In the ‘sand era’ full of chips and circuits fitted in all the devices around us, we are nowhere close to being a person dedicated to ourselves.
It’s all ‘social’ now. Individual’s definition of being indivisible and hence single entity has collapsed to a certain degree. The individuality of the individual has given way to the ‘sociality’ of individual.
Let us understand what an individual is and what exactly the concept of individuality means. Oscar Wilde writes that we speak other’s words, we think other’s thoughts and we live other’s lives, our lives are mimicry of other’s.
In a sense he implies that we are not ourselves.
We are a body full of different individualities of others with the traits that we like. It’s all about our liking and convenience of choosing.
What makes us that? Don’t we condition ourselves according to the surroundings we have?
We surely do but where is the quintessential ‘I’. That uniqueness that nature gives each of us has been repressed because of a fear.
Fear of rejection drives us to act like fake individuals admired by another fake lot. This mutual admiration of ‘fake-ness’ of each other, at times, keeps people unaware of their mettle throughout their lives.
Why do we fake? Of course, for acceptance. ‘If I say/act it like this people will admire/accept me’, is the thinking process of majority. There is a sense of defeat and inferiority creeping in in to the individual.
Unaware that most of the admirers, so called ones, suffer from the same fear of rejection. People go on to mould themselves on the lines that do not represent them.
Society grooms the best of the individual only when it has a set of objective individuals as its constituent. If the whole society is a theatre, expecting freedom of thoughts is asking for too much.
We have been taught that individuals make society. True. But when the components are adulterated, their purity is compromised, it will, in all the possibilities, reflect on the larger picture.
Fake individuals will make a fake society and will end up being unknown to their own selves about what they ought to be.
What I see around myself is people are not integral in their own thoughts and words. They are not true to themselves and somehow they have convinced themselves that life is to be lead this way: the fake way!
What a pity! It’s simple. If all of us think one thing is right and don’t question why it is right or why it can’t be wrong, accept it because someone has seconded it, we are driving in the wrong lane. May be the lane is clear but at some point you will be hit hard.
Now, why is it important to question? Because it brings dynamism to a given fact with multiplicity of opinion. The culture of questioning and debating with all independence, with no fear, is required for us to bring in a better set of societies around us.
That society will groom our children that will be free to think and hence speak. Speak because they will find a necessity to correct something, to mend and improve a thought which otherwise will be lost in its own arrogance.
the naked mind 