What Are We Fighting For?
Love, love, love...and some more love
Dear readers!
Skipping small talk here because this one is going to be fairly long. There was just too much I wanted to say. So please keep up with me and thank you in advance.
Taking Active Charge of Your Politics
I had a my proper political awakening during college when I studied sociology for my majors and it opened this whole new world of critical thinking for me. I feel I always had the right emotions, I just needed an intellectual level guidance. And my politics has been evolving. 11 months back, when the Gaza genocide began, a drastic shift occurred in my politics. I got more radicalized.
Till that point I was like most other liberals. Yes, I could speak on Marx and how capitalism is bad. How colonialism ruined the world forever. What Foucault meant by power. How inequality is our biggest problem as a society. I had all these big names, words, and ideas, ready to throw in any conversation. And while I do agree that there is nothing wrong with this, in hindsight, it feels not enough. It’s great to have this knowledge, this worldview, this ability to engage in critical thinking. I would put some posts here and there on my social media, share news with my comments condemning the systems and ruling class, but somewhere I definitely knew even back then, this wasn’t going to be enough.
So have I figured out what’s enough? How to change the world? How will I change this world? No, no, and no. But have I become more mindful of my limitations? Yes. Have I started to actualize my active position as a citizen of this society, and the power that comes with it? Yes. I find my politics evolving more rapidly than it ever did. From mere commentary and surface level understanding to more deeply rooted action.
What made all this possible? Love. Love for this world. Amazement and awe. Despite everything, despite all the evil and darkness, humans have always managed to find goodness and light. If we’re capable of great destruction, we are also creatures of creation, care, and nurture. And above all, empathy. That thing which has carried us through time and ensured our survival.
When I talk about why I am so vocal and loud about how everything is wrong with this world, how we are absolutely fucked, I know I am sounding too pessimistic. Negative. Cynical even. Like there’s no hope left in me. It’s the exact opposite. There’s only hope and hope in me. And which is why I am so drastically bothered by everything that’s wrong with our world.
Because I know that is not who we really are. That essentially and fundamentally, humans are creatures of love, care, nurturance, and sustenance. And that it is the greed of few, the ones who perpetually want to dominate and rule, that has always brought destruction upon our world. They have normalized destruction, violence, selfishness, apathy, neutrality, hatred, and dehumanization. That is not who we are. And that is why we fight. The ones this world considers the cynics.
Cynics are fighting to protect and preserve love. It aches me so deeply to see such a beautiful world being destroyed like this. And it is that very ache which moves me to speak and do something about it.
The Burning Question: Have we lost empathy?
As I became more and more conscious and proactive about my politics, there were certain questions that constantly bothered me.
Is empathy slowly dying down?
Why is that being political is seen as a choice?
Have we become numb? Or selfish? Or both?
Why aren’t people bothered by the suffering of the world?
For a very long time I rationalised that these questions were too naïve. It was my way of protecting myself from all the anger, frustration, distress, despair, disappointment, and a whole lot of questioning and doubt that arises from sitting longer with these questions.
And when I couldn’t hold it in any longer, there was a huge outburst. I was mostly angry at everyone and everything. I wanted to scream and shout, at the top of my voice: “HOW ARE YOU STILL SILENT? UNBOTHERED? AND UNAFFECTED? AND SO SELFISH”
But I tried to sit with these questions instead (once a therapist, always a therapist). It was a more smarter thing to do. Reactionary behaviour is often short sighted in its impact.
Is empathy slowly dying down?
Empathy isn’t dying down, it’s becoming a selective response. People are empathetic only to those who belong to the same social hierarchy as them. Most people are okay with that. They see their selective empathy as a sufficient qualification for being a good person. This rationalisation helps people in building a wall of apathy around them. Inside these walls, people see themselves as essentially good people, who care for their family, their relatives, their neighbours, basically anyone who is on the same social standing as them. And thus people are okay with not caring about what’s happening outside these walls. Unless it very directly inconveniences them.
One day, an upper class friend of mine was forced to travel in a public bus. They were telling me how difficult it was from them. How overcrowded the buses were, people had to stand for hours and hours with little to no space, the roads were so bad, everyone kept falling on each other. It was very distressing for them. I thought this would be a good opening point for me to spark their empathy. I asked them to sit with this distress and imagine how hard it must be for people who have to do it everyday. That majority of the people in India have to travel via public transport and the devasting conditions of it makes this such a difficult experience for them. That unlike us, who can take cabs, they don’t have that privilege.
It’s wasn’t surprising that I didn’t get any response. It also wasn’t surprising when a few days later I found them showing empathy to another friend who has to travel a lot for work and how distressing it is for them. The person who lived through the reality of what majority of people suffer due to terribly bad conditions of public transport had empathy for someone who has the privilege of bypassing that reality.
This is where we are at. We cry for people our own class who face only 1% of the system’s brunt, but we only have “oh that’s sad” for all the rest who face 99% of the system’s brunt.
Why is that being political is seen as a choice?
Another bullshit outcome of neoliberalism. The buffet of choice where “citizens are consumers” (George Monbiot). Everything is a commodity in the market, and every commodity comes in a thousand varieties to choose from. Politics is seen as no different. I can choose whether to be political or not political. I have the choice to consume information that will help me consolidate my politics. Or I can choose not to.
Yes, individual choice is important. And making active choices and respecting them is also crucial. But the problem arises when we start seeing everything as a choice. Even our duties as citizens, our responsibilities towards each other as members of a collective community. Very glad to be the bearer of bad news but every single aspect of your existence is politics.
If you choose to take active charge of your politics, you are resisting the system by saying: “Hey! Fuck you!! I won’t let you treat me as a passive consumer you use for your own advantages.”
But if you don’t solidify your politics, and this is where it gets interesting, you are not being apolitical (which many find a comfy choice), rather you are being very political. You are saying to the system: “Hey! I am okay with giving up my personal agency and upholding status-quo. You can do whatever you want, just give me my buffet of choices and commodities to fetishize.”
Have we become numb? Or selfish? Or both?
I think the long term effect of treating everything as a choice and then constantly choosing what brings the most comfort to us, has pushed us to place of selective empathy or even total apathy.
The news is too depressing, I don’t want to hear it. Oh it’s too much information for me, I don’t think I want to engage with it. Capitalism and neoliberalism have made sure that you always prioritise yourself. It has pushed us into such deep trenches of self-focus that we will automatically choose what brings us the most comfort.
Because discomfort is a sign that something around us is wrong. The systems don’t want us to feel any discomfort. The more you sit with your discomfort the more you will realise how absolutely horrific and brutal this system is. How this system is ruining everything you love and value. The more you allow yourself to feel uncomfortable, the more you would want to change it. Resist it. Act against it. Rise against it. Reject the system.
Your discomfort is a threat to the system. Hence the system keeps giving you varieties of comfortable things to choose from. So that eventually you just stop caring. Or you care just enough to keep your conscience clean, whatever is left of it.
Why aren’t people bothered by the suffering of the world?
What do you know about the trees outside the window? What keeps them healthy? What about the other animals that live close to you; do you recognise their calls or tracks? What they do, what they prefer? What do you know about the lives of human animals that go on over the other side of the wall next-door, or the masses you pass on the street? What do they know about you? How does that make you feel?
What do you really know about where the food you eat comes from? Or about what has to happen for our homes to be lit, heated, or built? How many of your survival necessities or subsistence skills are truly in your own hands or those of your relations?
How much of your daily activity is to suit your own needs? Aside from within the symbolic order of the wage economy, that is. How much of it do you even really see or understand the repercussions of? Would we live in this manner if we could directly see and touch the impacts that are hidden from most, in ghettos, toxic dumps, slaughter-houses, hospitals, cemeteries, refugee camps, battlefields and felled rainforest in distant lands, youth jails, oceanic garbage-gyres? Or have we become so distanced from other lives by the allotment of everything into categories of utility, so justifying their and our exploitation, that we cannot empathise with parallel lives that become mere resources for our own, as rulers living off us cannot empathise with ours?
- from Alienation by Return Fire (2014)
We Are Fighting for Love?
After all the discussions are done, and all questions resolved, the final answer is love. All of us who choose to see everything that is wrong with our world today, who choose to witness the injustices, the oppression, the violence, we do it because we care for this world. We love this world, and we are fighting to preserve this love. To preserve all that is good in our world.
We need to feel uncomfortable. We need to feel distressed. We need these emotions to move us to action. Unless we don’t face the society we are living in, confront it in its truest form, we cannot change it. And let’s face it, you and I both know, the world we are living in right now is doomed. Its only purpose is destruction. So we must do our part in making this world a better place. One filled with love, magic, beauty, care, and warmth.
Okay, this is officially the longest post I have written. If you managed to reach till here, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart. Yes, I know I haven’t provided any solid points for real life applications. But my primary purpose here was just to rant. Also hoping that this rant manages to move at least some of you. We may not have all the answers we need, but at least we need to start the process of being conscious of systems.
I am also very excited to share that after a lot of deliberation I have finally decided to create a Buy Me A Coffee profile. Now you can monetarily support my work with something as low as Rs. 170 ($2). A LOT of unacknowledged and unpaid labour goes into creating these essays. It would mean a lot to get rewarded for some of it. So if you can, please support my work!
With that, I hope to see you soon. Wishing you pleasant rainy evenings with a hot cup of tea/coffee.
When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx