Messianic Utopianism
I came across this eloquent and weighty
phrase ‘Messianic Utopianism’ in an article by the learned Prof. Pratap Bhanu
Mehta as he recounted the best of writings in the year gone by. I could not root this phrase out of my head as
it comforted me against all the heinous happenings of the year that had gone
into sunset. I could not join the artificial euphoria of ringing in the new
year and ringing out the old with bursting of crackers, cutting of cake,
raising a toast to the arrival of annus mirabilis and with induced excitement
greeting family and friends on the skype, through the net and over the phone. (The
pleasure of those days when one went shop after shop, searching for the best of
greeting cards, writing personal notes and signing the cards and the postal
addresses and posting them in the mail box are no longer there; on the
contrary, such activities are today regarded as antediluvian, time wasting
tasks). Wordsworth’s sonnet The World is
too much with Us summed up my state on the First of January- one of profound
despair but paradoxically and mercifully pressed down by a glimmer of hope that
protects humanity from turning into lemmings which follow a course towards suicide
or mass destruction. The first four lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet published in
1807- more than two centuries back- seem prophetic as we are today engulfed in
our material pursuits that we hardly have any time to appreciate the lovely
world of Nature that the Creator has bequeathed to us
The
world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting
and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little
we see in Nature that is ours;
We
have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The fact is
we are out of tune with all that continues to remain beautiful around us.
Nothing moves us, nothing excites us, and we have to artificially hype
excitement and hysteria over the dawn of a new year. Hence this longing for messianic utopianism kept popping up in
my mind. We are as Browning says in his Bishop
Blougram’s Apology
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white -- we call it black.
We all know utopia is only an intellectual construction as no
utopia exists in the world. Utopia is a term to signify our impulse
toward some sort of ideal society that embodies a broad framework of values
such as righteousness, justice, humaneness and ethicalness – values that lend
themselves to implementation in our daily lives. These values when translated
in social terms, will mark a period of abundance and fertility, longevity, health
and absence of mental illness and physical disease. In Hinduism and Zionism
practiced in India and Israel, messianic utopianism is something equivalent to Ram Rajya, an ideal that is desired and
practicable, though unattainable. Even
Lord Ram’s efforts at establishing Ram
Rajya could not bear fruit as it meant sacrificing his consort Sita in a
unjust manner.
But this does not alter human desire for a divinely blessed utopian
world order and more so now than at any other time, when a unprecedented
churning is taking place in our personal, social and political spheres. There
is a perceptible change in today’s outlook, attitude, aspiration and wants.
Today’s generation is the selfie generation or the self absorbed generation.
This in conjunction with the social media have changed the ways people connect,
communicate, and relate to the world outside of themselves. Somewhere the
mistaken notion that selfie stands as an image for self empowerment has turned the inherent selfie narcissism on its head and affirmed
selfie’s negative values of vanity, self obsession, lack of empathy,
fragile self esteem and a deep need for
all time admiration as positive virtues. The plusses of the new age of internet in terms
of excellent and swift connectivity have been overtaken by an obsession with
Facebook and Twitter resulting in physical and psychic isolation. It is virtual
reality that has overtaken factual reality. The mental and personality
disorder, the increase in bipolarity, the illusory excitement of being in a
crowd where the crowd is no company have changed human relationships that had
earlier been bonded by sharing and caring for fellow beings. As the English poet, Philip Larkin in Vers de Societe’ writes “All
solitude is selfish”. The present day preoccupation with net surfing and twittering
or facebooking with selfies has brought a new connectivity sans connectedness.
On the political front, President Trump with his no holds barred tweets has
devalued and debased language. Though he is no trend setter but only a follower of many crass tweeters, one
dreads the coming of a new age of dark illiteracy that shuns all niceties,
politeness, etiquette and civility in the use of language. Political discourse
in India has reached a new low that encourages violence in action as much as in
words. The newspapers and the news channels headline gruesome violence against
women, political murders , juvenile acts of rage and killing, brutal assaults
that seem to have the blessings and approval of people in power and acts of
terrorism causing mass destruction. This
is not an Indian phenomenon; it is globally seen in the US-North Korea nuclear
missile one upmanship, the Dragon’s systematic intrusion into other territories
, building its military outposts, the perennial war between IS and the rest of
the non Muslim world, the daily firing at LOC between India and Pakistan with mounting
fatalities on each side, the solution-less Palestine problem with Israel and
last but not the least, the environmental disaster, the thoughtless rampage and plunder of Natural
resources resulting in aggravation of
climate changes. All these never ending conflicts pit Man against Man and Man
against Nature in all spheres of the world.
The silver lining in the midst of the
darkness visible is the fact that only a minuscule minority indulges in such
heinous acts while the majority wants peaceful co existence transcending all
divisions of religion, caste, class and gender. My bonding with messianic
utopianism is founded on the strength of this silent majority that believes in
humanity. While messianic utopianism is a divine ideal and not an earthly possibility,
the only thing left to mankind is to aspire for it. As Robert Browning says: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what's a heaven for?
Let us individually and collectively seek Messianic utopianism in our
words and actions. Again to quote Browning “ Love, hope, fear, faith--these
make humanity; /These are its sign and note and character”. Is it difficult to
understand that there is only one God who created this world? We call God by
many names but no one disputes the truth about one Power, one God, one Creator. All humanity is one in paying
obeisance to that one Power it believes in. It can be Allah or Vishnu or God the Father or Let each man follow his faith
without necessarily expecting everyone to follow him/her. Swami Vivekananada in
his famous Chicago speech stated: “As the different streams having their
sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea , so O Lord, the
different paths which men take through different tendencies , various though
they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee”.
On the social front, there are only two main genders and a cross between
them is the third gender. Again it is a ‘given’, bestowed on everyone of us as
his/her gender. Why thendiscriminate one
against the other or privilege one gender oer the other? Can anyone of us feel fine and healthy if our one little finger
throbs with pain? All parts of the body have to be free of pain and discomfort to make one
feel happy and healthy. Can I be safe if my neighbour’s house is on fire? Can
humanity survive if we convert the world into a jungle and fight one against
the other on matters that are personal to every individual both as a genetic
trait and hereditary acquirement? Let us recall what J.Krishnamurti wrote: “We are
second hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by
our inclination or tendencies or compelled to accept by circumstances. We are
the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us.” Once we
understand that we are what we are through our genetic inheritance, we can abstain
from frowning upon the rest of humanity for their genetic inheritance. Man alone among God’s creations is endowed
with the reasoning faculty. Do we give it up and allow animal passions to
overtake us and turn this world into a
jungle?
We have to ask ourselves this question: Can we live happily if we assert
a new aesthetics of tastelessness over aesthetics of beauty or aesthetics of
hate over aesthetics of love, or aesthetics of violence over aesthetics of
peace or aesthetics of barbarity over aesthetics of dignity- in short, can we be happy and at peace if we assert
aesthetics of inhumanity over aesthetics of humanity? Do we give up looking for peace, happiness, love and beauty in this
world? If the answer is no, let us
aspire for messianic utopianism however distant it may be.
