The greatest democracy in the world has been going through a dark phase in the last four years. A change no one ever anticipated. Challenging times reveal the true nature of human beings. In that sense, the previous four years exposed the deep-seated insecurities, anger, and pain in the American heart. It also revealed the love and compassion, a sense of fairness and justice in people's minds. A leader of a democratic nation reflects and many times amplifies people's psyche. The USA has a unique election system. Therefore, people who win the popular vote may not be the president, which happened last time. In that sense, it is comforting to learn that a vast majority of US citizens are not supporting the egotistic display that occurred over the last four years.
On the other hand, these challenging times strengthened my confidence in the democratic principles that this country is founded on. Even with so much scheming and dirty politics, democracy won in the end. One of my 2020 resolution was to read more books. It was a good decision, and I am glad that I stuck with it. I read two books in the early stage of a pandemic: "Nineteen Eighty Four" and the "Handmaid's Tale." While I liked both books, they are not the best ones to read when you feel the world is collapsing.
Both of them happen in a futuristic western society, where an oppressive regime is in power—a society where ordinary people do not have a voice. A society where some humans are more equal than others and "the others" are insignificant. At one point, I started getting paranoid, thinking that the whole COVID situation was scripted by someone in an attempt to collapse that human connection and society as we know of. Anyway, these two novels depict a worst-case scenario that could happen. But the truth is that all it would take is just one human being to change the world we live in now, to those in those dystopian novels. All it takes is just one human being! At least that did not happen in the USA. Many people were predicting such a scenario four years back. Yes, the US presidency is the most powerful political post in the world. But I am more than ever confident now that the true powerful entity is the people who cast a vote. These years also taught us, democracy and freedom are not free. Just like anything else in nature, everyone has to actively work together to maintain it.
Absolute power corrupts! A democratic nation always needs defenders of freedom. Who are the defenders of democracy? A strong opposition, free press, and educated citizens. Once democracy is lost, it is challenging to reinstate it.
When parties win with an absolute majority, most of the time those voicing against the minority, the supporters rejoice. Many people naively think that minorities take undue advantage and take away opportunities from the rest of the people. If the minorities are eliminated from a nation, do things would change for the better? I am not a political scientist. But taking a lesson from "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the autocrats always want to instill fear in people's minds. They want to distract people from real problems. If we "get rid of minorities," next there would be war, famine, pandemics, transformers, alien invasion….. well, anything that causes fear and uncertainty. As someone said, "(in politics) fear is a more powerful motivator than love."
Our society is changing rapidly. We can find out, without much effort, the whereabouts of pretty much anyone we are interested in without stepping outside our rooms. Well, that means each of our lives is out in the open now. Privacy is going to be a fictional state pretty soon. We are what we read and listen and see. Surprisingly, a vast majority of the US population gets news from Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. In this world where anyone with a smartphone can become a journalist, we will be handing over our freedom of thoughts to a bunch of lunatics if we are not very careful. The only thing we have control over, so far, is our mind. The time is here where we take responsibility for our thoughts. Eating junk food makes us diabetics. Feeding on junk news makes us puppets of the crafty people. In a not so far away future, truth and fiction could become hard to distinguish. At that time, all we have would be our own minds. Let's be proactive in keeping at least that under our control. Let's be mindful! Let's pay attention to our own thoughts! Let's meditate!
Well, today is another day of hope and course correction. I hope that humanity will learn from mistakes, move past the COVID and work together to bring out each of our creative best for a bright future of this planet and beyond!
No comments:
Post a Comment