Definition

Sometimes a question arises in my mind, as to how to define myself. For that matter, how will you define yourself? Let us analyze the supposed answers. You will quote certain parameters saying at first, I am Mr/Ms/Mrs blah blah. Well, that would be your name and very nice to have your acquaintance, but that gives me a mere outer or superficial idea.
No, I do not ask for your genome map, still the name, caste, religion and other paraphernalia which you usually furnish as your ID proof, I am not asking for all that either. Those have been created by the society where you were born.
Sometimes I think all this identity business is the price we pay in exchange for our survival in a 'society', what do you say? And what to speak of the accrued conventions and rules over thousands of years that have been deigned as divine and thus final and binding. Aren't they more like oil in the bearings of this vast machine of the so called 'civilization'? Something, whose sheer brutality puts even the so called brutes to shame.
Oh I see! You have a perfect explanation. Reason and rationality. And what, I pray please tell me, is this rationality? As far as I see and believe, rationality in modern times is nothing more than an unconscious acceptance of the logical reasoning of a superior intellect, augmented or strengthened by use of the existing facts. However, we have had enough past experiences in the human history, and enough of them to prove that both the reasoning and the facts can be distorted and presented in a format that can be deceptive and manipulating.
Again reasoning in itself is an analytic and argumentative faculty. This is more or less is influenced by the surroundings and the mental conditioning we are forced into or to be more polite brought up as. So, we find people differentiating and fighting on petty basis of castes, religion and language, any of the above hardly being original to them. Also, the ways the facts are presented are of no less significance.
The means of communication and education are becoming more and more intertwined. TV, Cinemas, internet and so many other contraptions and enlightenments jumbled up together. Depiction and extolling of vices like crime and immoral habits. In the course books, the wars of barbarians are taught. The cultures deify warriors and wars; avarice is given new names as business and entrepreneurship. We are running a race like lemmings, only to finally commit suicide. A society that has become bereft of original thinking and humanitarian values which the greatest intellects and the softest hearts ever preached in the form of Buddha, Christ or Nanak or countless others. The only gods we worship are made of gold. A non conformist with the social notions of justice or anything for that matter is ostracized. Discrimination, linguistic or nationality based is rampant everywhere without an exception. The people are clashing and so are civilizations. The sheer amount of violence we perpetrate on our own race is mind numbing. Couple that to ever increasing lust of luxuries which are the breeding grounds of all the evils. What are left behind in this stampede are the reality and misery of hundreds of thousands of our own kind, to rot and decay and become the stuff for more history books.

The next question which arises is that of the exercise of free will and speech. Ever since human history can be traced we can see there have been curbs on the free will and thinking in some form or the other. Subservience to a higher authority maybe it is divine or some other form has always been present. Our parents decide what is good for us even after we are capable of completely taking care of ourselves. Any novel idea, if found not up to the understanding of the society is derided and termed as preposterous, however good may it be in reality. The freedom is then often exercised in other perverted forms taking the route of either drugs, alcohols or other such undesirable means. Though the link may not always be direct, some part can always be traced out. And the thoughts are the results of your social conditioning. Without a society to dictate you terms, what the thinking pattern would be is difficult to surmise. However a craving of this sort has and will always be there, as will be the eternal quest to find the answer to the ultimate question ‘Why?’

I could go on blabbering and still the result would be zero. I do not say I have any answers. I am as clueless and confused as any of you. But I dare raise the question, and I know that nobody else except me will give the answer and so I journey, to find one. Will you come along ?


DISCLAIMER:-

Thoughts are like waves in the ocean of the mind, hundreds and thousands of them. As in the ocean all waves are made of water but not any two are the same. They may seem so to a layman or an unobservant intelligent fellow too. Similarly thoughts echo but in different tones and if I am accused of any repetition of ideas, please bear with my human intelligence and capacity. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome all alike.