The world is a small place, more so with the waves of globalization engulfing every corner, every part of the world we live in. In the midst of all the technological and material advancements, it is heart wrenching to find that material advancements do not guarantee a parallel intellectual progress. Just as you find the phenomenon of globalization as the new normal, something called anti-globalisation sentiment starts to surface, perhaps the anti-thesis! More so, with the fast changing world, it further hurts to see that the society at large is bragging about the change to which they are innately against! The resultant situation that confronts you is a strange blend of frustration, anger, despair- you concede to the premise of being abnormal or misfit or mad. How easily the world that actually lives in a self contrived pretence of normalcy, succeeds in convincing your out of the box temperament to be abnormal. And demands you to conform to their pre-determined, stereotypical, blindly set customs, beliefs, standards which of course for them is not just the Normal, but also the Right. You tend to feel alone and suffocated. For once the wrongs spotted by your progressive and liberal values, that had inspired you to take on the mammoth task of transforming or changing the world for the better, becomes blurred and nothing seems to go right. You tend to give up, when you face set backs, one after the other. You look at the sky and complain: “why me, why am I like this, why did You make me like this, what to do next?” It feels like the end of the world, at least for you.
The world we live in today, is going through a difficult and dangerous phase- CONFORMITY; you are ordained to conform, if you fail to do that-the punishment could be a lifer or isolation or exile or abduction or even death! But should that stop us from questioning the status quo? Who do you think have been the people who have changed the world- they were not normal, for they believed in change for the better- the world would have come to an end long before, if such people would have been Normal by the usual standards- to dare the entire system of functioning is not something that anybody can do but only those who think! The world we live in today is highly censored, and opinions no longer amaze, rather views pre-determined are enforced and imposed on people. It is like, if you are born in a particular set-up, then you have to salute that existing set-up because that’s the obvious thing to do, even if it’s the most backward of all set-ups ever established. We are all familiar with the politics of hate and harm that is raging like a wild fire, burning and annihilating everything coming in its way, and it is more dangerous now, because society is akin to the fuel of that fire instead of acting like the fire-extinguisher. I see the water rising above the danger mark and what will come next can’t be predicted and it shouldn’t be predicted! Globally there’s this Rightist Revivalist movement growing day by day, country to country. If a third world war is hard to forsee in the near future due to mutual deterrence, a second cold war but seems to be inevitable! Political socialization again has to conform to the rising cacophonies of those who govern. Fascist tendencies that first attack the intellectual spaces are now seen in rife, and more so it is made to look natural. If Antonio Gramsci’s thought of Hegemony is applied here for a better understanding: he said that the web of beliefs and social relations are projected as acceptable with hegemony as the characteristic of capitalist society where family, school, church and other primary groups play a leading role in creating consent, it keeps the system going- his structures of hegemony comply for a capitalist society, but arguably it also is playing out for any society or country, where you need the status quo to continue- people are being fooled, and they do not even realize that.
Apart from the political aspect, in our social relations, things do not seem calm as well. Those misfit, abnormal souls that find the wrongs, are hurt by it, want to help the people around, are impeded by the chain of thoughts the social institutions build around them to block their line of thoughts- they are subjected to doubts, questioned conditionally without any fault of theirs. It hurts- it does. The rage suppressed inside starts accumulating- and it is genuine; because this is the rage that has to be positively converted into the forces of change. No change occurs overnight, we realize this sooner or later when our idealistic whims are shattered like a house of glass- we are asked to be practical. At times people (normal ones) would lure the misfits to conform- you see such people doing good in their lives by turning blind on all the injustices around, you are tempted to follow the same and why not, you think. Then either we can start pretending as they do, or we return to our originality. And it gets even more painful when you feel that if you can see the wrong, why can’t others see that. The simple answer to that is they are blind or at least can’t take the intensity of progessvie light that is the normal vision for you. People do things that are easy, they tempt you to do things that are easy because society rewards it; collective minds are not always adamant to achieve the best through the difficult ways and so it is. If you think differently, be prepared to be questioned, doubted, judged in different ways- people question new things, not the customary normal ones.
It is upto the abnormal people like us, who feel for every bad thing in the world- we want to own up the responsibility to change it and legends have been doing it over and again. Not that we are the saviours and that we necessarily have to change each and everything overnight and bring in a tide of revolution- but we can create conditions for that, taking small steps, enfolding minds close to you in your island of efforts. And to do that you have to be the humanist first!
And those normal people out there who consider it easy to conform to the usual standards- thank God everyday, for the normal test reports; you cannot do much!
—Sana Shah
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