Nationalism as opium

Mad About Pyramids

The above link is an article in the 22 September issue of Science which reports a growing trend in the erstwhile developing nations but now seems to have engulfed all the societies in its grip. The gist of the report is that the archaeologists in Bosnia & Sarajevo are prevented from studying a hill over a small town called Visoko that resembles a pyramid (in shape). The archaeologists contend that the underlying rocks that form the structure of the hills are

stone slabs ... nothing more than fractured chunks of sediment called breccia, the remains of a 7-million-year-old lakebed that was thrust up by natural forces.

But the media, general public, and the politicians do not want to listen to the scientific explanation, and worse, they do not want to continue scientific study of the hills, instead they want to support the millionaire businessman who promises to find pyramids that will fill the poor Bosnians minds with a pride of the distant past, a prehistoric supercivilization, because the present has nothing much to offer. The archaeologists are teeming with anger as they say that the layer between the surface and underlying breccia has remains which are crucial to the study of the history of the last two millennia, but that layer is being destroyed by the overzealous diggers scouting for a pyramid. The archeologists' community is suffering from severe fund shortage, and the whole social and economic machinery is killing them in lieu of some false glory pertaining to the distant past.

The academic in me cringes whenever I come across such news, and these are getting more frequent nowadays. The rich guy will behave like an all encompassing god bringing a sense of romantic adventure by disclaiming all the orthodox notions of study, the general public will follow suit with salivating tongues, hoping for a redemption from their dreary existence by a deliverance that will not need any effort on their part, the politicians will feed on the ego of the rich guy, and the drunken fervour of the general mass to secure his own position by the support of money and popular choice. And the media will, of course, sell whatever that earns hard cash.

Building a culture of any worthy note requires generations of very hard sincere work, there is no shortcut to it. Cultures in the decline have the tendency of looking back to their glorious past to rejuvenate their fledgling morale. If the glorious past doesn't happen to have occurred in the near past then one doesn't have much choice but to look in the very distant past, and if someone conjures up something in the guise of lost glory then the public goes into frenzy. Nationalism can be used as a very effective opium to guide the people off from thinking coherently, logically, to lure them into a false sense of well being, and the politicians love it as it doesn't involve any effort on their part. The truth can go to hell!!

This particular news is from Bosnia, but this is a very common feature all over the world, in fact this trait confirms the universal nature of man. Everywhere, at all times, few scrupulous people lure the masses into the false belief of well being by using nationalism (and religion) as opium to stifle all scientific, progressive thoughts by not allowing the development of a free debating atmosphere where opposing perspectives are dealt with respect and candour.

Nationalism, at best, is the natural love for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the man, and at worst is the hatred for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the other man. Stifling the gain of knowledge by logical, rational study retards growth, which is the antithesis of life, because life implies growth, of knowledge, awareness, leading to the realization of self.

The feudal system of humankind

The feudal system is the most stable set up of the human society. Despite centuries of efforts to upstage this system, including all the possible experiments with democracy as well as communism, the human system has
failed to see beyond the feudal lord.

Democracy is supposed to be a system 'of the people, for the people and by the people', while effectively its just that in this statement the 'people' consist of one small, rather minute, class that rules over the other, and the other class lets itself be ruled only because of the dream that each individual entity of the ruled class has, that of making the transition to the other ruling class. It is this aspiration that preserves the feudal system.

The biggest responsibility that a man can ever undertake is that of the consequences of his own actions, on the contrary it is much of an easier job to criticize someone who is running your life. Although more often than not the individual doesn't have any option but to run to the diktats of the master, be it in the form of the proprietor, boss, or the administrator, in the sense of acceptance of fate there lies, perhaps subconsciously, the lack of will to take charge of matters into one's own hand, because that will ultimtely imply being responsible for your own actions, and you wouldn't have any imposter to blame for your state of affairs.

There is always a minority who do not follow the trends of the general mass, the ruled class, and they fall in two categories: the major chunk who plan willfully to make the transition into the upper echelon, and the minority who decide to take on the system, often by force, to change it for the better. More often than not, all the major steps forward in the evolution of the civilization has happened due to this small minority. But, the human system stabilizes back to the old feudal system, with some incorporation of the newer innovative ideas of the few who had tried to change the system. After all, it is much more fun to decide the fate of multitudinous many rather than your own, and so the transition to the ruling class is much more attractive and profitable rather than taking on the system.

Ultimately, both the ruling class and ruled class are living in their own illusions, the ruled class believes that they are guided by outside forces who cause all the miseries of their lives and they have no responsibility in the state of their own affairs as they are not really guiding their lives. While the ruling class believes that they are deciding the fates of multitudinous many. The truth is that we are all guiding our own fate, and only our own, by our affirmative actions or passive acceptance by inaction.

It can be argued, correctly, that most of the time the ruled class doesn't have any option, but the counter argument is that one should at least keep looking for options, instead of tacit acceptance of the situation, and not give up. The small minority that manage this are the ones who have brought out the changes in the human civilization, perhaps most of them get unnoticed as history eulogises the ruling class. There are a few who make the successful transition to the ruling class without losing the appetite to take on the system headlong, and they form excellent examples of the history of human spirit. These people never really adopt completely in the ruling class despite having the influence over one and all, but the tragedy is that more often than not their followers very effectively imbibe the philosophy of the ruling class and stabilize the system back to the nearly original state. Then comes the group who make their mark invisibly, only the marks are seen and not the markers. The ripples are seen but not the stone that set it in motion, and if the situation is favourable these ripples leave indelible marks and the society is gradually changed irreversibly. The purpose of democracy is to give more authority to these ripples, and not let the system get into the completely stable state of dead action, which the ruling class always professes to preserve their rule.

One has to realise that there is never a completely stable system, i.e. a static system. Had it been so, this universe (or multiverse?) wouldn't have existed. Life wouldn't have moved forward had it been static. One has to look for dynamic stability. The closest analogue is that of a moving vehicle, say a car, which is most stable when it is not moving, but to move ahead it has to compromise and optimize between stability and forward motion. This falsehood of equating static with stability is the trump card of all dictators, who play on the basic insecurity of the people, and the few who see through it are seduced by the lure of power into making the transition to the ruling class. Democracy is the mechanism to create a multi-layered complex hierarchy in the system to distribute the feudal authority to enable logic and free flow of knowledge to take precedence over personal short sighted ambitions.