Civilizations Without Civility - The Generations That We Are Raising
For the last few years, I have been holding myself back to speak negatively about our culture and society because I was holding onto some hope. Slowly, and steadily, that hope is getting lost into the void of brutal reality. Consider this a rant of sorts but one with a lot of restraint and coming from somebody with a genuine concern from being a part of that culture and society.
Yesterday, Air India's flight from Ahmedabad to London crashed only 32 seconds after it took flight. It is an aviation disaster of a magnitude that we have not seen in India in the past few years. The videos that came out were heart-wrenching - people's bodies charred from the fire that engulfed the plane and the medical college's hostel that it crashed into. The debris and the aftermath could easily traumatize anybody who posseses half a heart.
Seeing a plane crash, seeing an accident of this sort would shock most people to the core - but not in India, and especially not the economic class that deals with gruesome living conditions day-in day-out. India is known for a lot of things - and now, maybe one of the other things that we would also be known for is our absolute disregard for human life and death.
At one point, we saw a group of men laughing and smiling trying to click selfies and make videos of a severed head of one of the passengers involved in the crash. For what purpose? Maybe to show it to somebody near and dear? Maybe to sell it to some news channels? Maybe to have their follower counts go up on social media? It boggles my mind - why, in any case, would you want to have a picture or a video of yourself with a severed head of a person who was alive just a while ago, and has no relation to you at all? And if for whatever reasons you do click it, why would you laugh and smile when you do that? What did we do about it? As a society, we wrote it off.
In India, it is a known fact that we don't respect human life because we have that in abundance. We are a lot of good things - we pride ourselves on a lot of moral, ethical, cultural, medical and religious superiority over many other countries, regions, religions and cultures, that WE consider below us just because they are different from us. I am not talking about who is right or who is wrong because right and wrong is subjective - we are just different. It is a way of living - ours and theirs.
However, the average thought process of certain economic groups of our country is quite evident when we see how we view "Russians" because somebody normalized calling them out like that. All of us at some point would have seen the videos of folks disrespect foreigners in their own lands because they thought they could get away with it. Yes, I know that it goes both ways; but if we are, indeed, as superior, we wouldn't behave like that in the first place. It, also, has less to do with "payback" and more to being true to one's own value systems. Isn't it?
Our politicians and bureaucrats exploit this exact mindset every single day and get away with it. Our reaction to it? - "Chalta hai!" (It's fine), "Aise hi hota hai!" (That's just how it is), "Humko kya? Humara thodi hai!" (Why bother? It's not us!). Our supposed strengths have become the very weakness that anybody who wants to exploit can do so, and continues to do so.
We see this on a regular basis from all walks of our lives, and yet all we do is armchair ranting (the irony is not lost on me). A few days ago, another video did rounds where children in a school bus called a random stranger "Chapri!". Now, children do all sorts of things BECAUSE they are children. They learn a lot of that behaviour at home, or from people who they look up to. In many cases these days, these happen to be social media influencers who promote content without any regards to a civilized society because it garners them likes and in turn, money. I think that money is great, but it is not great at the cost of a society that does not know how to respect basic humanity.
A society where road rage has become the norm, where personal space was never respected, where throwing garbage on the road, on railway tracks is acceptable, spitting gutka everywhere is common, disregard for traffic rules and lane driving is a way of living, ignorance and indifference is normalized, horrific news reporting of countless tragedies is treated as entertainment, and brainrot of all generations via social media and by many other ways is being ignored - no wonder we see the educated (not to be confused with the literate) either take advantage of the rest, or leave the country for a civilized society. Our civilization is no longer civil, and we are responsible for it.
The only way we can see this change is when we start to respect the civilized more than the uncivilized, when we collectively decide what is uncivilized, and then promote that as part of the nationalistic, patriotic and reilgious fabric of being - because, somehow, at some point, we still value those - be it when we play a match of cricket against Pakistan, or fight against each other in the name of religion, or in general, disagree vehemently to a point of patisanship. If at all, we are going to raise a generation that is better than clicking selfies with corpses, we MUST at every point shame uncivil behaviour and appreciate progressive behaviour.
When we see news channels make a mockery of journalistic standards, politicians smile on camera after a tragedy, people speculate over incidents rather than grieve and respect the dead, influencers influence by being a "goonda" (literally and metaphorically), people drive in the wrong direction and behave erratically, and we don't call it out? We are responsible for it.
Let's be responsible citizens of a society first. All of us dream about living or traveling abroad - but let's be honest, only so many of us really can do that - for the rest of us - THIS country is where we are at. This is what we have to live through. We are responsible for it, and only we can make it better. You may be one leading that change today, but you could also be the one leading thousands tomorrow because you were the one leading that change today.
Let us do better, together!
