2024: Can we whisper politics!

How the last moments of a year leaving, and the first flashes of a year coming, become an occasion for grand celebrations may be left to those who indulge themselves into such revelry. But if the change of calendar on the wall brings a sense of fresh start, let the first act be to open windows and get some fresh air in. But is the air outside fresh anymore?

The way this world is shaping itself, human societies will have to make an effort to breathe. The way states, corporates, and military complexes are geared up with new weapons of control, even our dreams are under surveillance. The invasion into human solitude is an indescribable catastrophe. We are no longer who we used to be. Our ways of relating to each other are no more the same as they used to be.

No matter how powerful a kingdom, no matter how vicious a king, and no matter how inquisitive a court, there was ample space for humans to live, to relate, to dream, and to-do-nothing. Even the states up till yesterday wouldn’t barge into individual realms.

The kingdom was stable, the king was happy, the court was comfortable. People retained their humanity, and human societies had their own wings, their own skies. It’s 2024, that luxury is gone. Now the digital state has reduced every individual to a number, to a QR code. The algorithm of surveillance-state makes it mathematically impossible for humans to count beyond the number assigned to them.

You open any window, to get fresh air in, and there the lofty steel sentinel is standing guard. It breeds sickness to see how human societies are invaded by the towers seen and unseen, cable above and underground. God bless Edward Curtin for these words: “even in the woods one may look up to admire a tree only to find that it is a cell phone tower.”

A customary expression of hope is good for health, but it can be misleading at times. In 2024, Gaza will continue to be pounded. More will die in Ukraine as war hasn’t come to an end. The ideological stiffening, and a economic Armageddon will leave swathes of our planet devastated as corporate businesses savagely squeeze wealth out of every crevice on this planet.

The global powers will use everything in their armour to bulldoze any challenge to their authority. The grand ideas of humanity, welfare, and rights have slowly disappeared. The world is no longer a global village, where humans meet and greet. It is now a flat space, with a blazing sun burning all traces of human.

Gaza and Ukraine are not the only places, people are divided in a violent way all over. Even in the womb of democracy, UK, we have seen how politics is turning away from the lofty ideals. Look at the US, and see how the size of leadership has diminished. If the images from continents away are not so clear to us, just look around in the neighbourhood.

We have the neighbour across, all in disarray. A strange country where all its armed might is up against its own people. He may be an unimpressive, in fact a very inferior brand politician, but he has been a hero for that nation.

Look how he is treated. Look how the state is dipping its claws deep into the body fabric of a human society. Gaze over into the other side of Himalayas, and the danger in Red is too visible to be missed. A economic giant, afraid of democracy. And then this side of the line, this side of Himalayas....can we talk!

As a general phenomenon, the capacity of states to employ power and silence people has unimaginably increased. More than climate change, it is a danger to us humans. The willingness of states to use surveillance as a tool to silence dissent, and the readiness to strike any dissent at the very moment it surfaces up, is a sign of annihilation. And then the divisions created in the name of politics, religion, history, and business – we have all the reasons to worry.

Finally this Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will be really a dumb creature if we are not worried. A state is already considered insensitive and faceless. Artificial Intelligence will arm it with such a savage control; Genghis will sound like a saint.

Today’s states have an appetite for control more keen than death. With AI they have means to do it, more than even before. In this Artificial-Armed state, the act of breathing humanely can any time be declared as Respiratory Terrorism.

What can rescue humanity from these dangers is a political leadership. If we have leaders with human sensibilities, some fresh air can come into the room. A political leadership that can transcend power intoxication, and ideological insanity.

A political leadership that can restore to people their democratic space. In the mayhem that is seen all around, it looks like wishing for too much. In a world, where democracy has a danger of turning into a folktale of prehistoric times, it is time for a global cry: all humans run for cover.

Call 2024 a new year, but the fears now settled for years are not going to go anywhere.

Tailpiece: Where is that J&K Bank calendar that adorned our walls. The bare walls tell a tale.