CASTLES UPSIDE DOWN

We humans have built castles too many.
The biggest of all is democracy.
But that castle like all others…
Is just dangling upside down…
-Srinath Krishnamoorthy

I really did not plan to pen down a blog for this week. But no…my fingers are not in my control and they are revolting. This gut wrenching picture of a an innocent Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless over a Turkish Beach cannot go unnoticed…this cannot be ignored because HE is in a way… WE. And wait…read ahead before you give out that usual sigh of relief that anyway…it’s not my kid…and it is not ME…

Europe is crunching under refugee crisis and the accidental death of Aylan is an eye opener. He silped from his fathers hands and drowned right in front of 100 of terrified eyes. Illegal boats dump rufugees in tons each day   along along the shores of Europe. Many die enroute and never make it to their destinations.

Human life today seems to have no value 😦

Where did we fail? What is so intellectually wrong about everything political happening around us? Are we collapsing as a species(just like dinosaurs)? If yes, are we the reason and is there a solution?

From an anthropological stand point if you evaluate the ways in which humans have decided organise themselves, it is pretty clear that we are far away from creating a way of life that would sustain us as a species for a million years from now.

Take for example the ants. They have been here for over 130 million years and may survive a billion more years. Even though they seem small they form 15-25% of Earth’s terrestrial animal biomass (shocked!!!..but true). Millions of ants, live together and work in such a well-defined orderly manner (like an oiled machine) to create an environment of peaceful co-existence. That is why an ant colony is usually called a super organism. And don’t look down upon them as silly small ants…they have remarkable problem solving capabilities. Don’t be surprised to you see computer scientists running behind ants to optimise computer programs!!!

The question here is : When billions of ants can coexist peacefully why can’t we?

Are we not intelligent? Don’t we have the best of the brains an animal can have? There you go…we are animals and we keep living without realising that.

A few million ants can live in perfect harmony in a circumference of 30 centimetres… years together…generations after generations; but four people cannot live in a room without fighting even for single day. And we say we are the greatest of all species…let’s get done with that thought in the first place.

Well, if this is the image that you see every day, then we have no right to be proud. We are just a rotten bunch of fleshy mass corrupting this planet.

After seeing this image, I’m not ashamed to shout out that religion as a way of life and democracy as a way of administration has failed miserably in bringing common good to people. This image of the little Aylan Kurdy also shows that democracy as a political philosophy fails yet another time (like millions of other instances) to save innocent lives.

Now, the first question that would come to your mind is this:

“Is this writer a supporter of fucking autocratic rule?”

“Is he a communist? (Probably a Stalinist.. yeah )”

“Or is this bugger a mad follower of He Who Cannot be Named (Adolf Hitler)?”

The answer to all these bizarre questions ringing in your head is a big, strong and bold NO.

Then…I should be mad?

Ohh…yeah… everyday of the year politicians go gaga over democracy…and we all clap along their wicked tunes. So the writer should obviously be mad. Yes I accept that for the time being… but first listen to me…

In the beginning of human evolution…that is when man walked naked with sticks in hand, he lived pretty much like any other animal. He was his master. He lived alone and he died alone. Simple.

But do we humans like simple stuff? No…

Eventually, we understood that living alone was no fun… so we grouped together. This had its own advantages. Better protection from wild animals, higher hit rates during hunting sessions, easier to find mates and higher chances of preserving the species. Probably our ancestors enjoyed more of sexual freedom…well making out was easier since the whole world was a one big hell of a forest!!!

But as always, like George Orwell says in his master piece Animal Farm:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…”

The concept of Alpha comes into picture. And then all the problem starts. Alpha is nothing but the ego. Alpha stands for the indomitable to dominate and conquer. Probably that was the single largest factor that ended the nomadic ways of human existence.

Somebody always among a group rules or overshadows others. And in the long run…we just don’t feel good if someone is not there to throw his/her share of authority over us. Most of the time they may not be half as capable as others, but we just let them do it…why? Because we are used to it. Simple 🙂

So in the great journey of evolution, Kings ,Queens and Empires came into existence. Autocracy was in fact the best known mode of administration. You paid tax to your king and he gives protection to you and your family. What’s wrong with it? Life was simple… so were the ways.

But Kings sometimes were really stupid and the hierarchical mode of administration concentrated wealth and power into very few hands.

So around 600 BC, in Rome, the so-called intellects  decided to make a small change. They decided to elect the king. Well, now the power shifted from one man to a few hundred men.  Those few hundred men started rolling over wealth and women. But yes, there was advancement in science, technology and mathematics. But whenever they went itching for action, they took their seemingly large army that would plunder and rape everything on their way.

But consistently they all made sure of one thing : Keep a large majority in deep dark ignorance and starvation. The philosophy is pretty simple- as long as the masses felt happy having bed, bread and shelter, no one would raise their voice.And to earn these three, make them work. Whenever the aristocracy realized that someone was voicing against their tide, they were silenced. Either by force or through bribes.

Just look around…even today our curriculum, media and government makes us all feel that getting a good house, a pretty spouse and a small car is the ultimate aim of life. As long as you work towards that and mind your own business…buddy everything is super fine. And when we people keep chasing our small dreams, there are others who walk over us virtually looting our very dreams.

But yeah, back then a lot of voices started surging from the masses and then all of a sudden, Religion was born. And that is the worst part of human evolution. The world would have been a far better place if people just went on with their respective way of life rather than grouping under the dark shadows of religion.

Religion was the most effective weapon used by the rich aristocrats to keep the ignorant masses in perpetual darkness. If you observe carefully, even today it is like that. Take any religion and you will find that the rich enjoy a carefree life. They never abide by the rules of their religion and lead a life of luxury. But, the religious establishments make sure that the poor and down trodden strata of the society are made to follow strict religious laws.

If inheritance of luxury is true…then the same stands true for slavery as well.

Generations are made to believe that their only activity on this earth is to eat, shit, pray and sleep.

So, as the light of democratic enlightenment started spreading across continents, a darker force of religion and superstition started flapping its dark wings against it.

This struggle went on for centuries, spanning generations. When the world was still split under autocracy and neo-natal democracy, one man set out to change it all:

Karl Marx– the economist who wrote Communist Manifesto and Das Capital. Today many people take his name synonymous with communism and communist party… but seldom do they realize that he is a pure economist. Communism in his terms is nothing but distribution of wealth to bring social equality. Thus communism is nothing but quintessential economics. But what are political parties doing with his ideologies today?

Karl Marx, a German, brought about a revolutionary idea about every man being equal and distributing wealth equally. Maybe he was the first person in the history to openly talk about class struggles and distributing wealth into the hands of working class.

But he did not take two crucial factor into consideration:

1. Human beings are selfish
2. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But somehow, communism caught the imagination of millions across the globe like a wildfire. And for almost 80 years, through USSR, the ideals of Karl Marx survived. But communism eventually did fall apart.

The good thing was that communism virtually ended the autocratic Tsar rule in Russia and gave strength to the working class world over. But the darker side was the likes of Joseph Stalin. Communism, I would say is the biggest anthropological experiment ever. The downside of communism was that it could thrive only if people could be grossly ignorant or the whole world followed nothing but communism. Because as soon as people got educated and enriched, they turned their attention towards the glitz and glamour of the free markets in the West :-  CAPITALISM. Capitalism in a way was the most beautiful alternative to communism. For many, communism was just a stepping stone to reach out and hug capitalism (like some of the politicians).

If the entire human race had come under the grip of communism, we all would be living and dying as communist. Most probably I would be tortured for writing this article and there is a fair chance for you would be sent to a labour camp in Siberia for reading this. Well, that was never the intention of Karl Marx and his whole idea of communism.

Meanwhile in India, people were famished and ignorant. Dark ages of varna system was running strong. The kings and elite castes enjoyed richness of every kind and the poor lived penniless and agonizingly destitute lives.

I felt like laughing when I saw Shashi Tharoor debating strongly for reparations from British Government. Look at the below photographs and tell me who needs to pay reparations to whom?

Indian Kings and the higher castes not only looted the poor, they had no commitment to anything other than their luxury. Except for some brave kings, none of them united against invasions. Be it the Mughals or the British, Indian Kings were interested in making pacts with the invaders and settling scores with the neighbouring Kings. We, even today stand as the most segregated societies on planet earth.

We speak a lot of India’s glorious past. Yes we had a past and it was glorious, but only for a selected few (castes). Till recent times, there were news of Sati being committed in news papers and what more, untouchability is no news at all. The upper caste men in parts of our country still rape and kill dalit girls as they fancy. And we say India is great.

It is not the British but the Kings who ruled various princely states who should be paying reparations to the poor, common man. Shashi Tharoor says British looted us…but who let them loot us? At least we got educated and due to that we have established ourselves in a global arena. I can’t imagine the plight of this country if people did not have the power of those 26 alphabets. You may say Sanskrit is this and Sanskrit is that… but why a common man does not know a single word in Sanskrit? It is because only a selected few had real access to that language. They kept the masses in dark and treated them like second class human beings.

Another big joke is the videos that go around these days telling Charaka did this…Sushrutha did that…Chanakya said this regarding management….Aryabhatta proclaimed this & that in astronomy before Galileo and Copernicus. Well hats off these gurus who did all this. But one question for which I’m unable to find and answer is:

Why the hell the common man in India did not have any access to these scientific inventions / discoveries? Why this great knowledge was not shared with the masses and was accessible only to a privileged few?

Can you point out one Indian King who has established a Vedic college and declared:

“Anybody can go and learn Vedic literature for free…and all the so-called Gurus should teach every man who comes there with the desire to learn- irrespective of his/her caste or creed…”

The first college in India was established by Church Missionary Society of England in 1817 in Kottayam (CMS College). Remember, most of our Princes and Kings usually sailed off to Oxford University to get their degrees. Why did they not start a college for the poor? Why it took a Christian missionary to come all the way from England and establish a college here in India?

Leave all that. Have these Kings laid one inch of railway track? Today we are boasting that Indian Railway is the largest in the world; employing nearly 100,000 people.

Try finding one Indian King who is capable of laying a railway track from Kasmir to Kanyakumari and from Rann of Kutch to Guwahatti? You won’t find it. British invaded India, they kept us as slaves and looted us…agreed…but that is because we never united against them as a one single country…as one single force…as one single entity.

When we finally succeeded doing that after 200 years of British Raj, they simply left the country. Just 69 years of standing independent and united and see how India is nowadays being hailed as a super power. But the sad truth is even today, you take any issue, the nation stands largely divided.

The moment Britishers came here, they understood that the socio-political situation in this country is ripe for exploitation. British are still here.. they have not left us.

The only difference is that they are replaced by the Desi-British. Just think why we accept the western notion of wonders of the world? There are temples in Thanjavur and Madhurai built by the Chola Kings far superior in architecture, technology and aesthetics than western buildings. And yeah… centuries before the westerners learned to make bricks. But still if you ask school children, they will all know about Leaning Tower of Pisa as one of the seven wonders, but will have no clue about Madhurai Meenakshi Temple, which has four Gopuras as tall as the Leaning Tower in Pisa. Madhurai Meenakshi Temple was built way before 7th Century AD. The tower in Pisa opened only in the 1372.

Who killed our history?

We ourselves have destroyed it.

I was shocked when I saw the initial scenes of the movie 7am Arivu in which the person goes asking if people knew who was Bodhidharm?

Strangely no Indian, including myself, had any clue…but surprisingly every Chinese, Singaporean and Malayan knew who Bodhidharma was. They even called him lovingly as their Damo and The Kung-Fu guy. And many even knew that he was the south Indian Chola prince who came to China and established Shaolin Temple. It is all updated in the official website of Shaolin Temple. Except for Indian’s everyone seems to know him.

This is high time we evaluate ourselves. If we have lost our great past, only we are to be blamed. Let us not put all the liabilities on someone’s head and perform an art of escapism. We are good at that anyway.

Thunder and showers are a certainty of monsoon. Only we are to be blamed if we fail to take an umbrella.

If we are still under the rule of our Kings and princely states…and if British never came here, who knows this could be our plight even today:

A family of semi-starved Indians who have arrived in Calcutta in search of food. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Well, coming back to global issues of 20th century, during the early 1930’s and till the end of second world war, the world rattled and battled under these ideologies:

1. Autocracy (Kings and Queens decided what to do and people had no free will)

2. Fascism holds the ideology of anti-democracy. The state is absolute and totalitarian and all citizens must follow the state. (eg. Benito Mussolini)

3. Nazism is a racist and anti-Semitic ideology which holds that the Aryan race is superior to all other races, and that the government must actively promote the perfect race- symbol of Nazism is none other than Adolf Hitler

4. Communism : is a social, political, and economic ideology whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society based on common ownership and the absence of social classes, money and the state. Sounds divine, but reality was much closer to brutality.

5. Democracy : People voted their representatives  to establish a form of government in which power ultimately comes from the people.

Everything else fell over a period of time, but Democracy survived.

The biggest confrontation between Capitalism, Democracy and Communism happened during Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct-1962). But thanks to JFK and Nikita Khrushchev who really understood the essence of the saying- with great power comes great responsibility. Try watching the ground breaking documentary “The Fog Of War” if you can. In that Robert McNamara, the then defence secretary, describes in detail the Cuban Missile Crisis. One wrong move from either USA or USSR would have turned the world into a barren nuclear wasteland. Well we have come that close to extinction…phewwww…

USSR fell. A big blow to Communism. But democracy not only survived, but kept flying higher and higher.

But today, even that is falling apart. Sad, but true.

Just look at this simple fact:

You elect a few hundred representatives to make decisions for a few billion people. Your part in this whole game is over till you cast vote. After that, for 5 years whatever our so-called representatives does sitting in the parliament is beyond your reach. Again, our netas will come begging for votes after their tenure and give all sorts of false promises… where cash needs to be thrown it will be thrown…where liqueur needs to be flooded, it will flow…where body of women needs to be used, they would pimp it out. Well they make sure they win…and make every citizen feel that they too are winning.

But are we winning?

Today politicians are far richer than businessmen since they are running politics like any other business. We people who elect them are nothing but scapegoats.

Democracy has become nothing more than citizen sponsored autocracy.

Democracy today is the process of intelligent people selecting not so intelligent people to make stupid decisions for them.

Just look at this:

Senior Bush and CIA gives weapons and training to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to fight the communist.

Osama gets bored fighting communists and becomes Bhasmasura. He wants to pull a few tricks up his sleeves over USA. With all the training he got from CIA, he decides to hold Uncle Sam by his balls sitting in a cave in Afghanistan. And he succeeds when Junior Bush Saab is reading Alice in Wonderland for school kids.

Bush becomes restless like the guy who feels like hitting someone when he gets frustrated and calls up his generals. He declares war on terror and sends bombers to Iraq- a country that never threatened to fire a single bullet against USA. A country that was living in relative peace and harmony was attacked for no fucking reason. And millions of innocent civilians were killed. Poor old Saddam Hussain was arrested and hanged…for reasons unknown. Both his sons were slaughtered.

All this and more when Osama Bin Laden was having cocktail with ISI officers near an army base in Abotabad, Pakistan. People of Iraq were never a part of conspiracy to attack USA. President Obama openly admitted that after Operation Neptune Spear and decided to pull out the troops. But wounds run deep.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi who was arrested by US as a low profile captive during 2004 and left free assuming that he was harmless formed the Islamic State of Iraq.

And now there is death everywhere. This is the perfect example of the saying: What goes around, comes around.

If any sensible Americans had any hand in the entire decision making process… I do not believe that they would have bombed Iraq.

George Bush kept saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq again and again and again. In fact there were none.

Democracy is a noble thought…a great ideology… but it has pitfalls. Especially when democracy becomes nothing more than a citizen sponsored autocracy.

When democracy boasts of equal opportunity for every good, it does offer an identical opportunity of things equally bad. The problem is that democracy is taking the shape of Demoncrazy… where the supreme power of decision-making in fact lies in the hands of selected few.

Still women are raped, blacks are shot at,bombs are blasted and innocents are beheaded…is democracy an effective solution? Or are we making ourselves a kind of species quite capable of building Castles in the sky but stupid enough to build them all upside down?

Democracy today is nothing more than a group of people who are bothered only about their rights and have no concern whatsoever regarding their responsibilities. (Shiv Khera, in Freedom is not free). If it was a good solution to human existence, this happy family would not have been shattered.

Is democracy as a way of administration and a way of life failing to defend innocents?

We need to think of an alternative…

We need to think…and think… and well some day I hope Karl Marx would rise from his grave, separate the true communist and false capitalist to his either side and proclaim a new ideology that he had worked out in his grave. Well, let that help us live like ants…billions in harmony for a billion years!!!

Ultimately this is the smile we wanna see always 🙂

We need to invent a system that sustains ever lasting peace and happiness of everything living and non living on earth!!!

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The Author of this blog is Srinath Krishnamoorthy who like millions out there is trying to figure out what needs to be done with life. After a brief stint as a software test engineer in Tech Mahindra, he is right now pursuing an MTech in Computer Science & Engineering in MA College of Engineering, Kothamangalam. His début novel Hope We Never Meet Again is getting ready to be released this year.