Tuesday, 23 January 2018

Messianic Utopianism



                                                         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.



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