1 Self-Inflicted Wounds?
In fact, each of my books puts focus on some of the issues that remain generally overlooked or forgotten while being highly destructive, about a few significant aspects of our life. On further study, I have been finding our ideas about such issues inadequate, my books offering an alternative and a remedial measure for each issue.
Since these issues are nothing new and have been there for a long time, few questions could naturally arise. Why does it continue to be so? Is there anything nourishing it? Or, are we deliberately avoiding to act against it? So, rather than putting efforts for a cure for each, we need to look for the root cause of all.
2 No – It’s the Cascading Effect of Remedies of The Past
I think it isn’t something deliberate, though it may look like it. Giving due allowance to our intelligence, one has to realize that we would have been coming up with optimum or appropriate answers to whatever issues we faced. Perhaps our answer to these issues are not at all effective as a permanent remedy, and those ones keep resurfacing with greater tempo and wider reach.
However, we shall have to keep facing the cascading effect of our ‘appropriate’ answers, more so, where those answers did not succeed in taming those issues well. Significantly, as time goes by, these answers need not continue to be of use, or even could become harmful, making the cascading effect lead to things like social strife. Perhaps, unable to identify it as an offshoot of their own actions, the whole populace would have been badly in need of a fresh remedy to counter the overbearing presence of disorder in their society.
3 Comes, An Apt Response
Our forefathers, not having the wherewithal to come up with a new idea for a remedy, given the logistical constraints of the early world, resorted to an intelligent move – put a tag of ‘violent human society’ to instill precaution in all. It seems to have worked, people have been maintaining a rather sanguine reaction to the atmosphere of violence that encompass them all. One needs to admit, it was a highly effective step to maintain social harmony with the meager standards of intellectual and material wealth.
4 Now, An Offshoot of the Response
But, this step, though effectively contained violence, resulted in hiding from all of us, the spoils of the cascading effect. Else, we would have been noticing instances of social violence as something abnormal, and put our intellectual faculties to task. Now, even though our intellectual and material standards are crossing boundaries of success everywhere, we remain blind to this particular eyesore. So, our knowledge or skill is of no avail for this, and we remain as mute spectators to the danger that is taking our society back. Rather, by celebrating and glorifying as a distinct human feature, all that is part of the cascading effect, we close our eyes for good.
5 Why It Misses Us
Here, an aggregate of the measures suggested through all my books can act as a permanent remedy, one which shall relieve us of the tag. (So far, none of us would have thought of the disarray, since the resulting violent ambience have been keeping us engaged profitably, while making many of us to do wonders. As a result of which, the whole of human race will come to possess a discernible forward momentum, and that will make them feel that they are totally unlike all the other ones of the living world. But, one can also say, if even violent ambience could lead us to profitable engagements, what better wouldn’t happen if the prevailing ambience wasn’t a violent one!)
6 Why We Miss It
But now, another question hits me. Why do we continue to be OK with such a tag? Why nobody found it worthy of an investigation, something we are quiet adept in? I feel, we are OK with it, since such a tag is of great use in finding an easy justification to the excesses or shortcomings that regularly occur with us. Else, we would have been in the horrendous situation of having to find ourselves as an assembly of blameworthy people.
Now, I find this pointing to a significant question to ponder. Rather than asking why ours is a violent society, isn’t there a need to answer, what makes us happy to remain as a violent one. How did we reach this state, a rather unnatural one for a form of life? For, had the tag not been there, we would not have been having at all, an unaddressed or unsolved issue in our society. One can safely say, with our analytic approach, every issue would have been made to meet its end. But, we miss to register as something significant, the violence that prevails in our societies.
7 We Miss It, Since We Are OK With The Disarray
With this question in mind, if we are to look at ourselves, what will immediately strike us is a well-known and widely acknowledged fact – in our daily life, there are plenty of instances of disarray, whatever or wherever we be. Of course we are aware of it, but we do not acknowledge it, and even when we do, it is only for celebrating it as a human-specific abstraction and a treasure.
I find, we make a collection of all such abstractions that are joyful or agreeable, naming and cherishing those as unique elements or occurrences of our life, collectively calling it our cultural wealth. Institutions like Nobel Prize, Olympics, or Oscar are only a few of the well-known ones among those. Many others of such nature remain in our tail, but we do not feel anything heavy or untoward, since we celebrate all of those with abandon.
But, the instances that are disagreeable to us haunt us, and we spend a major share of our time and effort in fighting those. Whether it is health, well-being, or wealth, such fights only, resulted in almost all the good things that has happened to us.
8 What The Disarray Does to Us
Thus, the disarray continues unabated, and so also, our struggle to contain it. This diverts a lion’s share of our time and efforts to a task that is not yielding any result. I think, we have not been able to smother the flames of disarray so far, since, though we address a disagreeable one with force, the agreeable ones keep getting nourished. As a result, even when half of such instances happen to face suppression, the remaining half is there to get fortified. Naturally, as far as the human society go, disarray becomes something permanently attached to it.
This brings up an interesting situation. The fortunes of human race depend heavily on how successful are they in directing one half of the disarray against whatever damage is done by the other half of the disarray! Quite in line with it, our past is a mix of golden periods and dark ages.
Is this a healthy situation? What else can we do but imagining that there is no possibility of a few dark ages or another few golden periods occur regularly to fill the coming years? While we proceed with a rather peaceful life, our creativity and resourcefulness resulting in golden periods, and while we proceed with wars and strife, the same, resulting in dark ages? And also to assume that the technology-empowered dark ages of the future will not become powerful enough to obliterate the race itself?
9 A Peep into Disarray
I have always been in search of a reason for this disarray, and my book, Life of Style, attributed it to the absence of a unique lifestyle. A distinct lifestyle could have made us just another one of life who sticks to its own style of living. In another book, Overhaul Life, I find that we have been holding on for no reason, to all the remnants of the past, which always lead to or aggravate disarray, and suggest as a solution, a periodic overhaul of human life. And in my book, Evolution and The Future of The Unique Human, I warn about the pitfalls waiting for us, if we overlook things like this and continue living with a disarray.
It seems, something is missing from all this. We are yet to get a good idea about the disarray and all its causes, as well as the effects, it gives rise to. Moreover, not all products of the disarray are subjected to a thorough scrutiny and analysis, and the disarray itself is left out fully, from both. I think, it is happening thus, for two reasons. Firstly, the products of disarray becomes noticeably disagreeable to us, only where it crosses certain threshold of oppressiveness. And we subject to a critical study, only the ones that are of such a nature, where the study focuses more on its threshold of dreadfulness than its oppressive content. Lastly, since we appreciate the disarray itself as something unique for the human, while we are engaged in relishing its facets that are worthy, all its drawbacks go unnoticed.
10 Root Cause of The Disarray
So, what is needed is a complete understanding about all facets of the disarray, whether it is giving rise to something disagreeable or not. In this, the first question that comes to my mind is, what exactly is this dismay. An answer too, comes to me. One cannot see or sense the disarray directly, but it can easily be felt in all that one does, where ever one is beyond reason. So, we only need to examine closely, all that we do beyond reason.
In fact, in varied circumstances, reason appears in widely different forms. For example, in schools, factories, or offices, the appearance of reason could be as theories, rules, or regulations. Or while engaged at home or in fields, it could be as wisdom or common sense.
11 Things We Do for No Reason
I therefore think, we need to do a thorough study about all that constitute, all that we do without reason. Like, whatever we do that are against, established theories, rules that are in force, existing regulations, widely accepted norms, or mere common sense. And whatever we do that are in accordance with the same, when it is beyond certain limits.
Now, it calls for a survey of almost all the we do as a part of living our life. For easing which, we can divide activities into two branches, namely linear and digital. Linear activities denote all the acts where there is a possibility or a provision to change certain parameters of interest, and by effecting such changes, the activity can be altered to suit us. Whereas, digital activities denote the acts where it is impossible to change a parameter of interest. However, such activities can be made to occur in a multitude of variations, where one can make a choice.
For example, think of lighting a room. If we use a variable intensity lamp, the brightness of room can be changed to our convenience by adjusting the same lamp. Whereas, if we use lamps of varying brightness, to achieve the same, we need to use different lamps.
12 Rational with The Irrational
It seems, human beings are quite rational while choosing irrational acts. They choose linear activities, where the act calls for exceeding certain limits, and choose digital ones, when it is an unreasonable, one time act. Or, one can say, there will not be an instance where one is not able to perform well, all the irrational elements in the act.
(Incidentally, we humans are not at all careful or rational while choosing a rational act to meet a need. Many a time, the chosen act may be a digital one while the need calls for a linear one. Which could be the reason for the persisting state of restlessness in all our societies. Like, things going well, or unwell, for no reason)
So, this is the key to understanding the origin of the disarray. Humans display a specific approach to the irrational. They are quite rational while choosing the irrational activity that suits perfectly, whatever be the context or the circumstance. As a result, an activity of this nature that gets chosen for whatever reason, shall continue to be in contention irrespective of everything else. However, nothing useful can come out of it (unless of course we define as useful, whatever is the result), since the activity is an irrational one. But, at least some of the results that come out of it end up causing ripples in our social fabric, which we quietly overlook, calling it as a part of our ‘violent society’. What we term as a disarray is nothing else but this.
How did it come to be, thus?
13 A Thought Experiment
Imagine that there are no abstract words, whether nouns or verbs.
One will be forced to express only those matters that relate to specific things, or about relatable or witnessed events, or of identifiable persons. Reactions also shall follow a similar path, all that happens being limited to those that goes well with the current ambience. For example, those who express sentiments and feelings like affection, dislike, or hatred will have to factor in the expected repercussions from all quarters alive currently. Or, if it relates to real things or people, only those descriptions and recounts that are humanly possible will stand to find a place in the narration.
14 The Cure for All
What does this experiment show? Nothing but the fact that as far as human societies go, there is a need to rein in the abstract, if peace is to be given a chance. How can we do it? Not at all difficult. Stop using words that do not point to specific things or real events or identifiable persons. Which amounts to nothing else but rewriting and republishing the dictionaries that are in use, such that all words that do not match the above criterion is removed from regular use.
Now, if we do so for all languages, nothing can stop human race from conquering all of the living world, including those unknown and new. Moreover, this is the only measure we need to take, to eliminate the root cause of the disarray that makes the human society, a violent one. Even with the disarray, we are scaling heights, and now when the disarray is gone, I think, nothing will be there to stop us from reaching unimaginable heights.
