Act stiff, and we are doomed!

The world has undergone a major shift with respect to everything: feelings that we shouldn’t express, personal opinions that don’t count, and sharing and caring that are deadwood now. Everything has become stiff and stern vis-à-vis human approaches. I fear the moment to come where a genuine query may translate into a sin committed, the gravity of which will have no place amid the ever-occupied humans. I fail to fathom why humans have turned stony enough to place everything in a dustbin. Why has subjectivity become an orphan, deserving no deep human compassion?

Complete regard for variables and disregard for the unknown bring disgrace to us at one, one point in time. Hoarding tons of wealth and indulging in sensual pleasures may act as an emotional crutch to numb the unaddressed human emotional plane, but for how long? How long shall we play with ourselves, as if emotions are an enemy to modernity? A devil, to be eradicated?

Long ago, literary stalwarts warned us of the negative consequences of harbouring a utopian idea of “perfection.” Carl Jung did his intelligent job of informing us of the ramifications of repressing our emotions: causing unnecessary behavioral imbalances, and often at the worst, driving us mad. Fyodor Dostoevsky applied his brilliance and showed that acting stiff and killing a pawnbroker (Crime and Punishment) for money, torments our souls. Similarly, Poe showed us the consequences of murdering someone result in dysfunctional normalcy. Rough and fixed decisions are concerns here. Not the moderate decisions as such.

Human madness is normal, but the extremes of half-conscious human behaviour, driven by capitalism and kaam-ki-baat culture, are worrying. We aren’t robots, divorced from consciousness and psychic secrets. We are alive, touching things, feeling them, living them, and dying with them. There’s not a single human being who has acted rough (half-consciously or unconsciously) and hasn’t undergone minor changes in moods, if not major. What does it point to? Humans aren’t made to accept the mechanizations of a few dysfunctional folks bringing with them their ultra-human conceptions: be strong, be you, be him, be an ideal, don’t feel it, and don’t give a damn. We aren’t angels.

History teaches, but in our cases, our yet-to-come future we in advance stud with our fixed ideas drives our motivations. The former has happened; it has passed. We aren’t humans if we don’t understand why the Kalinga War brought a major transformation in Ashoka’s attitude. Doesn’t it mean, I constantly mention, we are weak? That we just can’t stand certain things? That nurturing utopias demanding extra-human potential is hogwash? That sweeping emotions under the carpet has its share of consequences—sooner or later?

Where things are exacerbated is when a human being, who is a victim of some trauma, encounters these robotic, extraterrestrial people. It’s as if two entities with human faces and sky-earth varying features face-to-face stand on the turf of ‘World War Four’. One expresses, and another digresses and comes to the point. The former tries to cultivate connection, but the latter disconnects—smartly, naively, or foolishly. That’s a tragedy.

I wish some magic could occur, bringing back our fallible human senses. And thus love, care, and connection outweigh business, roughness, and practicality. And we understand the uselessness of going beyond what’s human. And we deeply meditate on human mortality. You die! I die!

Postscript: Moderation implemented in everything may revive our humanness. Else we are doomed!