Daily Times

In our country, the rampancy of crimes taking place every day is appalling.

The nine-o-clock news bulletin has become unbearably depressing. The unethical media coverage and sensationalism has contributed more to the depression and anxiety prevalent due to these incidents.

Misreporting and sensationalising incidents of rape, murders and other barbaric acts reflect the lack of empathy and ethics in our code of conduct. It is nothing but symptomatic of our violent behaviours and aggression. It has become a vicious cycle.

A society begets a face that it draws upon itself. The nature of our social interactions reflects our societal constructions and myths that we attach with human values and culture.

These pervasive behaviours eventually scatter us across fault lines of the kind that are presently at fullest display within our social milieu. It seems like an orchestrated ingression of these pervasive gateway behaviours. These behaviours have somehow gained acceptance, and determined our collective choices.

Absolutism, elitism and individualism are the top popular gateway behaviours that are displayed indiscriminately across every quarter of our society, and that too, in the most strenuous forms. One comes across to these behaviours as soon as one gets involved in various spheres of quotidian life.

Absolutism dissuades a society’s abilities to appreciate and accept the alternative narratives and precludes peaceful dialogue. It stagnates the growth of a society

These range from road driving ethics to grocery errands; from routine official interactions to negotiating business contracts; and from availing maintenance services to inciting social dialogue around globally acclaimed values. Consequently, adjectives congruent to the globally recognised social values such as integrity, genuineness, modesty, tolerance, fairness and civility remain in to our society deplorably conspicuous by their absence.

Every person of our society displays undoubted belief in his/her [made up] absolute conviction, no matter, without carrying any reasonable credentials thereto.

We are profoundly absolutist in our approach to life and mostly rely only on our undaunted conviction, which we are not ready to recheck at all.

The societal order, shaped up by individual absolutist mindset, thus ought to defame and ridicule any alternative connotations and thereby chooses to take pride in further expounding absolutist mentality. In matters of collective interest, such as upholding the mantra of responsive citizenry, appreciating legendry wisdom, promoting collectivism, human rights, compassion, merit and societal responsiveness, society hereby has chosen to remain relentlessly absolutist.

Absolutism dissuades a society’s abilities to appreciate and accept the alternative narratives and precludes peaceful dialogue. It stagnates the process of a society.

It is our societal absolutism that we, a large proportion of the society even after witnessing worst forms of barbaric behaviours, could not challenge our parochial and fractioned mentality. We are too absolutist in holding our sectarian, ethnic and social denominations that we hate improvement and betterment on our own situation.

Elitism is also one of the most pervasive behaviours.

Individualism is another one of the prevalent behaviours here. Seldom one could find someone aspiring the collective good or communal benevolence. It is a matter of societal degradation. It is a matter of looking down collectivism as a popular value. Most of the well qualified professionals are found across every walk of life chasing only a staunch career in pursuits of individualistic aspirations without any appreciation of the role one could have played at collective scale especially if serving at important positions in public service domains. [What a pity!!]. It is not only a shortsightedness that it seems. It is only a popular way in our society of approaching professional career with an individualistic lens. Across every walk of life in our society, it is the individual interest that drives our social and economic endeavours and subsequent proceedings. A people so much obsessed with individual interest ought to go to any extent in the wake of safeguarding its individualistic choices. The conduct that emerges in pursuits of safeguarding these individual interest could no longer differentiate the divide between what is right and what is wrong. Individualism by inciting compromise of merit hence paves ways for corrupt practices that further aggravates hatred, violence and abuse in the society.

The scholarship of a society does not depend only on the coverage of formal schooling. These values will have to become a popular narrative to replace the clerical fantasies in order to repair our social fabric. The day believers of pluralism, egalitarianism and collectivism will outnumber by practice the followers of hatred, violence and abuse, the society would starts taking up leaps towards the enviable moral heights.

It is the social scholarship that could help us implant opportunities to learn to appreciate and exhibit pluralism, egalitarianism and collectivism. The scholarship could be fostered through, among others, garnering and expanding literature and academic faculties. Our writhing and torn social fabric immediately desires the literary fraternity who should take this up by intensifying its endeavours towards promotion of greater societal values and behaviours. The academia also owes the crucial responsibility to intensify the formal academic faculties in ways that help nurture the much sought after social scholarship. What are we waiting for?

The writer is a citizens’ voice

Published in Daily Times, April 16^th 2018.