Pride and politics of power

Am writing after a long time primarily because of lackluster stock markets and also because certain changes taking place in my personal and professional life have kept me fairly occupied.

From main city I have recently moved to a rented flat in outskirts. The other day I had a minor argument with secretary of the housing society and found it immensely interesting that instead of replying to my objection he smugly replied “aap naye aaye ho yaha. main 40 saal se rah raha hoon.” (You are new here. I have been here for 40 years now). I found it funny because I don’t find anything to be proud of in staying in same house for 40 years. If you ask me, it’s a matter of shame. It might actually mean you are a loser who has achieved nothing beyond what his parents left him with- not even a better house.

False pride is one of the biggest curses of humanity. While ego might be natural instinct, I think people who draw power from our blotted pride carefully keep it alive. Governments, politicians, religious leaders and even social revolutionaries have drawn power from false pride of masses (And unfortunately this power has been often abused.) Then it doesn’t come as a surprise that we are systematically trained since childhood to keep our ego blotted. And the trick used is - keep repeating something and soon people will start believing it.

Take for example the pride that people take in their religion. The truth remains that most of these people take pride in their religion because they just happen to be born in that religion. And their minds have been suitably poisoned by telling them repeatedly that their religion is great (and that other religions are somehow inferior). Now, it’s not bad to take pride in one’s religion if it one does objective study of various religions and finally selects the religion he finds to be “greatest”. Either that or maybe if one “achieves” one’s religion. If one has to clear a very tough test to get admitted to a religion then he should be reasonably taking pride. But in most of the cases neither of these is true. Most of the people rarely take time to study their own religion forget about studying other religion. Of course, nobody “achieves” his religion. It comes by default when one is born. If that is the case how come most of otherwise reasonable people are foolish enough to claim that their religion is “greatest” (Greatness defined vaguely enough to ensure that they need not actually study their religion and compare it with other religions before proclaiming greatness of one or another). The answer lies in systemic poisoning of people’s mind. We are born, given a religion and told “you are hindu / muslim And Hndu/ muslim is the greatest religion”. Of course it’s repeated so many times that we actually start believing it without any objective analysis.

Same reasoning goes for so many other things that we take pride in. I am born in India and I am told to believe that India is great.( what makes it great? its illiteracy ,poverty or corruption ?) Isn’t it true that India is one of so many countries and citizens of every county believe that their country is “great”. Story repeats itself in caste, skin colour and so many other divisions in humanity. The result is a divided and bleeding human race.

Let me clarify that I don’t have any problem with anyone taking pride in his or her religion (or country or caste or even indulging in honour killings). However, I am against human objectivity succumbing to rhetoric and spoon-feeding by vested interests.

I would like to believe that if children are taught to take pride in only what they achieve and not what they get by default, many of problems of our society could be solved. Then a man will not be proud of his father’s wealth or position but will take pride in only what he has achieved in life. He won’t be eager to go to war. He might actually realize that the country on the other side of border is equally great and he happens to be on this side by pure chance birth. Hopefully, as human civilization progresses, our minds will develop enough to take decisions based on objective analysis rather than what we have been fed by others. Maybe then we will study others religion before responding to jihad calls by fanatics. Am sure such a study will show that differences are too small to kill for. And of course another Hitler won’t be able to motivate one race to exterminate another race.