Musings on the Current Affairs
With respect to what is happening in our close proximity and in the distant geography, a lot of people ask where the hell are we going.
My answer is simple: we are not going anywhere. In fact, we have arrived exactly where we intended to reach. There is no more walking, running, or flying. Only sitting back and watching this long anticipated arrival with quiet, unsettling satisfaction.
In interactions with the general public, I see no concern. No urgency. When issues are raised, the response is usually a nod (resigned or approving) and a casual, “Things are good.” Acceptance is one of the coping mechanisms. And it has become the coping mechanism now.
Most people neither understand what is happening nor feel inclined to understand it. History and current affairs demand intellectual effort, and in the present socioeconomic climate, survival has become all consuming. EMIs, school fees, job insecurity, and constant change leave little room for reflection. Awareness beyond immediate concerns has become a luxury few feel they can afford.
A significant portion of the post 1990 generation has grown up detached from society, civil rights, and constitutional values, though not entirely by choice. Rapid technological and economic disruptions have created a perpetual state of instability. Before one settles, another upheaval arrives. When life is lived at the level of basal instincts, human rights and values begin to feel abstract, even alien concepts belonging to another era, or another time.
Three generations matter here. The very old, who have largely disengaged from life and yet are rooting for change; the young, who are yet to develop a worldview; and the middle generation, which is split wide and also deeply conflicted. This is the tormented generation, suspended between inherited values and personal advancement. Each individual has to choose whether to submit or resist. Society, after all, is the fiftieth percentile of the distribution. Percentile is not equivalent to average. Fiftieth percentile means the maximum distribution of population around a central value, which itself is defined by the distribution. It is neither the progressive extreme nor the regressive one, but the indifferent mass in between.
Those of us who are economically functional and physically able bodied and who are standing on the sunset side of life, sense that our phase is ending. With that comes the realisation that this may no longer be our battle, neither physically nor mentally. We have struggled, earned, compromised, and also paid the price. The baton has been passed. If the next generation cannot pick it up by recognising the issues shaping life, society, and polity, then it is their burden to carry and their consequences to bear.
I would rather walk into the sunset calmly, unperturbed by the surrounding chaos. Let structures fall, timber burn, and smoke rise. My path is by now finitely defined towards an inevitable end. I have come to accept that this is not my time, nor my war. If the young choose not to fight, I refuse to shoulder a battle that is no longer mine.
Realistically, little will change in the next two decades unless a miracle intervenes. With global power concentrated among figures like Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping, expectations of meaningful transformation, at least in the conventional sense, are naive.
History moves through counterweights. Long eras are followed by their opposites. Extended dominance invites reaction. Empires, dynasties, and political orders rise, harden, decay, and are replaced by their exact opposites. This is not justification, but an observation (of course it is debatable). But what is not debatable is that the wheel turns, indifferent to individual desires, sufferings, and anguish.
It is undeniably cruel for those born into such phases, condemned to live with its consequences. But when a generation fails to recognise the damaging potential, becomes complacent, and remains unperturbed by the unethical, immoral, and inhuman happenings in society, what option does an ageing generation have but to watch, helplessly?
I have also arrived at an uncomfortable conclusion: democracy is not a natural sociological state for humans. At our core, we are herd creatures, and any herd gravitates toward dominance by alpha figures. Over thousands of years, we have developed an extremely evolved cerebral cortex and in the process gained intelligence, memory, mathematical abilities, logical thinking, and reasoning. We veered towards artistic and altruistic thought. But in electoral democracy, all this does not count at all. It is the animalistic primitive brain, the basal ganglia, that gains inappropriate weightage. This primitive brain dominates decision making when it comes to choosing leaders and is extremely vulnerable to external influences that appeal to its baser instincts. This has a major effect on the choice of leadership and by extension the trajectory human society takes. Democracy thus is an anomaly, a fragile interruption in a long evolutionary history of herds defined by hierarchy and power. Even where democracy was born in Rome, it flickered briefly before being extinguished by Julius Caesar and the Caesars that followed.
In the vast arc of history, democracy is a blip. The herd and its alpha males have always prevailed. Accepting this may be unsettling, but refusing to accept it can be disastrous for the individual. For society at large, it scarcely matters. In the grand scheme of things, individuals are insignificant, and history never pauses for a single person’s discomfort.
Yet disengagement does not mean erasure of responsibility. Even if the battle is no longer ours to fight, bearing witness remains a moral act. To name what is happening, to remember what was once considered non negotiable, and to refuse to normalise decay is itself a form of resistance. History may not pause for individuals, but it does record those who saw clearly and chose not to lie to themselves. Silence may be inevitable, but complicity is not. Sometimes, the quiet act of remembering becomes the only inheritance an older generation can leave behind.
