way mankind exists together? Make community living more organized, leashing behaviors/tendencies that are more original and natural to any living being? Were/are we trying to fool ourselves into believing that these can be our smart means to suppress one of the most raw and basic laws of nature - "survival of the fittest"?
To me this seems to be the most reasonable reasoning, something that I can accept to be the ground reality behind so many failed attempts in making these concepts a success. In India (or for that matter any democratic country) we hold pride in the fact that we are the largest democracy. But have we really ever executed any pure democratic behavior? It is and always (right from the independence) has been a power game! The one with more power, influence has always has his/her way around things - may it be at the leaf level or up above at the topmost level of hierarchy. Since one cannot (by the principle) openly give in to your natural instincts, one starts finding loop holes in the system that can work in ones favor. That's what corruption probably feeds upon and starts polluting the glorious ideal state living. In short, there is nothing called "democracy", as we would like to conceive it... in its purest form... its only a myth!
And this seems to be true for all the possible constitutional, political, economic arrangements... some of them we saw fail right in our face, some in its deteriorated reality version.
That's why I have come to believe that these are just thought toys gone too far beyond musing. Probably, they were only conceived, as fictional "ideal states", to explore, experiment and understand the possibilities - can any of these help us suppress or overcome our natural tendencies? My question is, do we have to? What would have happened if we had not led ourselves to "civilized" communities? What would have been that other path that we as mankind could take? Where would it lead us?
Are we just entertaining our own big fantasies? All these brilliant concepts and ideologies... civilization, democracy, etc.... were these just some notions, derived out of the urge to bring harmony to the way mankind exists together? Make community living more organized, leashing behaviors/tendencies that are more original and natural to any living being? Were/are we trying to fool ourselves into believing that these can be our smart means to suppress one of the most raw and basic laws of nature - "survival of the fittest"?
To me this seems to be the most reasonable reasoning, something that I can accept to be the ground reality behind so many failed attempts in making these concepts a success. In India (or for that matter any democratic country) we hold pride in the fact that we are the largest democracy. But have we really ever executed any pure democratic behavior? It is and always (right from the independence) has been a power game! The one with more power, influence has always has his/her way around things - may it be at the leaf level or up above at the topmost level of hierarchy. Since one cannot (by the principle) openly give in to your natural instincts, one starts finding loop holes in the system that can work in ones favor. That's what corruption probably feeds upon and starts polluting the glorious ideal state living. In short, there is nothing called "democracy", as we would like to conceive it... in its purest form... its only a myth!
And this seems to be true for all the possible constitutional, political, economic arrangements... some of them we saw fail right in our face, some in its deteriorated reality version.
That's why I have come to believe that these are just thought toys gone too far beyond musing. Probably, they were only conceived, as fictional "ideal states", to explore, experiment and understand the possibilities - can any of these help us suppress or overcome our natural tendencies? My question is, do we have to? What would have happened if we had not led ourselves to "civilized" communities? What would have been that other path that we as mankind could take? Where would it lead us?
posted by zero-state at 10:29 PM
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