Herds are threat to humanity

Herd everywhere is a threat to humanity everywhere. Systems that degrades humans into unthinking entities who are then readied to be manipulated, used against every notion of being human, is persistent danger to life and to all living being. A dehumanized human is a tragedy on humanity. An emasculated human has lost the faculty that makes him or her human. As they spread they negate all the consolidated knowledge and understanding through the ages as also pose serious impediment to contemporary and future understanding and challenges. Herds are more than just passive animals but a serious threat not only to human progress but survival itself. Herd is an infection that systematically invades the mind making it useless.

Systems that create and nurture herds whether its religion, cult, traditions, feudal norms or market or insular ideologies, persistently undermine freethinking, egalitarian references, humanist contexts, anything that encourages inquisitiveness and critical thinking. Such systems are incapacitated to have compassion or nurture any nuanced values. They produce humans with sedated senses incapable to connect to their surroundings or any reality nor aware of their unique context. An unexamined life is grievously inept to examine the surrounding nor anticipate the future or potentials for learning herein. Their life is hinged to fate of the herd and blessing of the agency that control. These are carbon units with no potential or hope except as enthusiastic herd member. They are biomass that encroaches and degrades biodiversity, the habitat and finally the earth system. They are gangrene on earth. It is also important to identify herd controllers –who seek and encourage herds and work to manipulate. Herd matters as it is not about humans but numbers. In democracy numbers matters as voters which consolidates power hence control, for religions numbers are about followers or devotees, more followers means power and clout as also initiative to spread and garner strength while for market numbers is consumers which converts to money and clout. In recent times societies across the world have degraded as urgency of virtual connection have provided platform for these to consolidate. What was supposed to be means to evolve has become end in itself to rot the core. Ofcourse these vary with societies, those lacking civilized bearings deteriorate faster. What is certain though is herd controllers are inching into space of humanity at a rapid rate. They diminish egalitarian value systems and decimate hopes of progress. Promise of education is reduced to curriculums of followers and replicators, answering machines vomiting memories of mythical glories, rotting minds as guide into dark alleys of future.  Education is a strategy to multiply money and power. Youngsters get trained into herd quite easily having apprenticed in deviant families with parasitic relations. Lack of investment in education, substandard education system churning out amazingly focused herds, all these are hallmarks of herd controllers. Herd controllers make herds happy and contented. Carefully trained in myths of grandeur herds are eased into fantasy. Politicians tell them what they want to hear. Market feed them with inane entertainments of self-fulfillment as also framework of juvenilities of achievements that further sedates their unthinking minds. Religion assures their unexamined selves as blessing while presenting the slave minded with steps to glory. Since future is perilous, insecure, and are incapable to even fathom any hint of, reality is obfuscated with glories of past. Make it great again. Unavoidable bleak future that barge in as daily tragedies of woefully lacking society is delegated onto individuals as fate. When humanity is reduced to herd when humans are reduced to numbers it is but natural that deaths are just statistics which can be manipulated. The herds therefore don’t even get sanctity of numbers. They are nothing. They are kept insecure so as to become fatalist, kept occupied in their self-defeating grinding chores which are made much difficult in a combination of incompetence and apathy while herds are also kept in constant strife. Very soon they learn to pay obeisance to the oppressive system and work to perpetuate it. If they are sufficiently clever they understand the deceptiveness of herd controllers and with blessing of the system can upgrade to become sought after herd controllers. Market actively nurture these template for herd controllers, nowadays they are called influencers. An evolved person of subtlety, exposed to excellence, essentially compassionate nature, will rarely fall for herd controllers nor will aspire to be one and with his or her sensibility can only pity herds. They know it is a loss of humanity. The reason why herd controllers actively work to degrade the system, as also define the success as an extension of herd aspiration. Non thinking frames like crass entertainment, sports so on becomes sought after mechanism for herd controlling. So on the one side excellence of sports or art become competitive exhibitionism of market and hedonistic aspiration for herds like in US while it is reduced to games of manipulation to stampede for gravy in extremely mediocrity thriving societies like India –where these so-called sportspersons and artists having filled their coffer by titillating the herds in a egoistic drive aspire to influence policy making. A crude world of herd controllers coalesces through crony capitalism, nepotism, deviant traditions and values to create a much dangerous world. Herd controllers will go to any extend to keep the world in their sinister grip. Every innovative idea becomes potential for manipulation while the latest gadgets an instrument of intrusion and control. Herd controllers persistently squeeze the humanity out of herds leaving them as vulnerable pitiable carbon units waiting to release their carbon as redemption for better afterlife, ironically having wasted their present life but under the compelling illusion of having lived fulfilling life as herd member. Carbon is carbon. It doesn’t have afterlife. Herds live and die in their fantasy. Sometimes it is helpful as an individual but the problem is when these coalesce into herds and into rigid frames of dealings that is actively controlled.

As much as climate change or climate breakdown is immediate existential threat herds too are equally debilitating and imminent danger to humanity. Challenges faced by humanity whether its climate change, pandemic or violence gets accentuated in direct proportion of herd spread. Herd is a waste of life. They are an insult on being human, an embarrassment on humanity and a threat on existence.  

Nonagenarian Chomsky

The other day I was watching an indie movie wherein they celebrated Chomsky’s birthday instead of Christmas and were ready for a discussion with anyone who ridiculed! Chomsky has aged considerably with his post pandemic Santa beard. It is quite saddening to see him shriveled in recent online talks, he is 92 but remains as always amazingly measured and insightful. Chomsky is one the very few living person who have had a considerable influence. I recall (it was probably in 1997) when I encountered “manufactured consent”, next few months was reading Chomsky. There were also some discussion groups in JNU that I occasionally dropped in where Chomsky was hot and anyone who didn’t know about Chomsky’s work could be murdered. He still is popular in campuses across the world. Ofcourse now there are younger Chomsky videos online. It was in 2001 after 9/11 when he was on a visit to India that the craze really picked up. I recall we were in stampede to listen to him (one fellow even caught a flight to Chennai to listen to him, ofcourse those were pre-internet era indulgences). There are few things one may disagree (I factor in as white patronizing the mysified other. Also, it is insisted that religion cannot be and will not be allowed to define identity nor meaning and significance of minority. Cannot pander herds nor authenticate herd controllers, these are done by cunning manipulators) but his views makes one think. He is brilliant. 

During those days I was under the influence of, apart from other thinkers (mostly western, Indians don’t really measure up despite valiant effort by likes of Amartya Sen, though advaita of Shankaracharya is compelling thought but comes enveloped in muck, and yes Buddha can hardly be referred to as Indian since his enlightened thoughts were decimated from the mainland by monster mullahs and caste cannibals), Nietzsche, later existentialist like Sartre, Camus –his early impetus on writing fiction with much aid from Gogol, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Kafka so on and guidance from Dickinson, Tagore, Whitman, Rilke, Thoreau so on . Much later I shifted to Spinoza. In between there was an interlude with Derrida. Now Derrida’s deconstructionism had a powerful influence but I worked it into an idea for my requirements. It even influenced me to pick up a name! Not many people know about this nor have I explained. It was while I was travelling on a night train from Allahabad to Delhi (in 1997, I guess) that I started working on names. Deconstruction was on the mind. So I took De, and then something that should suit Indian condition for name but meaningful. Palan in Hindi/Sanskrit/Malayalam means “to follow”, and follow I was not going to! Hence depalan. Previously it was confined to contributing articles or literary gatherings but now it is official! Many times people use de as in day then I have to insist with much pleasure 'de as in deconstruction'. Unfortunately at one place (while I worked as copywriter) they shortened it as de as in day, located in Bangalore with mostly south Indians these precariously dangled on derogatory, it was a valiant effort to keep it from slipping. 

Live theatre of climate disaster

Climate disasters are getting acute in its frequency and intensity. Australia –a continent nation, is fast becoming a showcase example. I use words like theatre and showcase because for majority of people these are spectacles that is shared and ‘liked’ while recommender algorithm takes it to worst possibilities of riveting disasters to blunt sense and hooked for self-worth. They are perpetual spectators addicted to the last eye catching fare, attention seeking inanities. It’s a market opportunity. They are not much bothered about what are the connections or reasons that perpetuate these disasters. In world bereft of subtleties and nuances knowledge makes sense if it serves the purpose. Market therefore streamlines knowledge for limited use as the vision gets narrower and narrower. Disasters seem to be happening at faraway place. For others, patched into securities of juvenile conceptions like religions, these are easily understood as wagers of sins. Never was majority of humanity so isolated from reality. It’s ironic since latest technologies and gadgets were meant to connect to the reality and open up amazing possibilities. It seems to have provided platform for the worst aspect of humans –the majority that were piggyback riding on best of lot and freeloading the benefits, to coalesce and create their alternate reality that is sucking into existential crisis, wasting energy and undermining effort. This majority of unthinking/incapacitated to think humans –the herds, are being pandered by competing forces to exploit. The Age of Morons has come at the worst time. This is no longer joke. Trump was no joke. Nor these moron herd controllers propping up all across the world are accident. They create immense damage. This foolhardy arrogance can no longer be overlooked. Younger generation –who will face the consequences, are teaming up and raising their concerted desperate voice. They have kept calm and have conducted orderly despite the fact that their future seems increasingly periled. Every day it’s their future that is being destroyed, ofcourse with hundreds and millions of species that forms the biodiversity. The world is collapsing in real time while majority are not concerned at all or that they are incapacitated to be concerned since are incapable to think. How long can younger generations keep straight face, raise their fist and take long marches? We are reaching the tipping point, about to breach the point of no return with cascading implications.

It’s perverse but Australia facing the brunt has some assertions to it. White rich people facing the worst could help drill in the urgency to herds across the world. Opulent people seeing their homes swept away or backyard burning into their palatial house can pause herds into thinking. If it were poor ‘third world’ then these disasters or worst get easily dismissed as oft repeated sad story of ever suffering miserables, or as Indians see: less blessed. White rich people are capitalistic aspiration that is fed all across the world through herd trapping popular culture. It’s the carrot for the hamster for perpetual success. A narration that hinges on perpetual wants and perpetual consumption wherein earth is seen as gifted for perpetual exploitation for blessed humans. It’s god’s plan executed ably by capitalist.  

There is an urgent need for radical transformation of systems that controls human.