Beyond the daily bread

Remember those 90s bollywood movies, where someone would be mocked at how shabby India was compared to US of A, he would come out all guns blazing with how great India's culture was. That still manages to catch attention these days. Especially after the recent attacks in the name of culture it becomes almost impossible to talk of Indian culture without explicit comments on that. I will avoid it, since the issue is mostly political. It is not about culture. It never was and getting into it would really steer away from the topic.

Stereotypes serve better than the prodigies to dissect behavior and appreciation of a statistical mass. Painting, sculpture, architectural marvels seem to be just relics of the past. The definition of art is a snake that you can never really pin it down and say you have got it. Even pinned down it just sheds its skin and grows away. With each age the set seems to vary, for example prehistoric wall paintings are now long out of favor while movies seem to be the latest entry. Though somehow literature, paintings and architecture seem to have the endurance of an immortal.

The average citizen certainly does not seem to know or does not seem to care about any of these. This exposes an ignorance or the lack of media portrayals. Either ways it looks very different from the time when learning was not just about education, and encouraged people to better themselves rather than mug others ideas. Even the literature seems to be all moving to English. Ironically I would probably be able to spill my ideas out much better in Hindi. Is it the time to ask ourselves the question is our art shedding its skin, sprouting wings or actually writhing in pain? I know the standard answer: music, movies, the great authors. Frankly I look at the state of regional literature and to me it seems unconscious if not comatose. Artists are discouraged these days. Man does not live by bread alone but certainly needs the bread to live. Immortality in memory has too high a price in life and nobody wants to help another gain it, the risk certainly does not justify the reward.

Of course a few years that I have seen are far too little to draw a conclusion. All I try to do is extend the graph with a few points. Then again there is the way of life which makes up culture quite a bit. Where are we on that point? I remember a story, 10 wired monkeys in a lab with a bunch of bananas hung up and a ladder propped. Every time a monkey stepped on the ladder, a shock was given to all of them. Then they replaced a monkey with an unwired new one. He sees the bananas and the ladder and wonders why no one takes it. Tries to go at it, all the others jump at him and beat him up. Another monkey is replaced the same way and monkeys think alike. He tries the same and gets beaten up as well. The first new one joins in the beating. He doesn't know why but beats the latest monkey just 'coz everyone does that. Gradually all monkeys are replaced with unwired new monkeys and each one faces the same treatment. At the end none of the monkeys were or could be given an electric shock, but no one goes for the bananas.

Frankly I don't think culture could die out. I guess it was never really about art or style of living. More about thoughts and expression. Even if you can stamp out or destroy expression, thoughts cannot be killed. Even a tyrant believes in his principles and thinks about them. The thoughts may not really be compatible with all but they are still thoughts. Just because a culture is unacceptable to someone does not mean it is bad. Classic case of one man's food and another man's poison. However expression gives everyone the kaleidoscope needed to see the colors. It adds choices to the single line of thought and makes people think. Art and style of living are but a result of a process somewhere else, changing that will never change culture. To really mess with culture, you will need to change thoughts.

The truly divine comedy...

Everyday the world is a little better off. 20 thousand years ago, we were monkey swinging from branch to branch. 2000 years ago, we knew all about the philosophy any god could throw at us. A 100 years ago, science was almost mapped out. Yet I bet the monkeys had no Monday blues, (or Sunday blues depending on where you work).

I am not being sarcastic here. We have all the art, the culture, the whole humans together thing. We are social people, far above the other lowlifes that we permit co-existence. We know to appreciate the good life, the beauty of creativity, the challenge of a quandary. A human's life has so much more meaning to it. It is not just about food and survival, it is a lot more than that. At least for some of us. I agree some certainly do not have that privilege, scrounging for the next meal as a street mongrel is the order of the day for the unfortunate few. But even they may chance upon the occasional snack for the inner higher being.

Now here's where I found my quandary. Adversity brings out the best or the worst in everyone. Even the pathetic fools from whom nothing could be expected. It is only the proverbial trial by fire which tempers the steel. Then why do we move towards the better life. Why does everyone want the garden of Eden if it will reduce us to the mediocre animals, who eat, sleep and make more of the same that we strive so hard to rise above? Are we not smart enough to see that we are bugs attracted by our nature to the bright light that will zap us if we manage to get there? Or are we so beyond that, that we know we are never getting there and trying to make the most of the journey?

Funny thing is we rose above to become worse. Only we slog everyday the way we could to make things a little bit better. Knowledge truly is the Satan's apple, the one thing that can make a paradise seem like hell. Then again, it is hell that puts heaven into a perspective. Without hell there is no heaven, and without heaven, hell would be just another hot place. I guess that is why it is human nature to create hell if it does not exist. For mediocrity is the sole right of those who cant whether they know it or not. Necessity being the sole reason for innovation, creating necessity also becomes a needed "evil".

Imagine a beautiful world with beautiful grasslands, deer hopping about,an all you can eat gourmet with the best wines, which would still keep you looking as fit as a Greek sculpture for all the time in the universe. A world where violence was an alien word, problems could never be created, and time would always stop for you to smell the flowers.
That's the stuff my nightmares are made of.