Divided We Fall
The better human society we are a part of, the lesser divisions we witness.
Having had my dinner at an event, as I was leaving I saw the cleaning staff of the event having their dinner. Unlike us, they did not have round tables and chairs wrapped in clean white clothes to help with their meal. They sat far from the lights of the large lawn, in a darker place with just a plastic chair to have their meal. I am sure almost all people who had the privilege of having dinner in the large lawn would not have liked sharing that lawn with the cleaning staff of the event. They would term that happening as filthy, I term their mindset pathetic.
Divided as we are already by nations, boundaries, and visas; even more divisions we can witness if we pay close attention to it. People sharing the same nation are divided by genders, castes, races, ideas, professions, and innumerable notions you can think of in your mind. If you think about it well, you would realise that all these divisions are in your parochial mind that needs to urgently expand its horizon so that it can have just one race of humans: the human race. I ask you to compare yourself with one of your friends. You would say, he/she is of a different profession, a different city, votes for a different party, supports a different team in league matches, gets a different pay scale, goes to a different religious place of worship… this doesn’t end does it? Robert Sobukwe, a premier African politician said, “There is only one race, the human race.” How long would it take for us to realise that? Or should I ask would we ever be able to actualise this idea in our minds? The answer very disappointingly is a resounding no. A friend said to me that there is a human need to be more powerful and thereby to be better than other people we meet. This need to feel and be important creates divisions in our minds.
The notion of being different from the person next to you is a great one. However, we need to look at the prospects and beauty of it through the idea of diversity and not divisions. All of us are born different, raised different and grow up to be different. This is quite wonderful, as it allows for unrestrained human growth. However, if we start looking at it with the concept of divisions, things get really wrong. People in the army are soldiers, those outside it are civilians; people who are literate deign to talk to those who are illiterate, people who have better incomes are divided by the chasm of difference in incomes by those who are poor. Engineers have their own associations, doctors their own, teachers their own. These associations are good for smooth functioning of the worldly order but that must not mean one set looks down upon another set. Those having jobs look down upon those doing business and vice versa. Your siblings and parents might have a problem sharing the room sometimes because they don’t agree upon ideas. Sometimes you start hating and judging someone else because you do not share their interests in music and movies. There are first world countries, second world countries and third world countries. Men and women have their own chasms. Women label men as misogynists without taking a note of their own misandry. This is all sad. The problem is that we do not think of it as a huge problem, but miss the fact that these divisions are posing far greater threats than we can perceive.
The problem of income disparity is arising because the rich are focusing on their own consumerist ideas, spending more and more on themselves instead of even thinking about donating a part of their money for social causes. The rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer, as the famous line goes. The rising crimes of robbery, rapes, murders and the like are the result of this income disparity. The poorer have become highly filled with inferiority complexes and are taking to committing heinous crimes being reactionary. The cases of riots and violence because of different religious ideologies have become commonplace. Is it so difficult for a mosque, a temple, a church to coexist in the same locality? It is not. We could practice our own religious beliefs, yet being respectful towards that of another person.
We really need to think about it well. The paradox here is that in order to get over divisions we need to handle them well. We need to embrace diversity around us but not let them get the best of us. If we don’t share the same income level, ideas, and social status as the person next to us, may we have the maturity to not let it impede our friendly equation with him or her. When we let the ideas of divisions get the best of us, we lost the wonderful opportunity to observe, learn and grow. I again emphasise that we are already divided by places, boundaries and time. Let us not waste more time in thinking of the person next to us anything else as another human.
You may reach out to me at sdshivanidubey@gmail.com.
