Newyork Syndrome
“For that we never possess, how can we be insecure about losing it?”
Human existence has been about survival against the odds, may it be in the fire-lit cave of ice-age man or in Nolan’s sci-fi movie Interstellar. The simplest deal about survival is possession of resources and trust on the group. As a caveman, we have, for most of the humanity’s lifetime, learnt that having food and water in your bag, firewood and flint around your waist, and your family by your back helps us survive. We are so obsessed with our survival as an individual that trust is one of the biggest issues. Thus, to keep our backs safe, we choose our loved ones to be in our team. These evolutionary traits of having a need to possess and own have been a modern curse as the nature of challenges and relationships have changed rapidly but our instincts are still the same.
On the noisy downtown subway running on line-1, a daily commuter, wearing a black long coat, layered with an oldish black suit, pale white shirt and black tie, was sitting on one of the seats in the train. He is constantly fed by the ocean of information starting from newspaper to billboards, radio to television and magazines to books. He was suffering from Newyork Syndrome. He was amongst a crowd of stoic faced individuals, fetching information from all ends and trying to digest it. Silently killing him from with were those boards on the top corner of the subway reading: Diamonds are not forever, call 1800-DIVORCE for service | Empty pockets? file Bankruptcy (1800-BNKRPTC). The left most train wall says Why are you here?. As he tries to distract himself from this information by looking at a person, he is faced with a cold interrogative gaze Why the fuck are you looking at me? Unable to grasp empathy, he lives a life in the background of other’s life. As he deboards the train, a hurling crowd pushes him to his workplace in an anonymous corner of New York which is marked only by a street and avenue number. A black wooden desk and a chair wait for him as he walks through the aisle of cubicles, full of identically dressed, identically faced individuals, trying to concentrate on something more important than their own life. He finds himself tied in the cobweb of unfathomable things, in middle of apathetic souls, and hence giving up on his try to live, he just starts existing. Friday evening is all he aims for so that he can drive to Rich people’s bar and waste his week’s earning. He finds no better waste of his money than trying to live few moments in the corner of the bar having an emotion-filled conversation one of his friends, who he assumes to be empathetic to his scenario but he is not sure. He fucks his girlfriend and they end up sleeping without a meaningful conversation because both are tired of living the whole week. Wasting most of the Saturday due to the hangover, they go out for a walk or a ride to friend’s place in the evening. Sunday is more of the day to get the house back in shape, cook for the week, wash the clothes for five more days in life. Their relationship suffers from the boredom of existence, disconnection of their lives, and insecurity of departure. Half of their mental space is occupied by speculations of each other’s lives, trying just to figure out if the other person still loves you. The another half grey matter is burnt in worry, tension and stress of earning more money, not getting fired, and climbing the ladder of success. The vanity of possession of material wealth and of love has doomed both souls in the darkness of a masked existence.
As we see it from the balcony, it is clear to us that each of the souls exists in the background of other souls. Everyone is suffering from Newyork Syndrome but none is ready and none is able to empathise with one other. Now see to yourself, aren’t you feeling the same? Let me tell you this phenomenon is not specific to New York. We all suffer from it to different degrees of severity. The philosophical construct of Social Contract and defining the meaning of existence by one’s ownself has been constructing glass walls around all of us. Strangled in the glass cabinet, we try to hide our emotional self from society, showing the smile which didn’t hold any value on our face. And as we see everyone around us enjoying the luxuries of consumerist society, smiling and swaying to the rhythm of the current state of society, we feel philosophically disconnected with them. We start believing that we are the only one and that everyone else is perfect. Sometimes, we dare think that some are also suffering from same social anxiety and take a hop to ask them the questions. A philosophical inquiry is perceived as a potentially unsettling threat, and hence we are often faced with retaliation or cold responses. We take a step back, finding our solace in our cocoon. However, humans are a social animal, we need people to connect to. The Internet’s one of the biggest inventions comes to our rescue (or that is what we feel). We log on to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. We create WhatsApp, WeChat and Snapchat accounts. We start living the life we feel is acceptable and is shared by rest of the society. We are one more conformist in the web of conformists, portraying our false self. This conformism is an evolutionary gift to human kind, as we feel that if we don’t conform, we will be outcast and hence our chances of survival will be low. Just like in old caveman days, we will be left to freeze to death in the cold wintery night. In the quest for survival, we fail to ask Are we living an authentic life?
The challenge here is not to be to possess, succeed and have your name on bronze plates screwed to walls of the streets. The challenge is to live an authentic life, trying to understand our existence and live it. It has been important now to understand that being a conformist might not be a key to survival but an attitude to question for the sake of authentic life may be the key. There the challenges were physical, here the challenges are emotional and intellectual (maybe spiritual too). The nature of challenges have changed, and so we need to change our approach to solving them. We yearn for a Socratic way of life. As a daily commuter stops on a piazza to ask a stranger What do you think is love?, they both gain more clarity on what their lives are about. An honest and Socratic conversation about simple things of life like food, dressing, relationships and work maybe the key to understanding our own existence. We have failed to look into the purpose of our actions. We do it for they are pleasurable. Pleasure has been a positive feedback to our quest for survival till now. However, this is the time to question it. Should we choose pleasure over purpose? How beautiful will it be to sit in a street side cafe and talk about why, how and what food to eat? Rather than whining about fruitless life to a drunk friend in a noisy pub, how about we choose to have an honest conversation about How can we live life more soundly or authentically? at home as we chop vegetables for the salad. Newyork Syndrome is deeply rooted in the society, but it is not the unsolvable problem. All we need is an intent to be a sensitive and empathetic listener, an honest and transparent communicator, and make a conscious choice between purpose and pleasure.
-Harsh Parikh