I am
I am the seething pain in the heart of a 5 year old that saw his world shattered by the missile of a remotely controlled drone. I am the helplessness of the boy who stands an orphan in the face of an alliance of the world’s 5 strongest nations, pouring in resources and military personnel to fight proxy wars from remote parts of the globe. I am the questions that bundle in the mind of a 13 year old setting his father’s pyre on fire. As the flames of hell wrap his body in warmth on a chilly morning, it insulates him from the embarrassment of unpaid loans garnered at tremendous rates because government bodies failed. I am the shame, guilt and fear in the mind of a 18 year old who has been invaded upon with no remorse by a drunk man in the streets of a metropolitan. The hands of law were too busy masturbating a male patriarchy to come to my protection. I am a crumbling democracy, raped by oligarchs, monopolists, capitalists and incumbents alike. A nation ripped apart by its pseudo-intellectuals, guardians of culture and religions standing without action as disaster after disaster strikes the lives of its citizens.
I am anarchy. The vengeance in the mind of a 20 year old who struck a bullet in the head of his late grandfather’s business rivals. The kind of vengeance that leads the likes of Alexander and Genghis Khan to conquer lands and gives birth to empires and emperors. I am the kind of distrust that brings along a horde of lawyers and strictly enforced contracts each time we have to agree upon something. The kind that turns a constitutional framework into my bitch. With enough money I could buy entire constituencies out. Democracy is on sale and I am out shopping. I am a capitalist looking to replace entire workforces with a machine, who couldn’t care less about their families. Need to buy that island off the coast before it submerges in water. I am a god man who entered the Forbes list building upon a FMCG empire leveraging belief in religion and nationalism to put 4 billion dollars in my valuation.
I am you. You are me. We are the same. Subject to the tortures of the geopolitical frameworks of our time. Stuck in a system that couldn’t care less about your rotten existence. Almost waiting upon a larger force to come fix things. Scrolling, sharing, liking, commenting — upon the perils of our time. As if revolt in the digital era involves sitting comfortably in our couches and waging wars where words become bullets and hoards of likes turn to tankers. We discuss and ponder over what could be the most stressing issues of our time. There are many. Or maybe there are none. We could be the issue ourselves. Our inaction, lack of empathy and trust in the ones running in the show could be the issue. Does it even matter ? All of what we value is crumbling, and yet we continue to be foolish in our hope of a fix.
The biggest mistake of our time is the faith we put upon a select few whose only achievement is the deception of the masses. With enough bottles of liquor and statutes any number of people and their votes can be bought. The kind of social issues the world faces today are not the kind that don’t have a fix. They exist, solely because they benefit someone at the other end. The state of sanitation we see, forced prostitution, farmer suicides, heck even bad education, all of it is profitable. In such a scenario the free market, entrepreneurship and technology are the only ones that even the odds. Until the entities that profit off others misery are strong armed into a different mode of operation, they’ll continue to exist as is. Uber’s ability to disrupt unions around the globe and to infuse artificially intelligent drivers running swarms of cabs in the future is an ideal example of the same. Our inability to understand that there is no external force that can fix global issues, and that we are the last hope of this ailing planet is what leaves us comfortable with inaction over the atrocities we see today. The beautiful side of all this, is that the free market incentivizes those that can do this effectively. The ugly side however, is our inaction. A generation that has been raised being told what to do, how to think and none of the why can rarely ever stand on its own feet or think for its own. Unfortunately, we are also the generation that will pay heavily for the sins of our ancestors. Innovation, better thinking and problem solving are therefore not an added benefit, but rather a need of our time. At the end of the day — actions do speak louder than the words we utter on facebook while trying hard to make dramatic displays of intellectualism. Until we take matters into our own hands, we will be left with all that I am. A canvas of pain, framed in bones and skulls of the innocent, wet with the tears and blood of the gullible, depicting a tale of deceit and malice, amusing the guilty.
