It was Rousseau who used the oxymoron noble savages to describe men when in ‘state of nature’-the primitive man, he was later to negate it and rightly so. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality (contradicting the elitist ‘social contract’ by Hobbes), Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and hierarchy. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. Rousseau asks "What is to be done?" His answers was all men can do is to cultivate virtue in themselves. Rousseau was a significant inspiration behind French revolution, and the democratic principles on which civilized societies stand. What Rousseau refers to as virtue is what we know as ethics. The reason why I am quoting Rousseau is to point out that all great ideas that put the foundations of equitable society was based on ethics, an expectation of responsible behavior. All understandings of different religions and faith also stand on the same premise. The society as we know and cherish stands on the enlightened thoughts of some great people who strived to create ideals for the betterment of humanity.
What we are seeing in the contemporary world is a paradox of unbridled access to information and exciting possibilities with degradation of society through unsatiated greed and increasingly crude irresponsible lifestyle. The misplaced confidence of ‘great unthinking masses’ (to use Kant) is being sought to be channelised as freedom, as aspiration, as legitimate desires. Is it surprising that people who espouse liberal values are themselves repulsive opportunists?. Is it surprising that those who swear by god and call themselves religious resort to shocking expressions of faith?. In this scenario democracy becomes farce in the hand of few, religion becomes tool of oppression.
Business and commerce is important part of society but whether Adam smith or Weber (remember he had Protestant ethics as his reference) they emphasized on being responsible. Ethics here means that if my business is irrevocably damaging the environment and long term well being of society then it is unethical. Democracy therefore means that leaders take decisions to safeguard against these exploitations and dangerous implications on future. I don’t think it could get simpler than this; it is a very simple reality on which world leaders have to work at
In this increasingly crude world cherished institutions and great thought get easily manipulated by vested interests. Market opportunism has constructed freedom as independence to do nonsense and still feel euphoric!!. The ideals though were meant to necessarily go with responsible behavior otherwise it is not freedom, it is vulgar. It is in this world that religion also finds its extreme takers. The society it seems is extending its fringes of crudeness wherein the construct was for enlightened thinking and actions. So what we have is society of reactionaries, a society that individually and collective live by reacting to each other or situation, in this melee competence is downgraded and truth pushed out. They create their own reality. It is where extreme forms of vulgarity meet.
Democracy was not meant for conduit of market choices, nor religion for crude insensitive people. Nor Plato nor Rousseau nor K
ant ever meant democracy to reduce to serve bunch of profit mongers at the expense of all other expressions and aspirations or even sustainability. When social relations, emotions and even human bodies are meant for the purpose of unabashed money making, when respect becomes sycophancy, when compassion is profit, when words becomes farce, when others are statistics, actions are compromises then we know something is grievously gone wrong and that such a system will lead to nothing but disaster. In Holy Koran there is a mention of modest dressing but enlightened words never conceived crude followers who could pack women in burqa (the full face covering) and still claim divine. Religion also is about power, male domination therefore does find enough reasoning. It is in this context of politically correct and incorrect world Sarkozy’s statements become ambiguous. He may be right or he may be wrong depends upon how much you stand to gain. Truth is the biggest loss in the contemporary world we live in.
These varied forms of vulgarities compete and they call it freedom of expression. Here we get cruder versions of liberty, secularism, profit, love, creativity, modesty, faith…, it’s a celebration of mediocrity. In gist it means you do your crap and we do ours. Live and let live. And yes we respect each other for that!!. And so we live in a free world. Modern savages. If this idea of living was so very ideal then why is environment/nature not ready to take the crap?. Clearly these are not true, therefore unsustainable. Nature doesn’t lie. Then that means there is truth, and we do see it all the time but are not ready to acknowledge. The crass world makes it impossible, so we flirt on the fringes of truth and justify ourselves for immediate gain. Somewhere this will have to end, we see glimpses of that in bombs, riots, cyclones…
Post script: readers are invited to short story blog, there is a new story I posted the other day. It is dedicated to incredible people like Swami Agnivesh, Medha Patkar, Aruna Roy, Binayak Sen, Vandana Shiva, Sugatha Kumari and so on. It is these people who make democracy vibrant. Indian society is proud of them.
