It is all disintegrating now
Two decades ago, it was sad to know that the couple is divorced a decade after being married. But now it is an momentary amusement to know that are 'liberated'. Similarly, on generation gap pretence. It is easy to justify why young are not respectful towards their elders. The fact is that social fabric is ruptured and cultural capital is exhausted with displacements and radical individualisation. The social order that was built with inputs from different cultures encountering from the Enlightenment project, has collapsed. With fluidity of consumerism and sweeping, belligerent individualism, desire for material has become endless.
Youth and adolescents see possibilities in shortcuts, trespassing means that had no social sanction, sometime ago. In the name of transparency, digital world is deceptive. Therefore, new generation needs more privacy in a non- private machine world. Its requirement is fractured relationships. Otherwise, exposure in familiarity and transparency in method would breed vulnerability. It is illusive conduct, measured by the market target standards. The rush to become rich overnight, to be famed and incessantly visible in the ruptured social landscape has changed the worldview, delinked the morality, and lifted the mask of sensitivity. Lie has a legitimacy; easy to Justify it in radical nationalism or to hide it in militant religiosity. Unfair economic data has produced deceitful market logic about the value of human beings.
Humans have become commodified.
Religion had made omen a commodity, technology and its aftermath has made men also in the same line, consumable. It has led to the loss of aesthetic sense and ethics of care in the process of socialisation. There is a continuous process of producing the other in the race of survival, from home to office. Undeniably, it is the flow of deceit and salesmanship played and replayed, all the time. It is happening in our families, in our kinships and in our primary groups. Conversations, even with the home people have become rare and measured. These were trust based relationships that would grow stronger and stronger with time. Now this cultural capital, this shared togetherness is vanishing. Spouses are tied only for the sake of their dependent children. Partners in business remain together, for they have generated vulnerability of exposure.
There is no emotional tie up. Mobiles and television sites have brought the estranged world into homes. It makes us feel our home illusionary, not a fulfilling abode. The homes have lost that sanctity of monolithic entity of oneness, deprived of common belongingness. In western societies, there is no surprise about it. It is in their collective consciousness, since when age has been compartmentalised. This happened after Great Depression was succeeded by Welfare States. On the other hand, we are primordial societies with oriental subjectivities. Therefore, primary groups had not only significant bearing on socialisation of an individual, but were well connected with the need based emotional integration in the system. It is disintegrating now. Old logic of primordial loyalties is not holding the bond. Neo-liberalism in globalisation has played havoc with cultural repertoires of old societies, by converting spiritual cultural capital into market economic commodities. This togetherness of neoliberal world is measured in terms of loss and profit.
Radicalism of religion and militant nationalism, both are measured categories that fit in market analysis. It has brought a paradigm shift in social relationships. If modernity has broken our families, disintegrated our social patterns through the nexus of rural urban middle men; the late modernity has created new class of service providers in stratified categories in chain relationships internationally to set the new global order on play of communication.
Seeking Power, placements in the crème institutions, buying prime properties are conceitedly managed by these new middle-person class, known as ‘service providers’. They are seen everywhere, in the corridors of power to the religious gatherings, in congested settlements to inaccessible places. It has taken away the moral sheen from the social exchanges and in day to day social conduct. Without any hesitation, they justify their enormous profit making through make believe vitae. Conversations are their capital round which exchanges of labour and economic spheres are built, arranged across the geographical boundaries. The fail of geography has resulted in the questioning of boundaries. The notional boundaries, judgmental spaces perceived through religion and nationalism have attained mistaken allure. Its unacceptability is hard to reconcile. It has led to the rise of militant nationalism and radical religiosity.
God has been reinvented after the collapse of modernity. But reinvented God has made states vulnerable through imagined nationalisms. States in turn have resorted to surveillance, security and punishment strategies. For, the very notion of religious boundary and national boundary have gone out of control by its setters; God and state, first time in show of strength. The world order is round China and the Western world led by America. Social awareness and public perceptions have been taken over by digital platforms promoted and processed by artificial intelligence. It has implanted the seeds of new existentialism, of new frames that beseech us that setting boundaries need individual discretions.
It is a birth of a new individual that has far reaching consequences for the new world order to shape up.
Therefore, without proper reforms at ground level through micro and macro global movements, the ruthless winds of the late capitalism will not go away. It can only be faced by promoting ethics of care, charity, trusteeship, compassion and inclusive humanity. Otherwise, the world is doomed in asymmetrical violence and symmetrical wars, made worse by natural catastrophes that we regularly are witnessing around us. Look at the blood bath in West Asia, the challenges for the new Middle East and then death and destruction in the Russian- Ukraine war.
There is neither checkmate of big powers nor any heavenly retribution. Helplessness and vulnerabilities have made humans dumb, solace from nowhere. This has created a wave of new existentialism, causing disillusionment with religion and with state. This state has failed to punish evil, to reward virtue and unable to produce genuine compassionate citizenry. New types of pandemic variations appear all of a sudden. Health sphere is insurance targeted. Loneliness is surmounted, relationships are conversation-less acquaintances. Much frustration has resulted in the rise of radical individualization, where in day to day race multitudes get excluded and wilfully alienated. The scenario seems to be worsening with each passing day. The new mode of artificial intelligence without human concerns paves way for hardened neo-liberalism. Resourceless unskilled poor are destined to perish.
Undoubtedly, this world order has lost its social equilibrium. However, those societies will survive which are making perpetual reformation by redefining tradition and by identifying it with ethics of care and trusteeship, for the welfare of inclusive society. The political leadership that takes ownership without self interest can bring reformation in the academic institutions and religious organisations. It is the need of the hour. How sad it is, if it is true that appointments are a deal away, wishful lists are given to the chosen experts for this purpose in election committees, without any moral sensitivity. We may not have proof, but even the rumour is shocking.
There are exceptions about good people and meaningful persons, who are performing appreciative work, but their number is diminishing. We need to identify them with rewards and recognition. Screening the past and present should be transparent a process. The education institutions need empowerment of humanities and social sciences to be at par with applied sciences. Pure sciences are also facing the challenge. Applied is hybrid and hybrid is not inclusive.
Humanities, literature and performing Arts bring creativity and sense of appreciation, spruce aesthetic acumen in the system. Otherwise, any human exchange, including sports competitions for the spectators and common people turn out to be a process of othering with militant toxicities. Instead of that, it should give national pride and aesthetic appreciation, irrespective of caste, class, religion and race.
Aesthetics, music, dance and literature cut across the manmade boundaries. It would give reflectivity to surveillance, dissent to democracy, and warmth to economics. A university without moral and aesthetic intrinsic vitality is heartless neo-liberalism that can do no good to the multitudes. Old societies have enough social and cultural capital, provided we have religious and social reformation. The new challenges thrown to health and education spheres from neo-liberalism could be mitigated for a better life chances and inclusive development. The leadership from the top has to take ownership for it and reformation from ground level has to take birth.
We need conversations and conversation means to acknowledge the presence of other.
Prof. Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus Professor of Banaras Hindu University
