Reality, Stupidity, Hypocrisy And Humanity - Santosh Jha (best novels for beginners .txt) 📗

this innocuous-sounding food poisoning kills ten times more Americans than what terrorist attacks kill every year!

Also check this – Politicians globally are prompt to declare terror as the worst enemy of humanity. People also love to believe that terrorism is the worst trouble of contemporary world. However, this is also only perception, which politicians love to sell for their own petty needs. Every year, around the world, around one lakh people die of snakebites. We all know that in 2015, around only 28,000 people were killed in terrorist strikes. So, can we say, snakes are the worst enemy of humanity…!

Every year around 12 lakh people die in road mishaps. This is 40 times more than what terrorist could kill. So, can we say, roads are the worst enemy of humanity…! Every year, around eight lakh people commit suicide. So, more than 28 times more people kill themselves than terrorist could. So, can we say depression or self-harm tendencies are the worst enemy of humanity…!

It is very clear, nothing else but humanity’s very own ‘intelligence’, which makes it accept million shades of stupidities is the worst enemy of humanity. We have become too intelligent and this ‘intelligence’ is killing us like stupids…!

Globally, the experts in warfare and especially those who are geniuses of terrorist psychologies and strategies have been warning media and politicians not to talk about terrorism in such emotionally charged ways. They say, accept terrorists as slightly more than average criminals and let the state deal with them with iron hands like all criminals. They warn that when we speak of terrorism as something like the worst scourge of humanity, after every terrorist strike, we are actually praising what terrorists aim at. We actually boost their confidence. Terrorists wish us to feel threatened and when we say, terrorism is the worst enemy, we only in fact validate their mission…

The realism remains; politics and politicians should never be blamed for such ‘smoke-management-skills’. Perceptions apart, the truth is – a nation’s problems and their solutions are not in the exclusive domain of politics. It is majorly in the domain of family, society and culture. Administrative failure is only a small part of nation’s mismanagement. The major share of trouble lies in individuals, families, societies and cultures. Stupidities and hypocrisies of masses are the prime culprit. The prime culprit is human mechanism of consciousness, which thrives on stupidities and hypocrisies.

It is so easy and satisfying to shift the onus of all troubles on others. This gives us huge joy and our egos get huge boost. We all are deeply infatuated with this hypocrisy of blaming others and some ‘fake-realism’ for our trouble. This artistry of convenience of life-living makes it possible for smart people to hide their own weaknesses.

Politicians however get the majority of blame for this art. They should not as chief culprits are people. If people make someone a President or Prime Minister, who is master of the craft of ‘perception-intelligence’, then who is to be blamed? Naturally, the primary blame is on human body-mind mechanism, which is wired for such behavior.

The truth is – One gets, what one seeks and accepts. As masses all over the world are stupid enough to seek and accept ‘smoke’, the attention towards ‘real fire’ is missing and this fire is slowly engulfing them all. This ‘taste’ of 90%-soda liquor is calamitous but our consciousnesses are wired for it. As this fire is raging unattended, loads of more smoke is also coming out. Hypocrisies of seeing and accepting ‘smoke’ makes ‘Hero’ out of those, who are brilliant marketers and brand managers of perceptions.

The real battle is not being fought against true troubles of nations and people but about who wins in installing his perceptions as truth. This is the stupidity and hypocrisy, not exclusive to India, USA or few nations but globally, this is the common singular disease of humanity – not exclusively in political domain but primarily in individual and societal domains.

There are loads of perceptional elements in populist idealisms. That is why, there is this need to check and recheck the utility and worth of what average men and women accept as the ‘Be Yourself’ viscerality. There are loads of stupidity embedded in the populist perceptions about so many ideas and idealisms in contemporary cultures. We need to ‘unlearn’ them to stand as self-actualized rational human being.

This symbolism to celebrate stupidity is primarily aimed at being aware of personal stupidities. It is an innocent assertion of the Reality that our body-mind mechanism may be the primary culprit of our subconscious stupidities and hypocrisies but as a conscious being, we can and we must accept that this is disastrous not only for us but for humanity as a whole. This must be unlearnt. We cannot continue to live by our innate instincts. We are rational beings and consciously, we can make our lives as well as the world a better place by unlearning our mechanismic stupidities and hypocrisies.

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Background Continues…

Change has never been that important and option-less as it is now. We all live in a contemporary culture, which needs to change drastically. There are larger issues of hypocrisies and stupidities, which have become part of our popular cultures. There are perfunctory pursuits of pop benchmarks of successes, a passion-oriented worldview of karma and life’s purposes. We need to opt for a journey that takes us far away from the stupidity of self-worth, calculated in terms of personal utility, individualistic possession and unfettered consumption. The hypocrisies, which the popular benchmarks of the societal notions fill up our professional as well as personal universe with, the hypocrisy of art and lies about idealisms, are taking a toll on our wellness and personal excellence. This is high time we all need to change.

Interestingly, it is this pop culture and milieus filled up with hypocrisies, which make us defend status quo. It is this inertia of comfort with the current hypocrisy that makes us say, “Why do you want to change me? Why cannot you accept things with me as they are? After all it is my life… and what’s wrong if I live happily with my truths… I do have the right to do so… and why not?...” etc..

One can say, why not… this looks like a very just desire… a very simple and honest requirement, not to mention that it is the core-idea of modern liberal philosophy. And, these are not modern words. Since millions of years, man has been mouthing them and today, it is a popular social benchmark of all successful people. The questions have ‘singular’ answer, though not acceptable! The populist mantra, which pampers you saying, “Be Yourself” is something the markets and economics make you believe in. Being yourself is a sure call for you to remain as indecisive as you are and keep drifting with the populist benchmarks of self-worth, calculated in terms of personal utility, individualistic possession and unfettered consumption. This suits the bazaar and liberal economy.

Look at some facts available in public domain:

The world is facing unprecedented food crisis. About one billion people worldwide are starving and many nations facing unprecedented food-crisis. This despite the fact that global food storage is 1.5 times the food requirement, growth in food production is higher than population growth. Interestingly, many nations, having large chunk of hungry population, have surplus of food production and storage and markets are flooded with food stuffs but the buyers have gone away as large many of them can’t afford them.

The singularity of truth is that the crisis is all man-made, the problem being structural, not real but it has no acceptance with larger population and leaderships. Now, sample some facts that are also common knowledge for almost all those who are aware and concerned:

• 80% of world’s food products are consumed by only 20% of affluent people, rest of 80% people has to struggle with remaining 20% food. One billion people worldwide face starvation and hunger.

• 70% of USA’s food grains are used as cattle-feed to raise beef output for human consumption at cheap rates. Cereal prices have risen many times.

• A large chunk of productive lands of the world are being used to raise sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, and some other products that are largely consumed by 20% of the affluent people of the world. None of them has good nutrient value, rather they are unhealthy, leading to myriad of diseases.

• World’s best lands are being used to produce cash crops at the cost of cereals, making cost of poor man’s food rise beyond their meager purchasing power.

• 5% of developed and developing nations’ grain coverage areas have been diverted to raise biofuels to make fuel for cars cheap. As per experts, this has caused food prices to go up by 75%.

• Large tracts of productive forestlands of poor nations are being cleared to raise cattle to supply them as beef consumption of USA and Europe. Etc.

• Productive agro-lands, hitherto producing cereals are being made available for construction of apartments, malls and multiplexes.

• Farmers providing food to you is now a misnomer. Farming is growingly being overtaken by corporate. Today three big companies control the world’s grain trade. A Chemical giant controls three-fifths of seed production.

• Over 10% of food is wasted globally by affluents as left-overs and selective-eating is on the up. America wastes around 40% of its food.

… and, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Still, we can say, “So..?, it is my life, my choice of my truth…! I may like to eat a lot of sugar; the cakes, pastry and sweets… what’s your problem… it’s my life… what harm am I doing to anybody?” The harm is quite visible. It results in one billion people on earth going hungry as they cannot afford rising prices of wheat and rice. We have made something our daily consumption need, which is supposed to be a luxury!

One can say, “What I can do if a billion people are hungry, I did not ask them to come to this world… and, why on earth can they not work out what their problem is? … So foolish of them…!” And then, a quarter of world’s population becomes diabetic. The precious moneys are drained in medicines, hospitalization, lifestyle correction, lost productivities, which is at the cost of withdrawing the precious subsidies on food. Half of USA’s population is facing the epidemic called obesity, many nations have 20-30% population as obese and still, one billion people on this planet are starved and hungry. Another billion is malnourished. This truth is ‘No Truth’ as it is not ‘My Truth’.

A less than two-dollar burger with beef actually costs 35 dollars to the nation (half of USA’s water goes to raise cattle, etc) but then, “it is not ‘my truth’ so cannot be the ‘truth’…” Strange singularity! Billions of individual truths are emanating from the ‘singularity’ of one truth – the base human instinct of self-gratification… the ‘me-my life-my truth’ has 7 billion shades but the parent color is one – ‘self-gratification/Self-importance’… and, why should anyone want to change it… why?

Still, many cannot understand, why some people want to change this all… “God has created this all… whatever has happened, whatever is happening and whatever shall happen… if one billion people are dying of hunger then it is God’s trouble, or of those who say they are world leaders … only God knows what needs to be done, or politicians do … anyway, they will soon go to God… why should I bother… I am only doing what I think is right… and I have the right to do so… why not?”

They said, “a man’s right to stretch his hands ends where the nose of other starts”. And we are always very sure that we have this right to stretch our hands as far as possible. But then, we are far too many and far too closely huddled in this overly over-populated world. And, more importantly, we are far too linked in our individual destinies than we can