Belligerently Virtuous

 

I have spent years and decades (in fact, much of my life) being rather secretive about my ethical stands. Reasons?

• I wanted not scare people off.
• I wanted to come across as modest and approachable.
• I didn't want to be dismissed and persecuted as being prude.
• I didn't want to invite criticism that I am showing off my virtues.
• I didn't want to be misunderstood. For example, in multiple cases, my riding a bicycle to work, or not splurging on clothes has been openly interpreted as my miserliness or even poverty. I don't see anything wrong with being a poor man. But I have problems with something I am doing out of my choice being interpreted as something being done due to circumstances.
• In this world of 'cancel culture', there's a fear that those who choose to feel threatened and offended by you, will someday call out a small perceived slip by you as a weapon to shoot you down. A person who has been open about his good deeds in the past is more vulnerable to cancellation, because on top of whatever charges are levelled against him at the moment, he lays himself open to charges of being a hypocrite owing to his earlier opposite image.

Over time, I have realised that the above line of thought was useless and caused much time in getting wasted? Wasted in what?

• In caring about opinions which don't matter held by people who matter even less.
• In not allowing, to be positively influenced by your actions, many who are open enough to feel inspired by anything good you do, rather than feeling threatened by you.

In summary, I do what I do because I think it's right to do it, not because I want others to praise me or even take to my ways. Having said that, getting praised or becoming a positive influence is acceptable, even desirable. It makes complete sense that, if you do something good with good intentions, you be open about it. And know that in doing so you are not being vain. In fact, those who say so are up to nothing good themselves than pulling down someone behaving well. This world indulges in unbridled voyeurism in lusting over images expressly intended to show off and make others feel deficient on account of money, physical beauty, exclusive attainment of sexual love and so on. And in this, they do not bat their moral eyelid. These buggers have no right to judge you if you are doing something good with your talent and intentions and are generous enough to share it with others.

In the Picture

This Thursday, I chose to travel by public transport bus to Airbus Takeoff. While their high official did a lot of talking about sustainability during the session, I did my little part to help sustainability. I took a bus (and enjoyed the ride) to and from the venue. I carried my own water bottle and refused to pick up the plastic packaged water bottle. A gentleman at the conference even tried to pick me on why I carry a plastic bottle and not a steel bottle.

Oppressors and Common People

What enables oppressors to show such unity? Look at mafia, terrorists, smugglers, corrupt politicians, businessmen, imperialists. They all are hand-in-glove when involved in something vile. Somehow, their teams are extremely strong, despite being much smaller than the number of people they oppress. It's got to do with the common urges which drive them to do what they do. Greed, ambition, anger, fear, ego, vanity etc. are very potent motivators and unifiers.

On the other hand, common people never seem to come together? Because most people are cowards. They would rather hide behind their busy life etc. than come out in the open and speak out. They fear unpleasantness and messing it up with the 'important' and 'influential'. They would sometimes even turn against the very people who are trying to stand for them, just to avoid being marked as an agent of change in the existing social order. And agents of change are a set of creatures oppressors hate the most, and go to any length to get them out of their way.

The dominating emotion among the masses is fear. And here's another way fear works: as a paralyser, which is exactly the opposite of how it works on the oppressors. 

The oppressors often hold positions of influence, and once in a while do their bit to keep the system going. This could easily be construed as a service to the common man. But it's a delusion. A parasite needs the host to remain alive to be able to suck its blood. An intelligent parasite will go to the extreme of helping its host survive when it's about to die, because if the host dies, the parasite can't survive either. An intelligent parasite will also want to keep its victim deluded that it is actually a helpful guest, who should be allowed to suck its host's blood once in a while as a payback for its services. British, when they were here, also built bridges and buildings, apart from looting the people in immeasurable proportions. And even to this day, we punish ourselves by saying that their coming to our land did us a lot of good, whereas the reality is they kept sucking our lifeblood for two centuries, and left us scarred for centuries to come.

The common man -- lazy, ignorant, fearful -- is happy to lead a subjugated life as long as the oppressors keep them away from the need to understand things and take things in their own hands. They are afraid to take responsibility, to fail, to deal with the discomfort of understanding and learning. When the common man stands up to say something, he cowers back down after seeing the menacing look in the eyes of the oppressor which seems to say: 'Speak, and I will drop everything.'

An oppressor -- a social parasite -- will do everything in his means to keep the masses deluded about the true nature of its relation with the oppressor. One of the most potent ways to do this is to keep the masses divided. Mass ignorance is a great ally of the oppressor. People who are divided can easily be dealt with by a handful of oppressors. When the voices of the people come together, it is a beacon of death for the oppressors. Hence, it's a universal characteristic of the oppressor to try and kill communication. A group of sufferers is a formidable force. A lonely sufferer is puny in comparison. He is so afraid and lacking in confidence that his voice can be silenced for ever with a rap on his knuckles.

I now gradually realise why Netaji and Gandhiji were such great leaders. Because they could make millions of cowards come out on the streets and take up a gun or fill jails. Respect!

Sensationalists at Workplace

We all come across numerous losers who get emotional about things in all ways except the correct one. This post is an ode to them.

Their behaviour is characterised by one singlemost quality: Whatever they are talking about, they will give you normative statements about it before giving out positive ones. In other words, they will impress you with how strongly they feel about a thing before they reveal their real understanding of it. A list of examples follows:

- It's a good site. (I have studied it.)
- It's a beautiful theory. (I have understood it.)
- It's based on raag yaman. Lovely raaga! (I know about this raaga.)
- Tolstoy's writings gives me goosebumps. So intricate! (I have read Tolstoy's work.)
- This country is going to dogs! You should shoot all the politicians. (I am concerned about the nation's welfare.)
- This is my favourite part of my thesis. (I have done my PhD with a lot of affection. Therefore it's a good thesis.)

- ...

It's generally understood that you get emotional about something you are deeply involved in. So, the easiest way to prove the existence of your deep involvement in something, particularly when the involvement is not there, is to show your emotions about the thing. It shows that you have it in you to get deeply involved in something, which needs you to be at some level of intelligence. So, if the listener is weak enough in logic not to see that emotions are not a sufficient condition for intelligence, and is gullible enough to believe that your emotional involvement is authentic in the first place, he'll interpret it as a sign of your intelligence.

I'm sure we all have learned to expect such people around us in parties, conferences, workplace etc. Also there are some disguises in which the same thing appears. For example, use of superlatives, e.g.
- I read it a long time back. (I have been involved in this for long. Hence, the involvement is ripe and deep.)

or casual/askance statements like:
- ...when I was talking with Queen Elizabeth last year ...(proves that I had been to England last year, and I mix around with monarchs, and most importantly it's no big deal for me.)
- I feel nauseous in the flight (Ya, I mean, I travel by air very often.)
- Man, M. G. Road parking situation is horrible! (I travel by car often.)

Similarly, for example, throwing jargons, e.g
- Picaso, right? It's surreal!
- Plutocracy bla bla totalitarianism bla blah bla ... existentialism bla bla bla blah... emricism, idealism...

Sometimes, it requires a conscious effort to resist the temptation to be one of this kind at occasions. But, it helps in general to stay away from this temptation. Discipline in this regard the makes it possible to experience the actual fun of emotional involvement. Faking it closes all roads to the authentic experience; or at best delays it severely.

I also beg your pardon for a slight tinge of cynicism in this post. I definitely don't mean that all high-sounding discourses are phony. Often, trying too hard to sound simple and modest could be the worst form of vanity. But definitely, if one is conscious (without being paranoid) of the germs of vanity that is present in all of us, we would learn to minimise its expression in our behaviour. I do feel this discipline to shun vanity is very hard to get, but unfortunately lies at the root of all ethical behaviour in professions like research, art and social-service.