- Worst part of life
Living in the 21st century, we presume everything to be just right, mechanical – ideal. In this race of being the best and counted with the rest we have led ourselves into a dark hole from where turning back isn’t possible without a serious commitment…
It is well said:
“Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was ‘digitisation’ which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. ‘An aesthetic holocaust!’”
―Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
This is the perfect definition for modernism.
Listening to my grandparents talk about the independence of 1947, I get rapt by the patriotism they had. Sacrificing everything — money, property, loved ones — to come and live in freedom. For them it was an experience worth the sacrifice. The freedom to practice their own religion, living the life with no fear of death — living in a neighbourhood where there is no more hiding. This just reminds me of an Oscar Wilde saying:
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
With literacy rate of barely over 40 per cent people cannot understand the importance of religion or the importance of moving along with the world
Each year on the 14th of August, we celebrate the spirit of sacrifice; we sit together and reminisce over our ancestral sacrifices. What we conveniently forget is that those sacrifices were made for us, so that we don’t have to live in a place where it is hard to speak and harder to be recognised. A place where no one will be killed in the name of religion and no one will have to hide.
Let’s face it! Over the past decade, it’s like the tables have turned, people have forgotten all about their religion and the sacrifices our elders made for this country but most importantly, for us!
It’s amazing how we use the phrase “enlightened moderation” to simply and quite conveniently get away and deviate from the right path. They say God created the devil so that man could differentiate between right and wrong, I believe it’s true. But God also created the devil to provide a balance in the universe. Just like you have an enemy for every friend, you have good over bad.
But our lives these days can be summed up in one quote by Mark Twain
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
People have slowly moved the equator from their lives. We have clearly divided ourselves into two groups – orthodox and modernist. There is no balance in our society. We have given ourselves up, to the people who just want to control us. As C.JoyBell C. said:
“We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don’t even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time for us to let ourselves be loved.”
The question is how we define this era of modernisation and how it has affected our society. A simple example can be the use of technology. Modernisation has led to a “boom” in the technology sector. New and expensive smart phones, launch of various social networking internet sites and most importantly, it has led to exposure. The youth has been influenced by these fancy new gadgets and advancement and takes it as a sign of disgrace if they don’t follow the trends.
They can neither live away from such a lifestyle nor can they afford to live it. They have to make a choice between the two worse scenarios for them. This is where the division in our society starts. The clash begins when the person decides to get affected by the peer pressure! He starts doing things which might be unethical in order to get noticed, gain recognition and considered to be cool.
Whether it’s the orthodox group who have decided to kill innocent people every day or the modernists; they adapt the western culture and idealise the western society.
The problem is in the way of thinking. Our approach towards a certain issue in our society is very limited and is over shadowed by our enthusiasm for Islam. We don’t need to change ourselves. Because if we do, we will only make over ancestral sacrifices look like a suicide.
With literacy rate of barely over 40 per cent people cannot understand the importance of religion or the importance of moving along with the world. There is always a moderate path that can be followed — we can learn different languages, as a hobby not as a compulsion; we can learn about different cultures, study them without idealising them.
As TJ Clark said in Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism
“Modernism had two great wishes. It wanted its audience to be led toward a recognition of the social reality of the sign (away from the comforts of narrative and illusionism, was the claim); but equally it dreamed of turning the sign back to a bedrock of World/Nature/Sensation/Subjectivity which the to and fro of capitalism had all but destroyed.”
As a third world nation we are living a dilemma; which is the worst part of our lives. We need to get our priorities straight so that we know how to live a life that is acceptable to both; our religion and this world.