Story of a Cursed Generation
Ever wonder what would it be like to be a worm or creature without brains feelings to understand our actions. Simply do whatever they are programmed to do. We evolved from mindless creatures to beings that has the ability to destroy its entire existence by their own creation. The problem is when we talk about how we have the ability to destroy our own existence we only talk about the big things-the wars, the use of atom bomb. However we rarely talk about what the little things are changing lives as we speak. We talk about our perception about the world . How the knowledge we consume is putting a toll on our soul.
To better understand what the problem is we must understand the key differences between the previous society and the new one. In previous society the wealth only centered around the very few people (Even fewer than the 1% of the one percent). Those were age of kings and emperors. Art ,literature and philosophy was a luxury that could be afforded by those lucky few. Yes no matter how we look at it we have progressed so far. More people die for obesity than hunger now. And the so called inequality still exist, and sometimes spikes (every century faces threats of leaders such as Hitler .We now have Trump, Modi and such people who motivate racial segregations) But still we are in a position where we can at least address it in a civil manner. We have actual laws to give people their rights. But we don’t realize that just like food and normal human rights we also have more access to more art, literature and a huge source of entertainment to keep our mind “Happy”. But this is the problem. We barely even know what we want, we never question how we came to be such rational beings and have such rational set of needs. No matter how we try to ignore our deep desires and impulses those things always pop up in the most unexpected moments and because of our inability to address those impulses we suffer the most.
We often forget to address why religion such as Christianity and Islam became so popular and powerful. It is not just because polytheism is utterly pointless or cannot satisfy logic . But these were the first religion which actually talked about all sorts of people. While the old gods preferred kings and queens these gods offered more power to general masses. People always loved the story of how kings suffers and dies and normal beings. But in these stories normal people could attain more pleasure and happiness than the richest of the kings. These religions actually gave normal people the rights to be something bigger than themselves. This is the first time people got rules that could satisfy their needs by logic as well in a socio-economic perspective.
But the problem is those still don’t satisfy the needs of modern times. Yes the so called better or richer parts of the world went through the enlightenment age and people came to touch with a lot of new philosophy that do not judge their action as much as the previous one and yet provide better ways to deal with the world. However to talk about those philosophy from this back part of the world is still a luxury. Because these new philosophy always lacks clarity. And there is still no answer for that. Communism and a few other revolution gave few of the answers but most of them are still excluded from a huge amount of people.
However we are not unaware about how the lives filled with so called love pleasure and luxury would look like. Now more than ever. Since the last few centuries the literature and art became part of our lives. They showed us how we could live a better life. A more meaningful life. And once we became aware of it its hard to ignore it. In the age of Netflix ,social media and internet everyone wants love ,everyone wants life filled with luxury and everything. We want money ,cars and luxury but within a short time. Again we want respect with that .We want to be loved by all. We want perfect love. Then again we long for sex. Because even the housewives who never actually experienced romance now see it from teledrama. Even a little kid with internet access can stumble upon pornography . Everyone now sees what life with luxury could look like. But we don’t know how to regulate our needs. Religion ,justice and social norms can only do so much. It is in our nature to want be accepted by society ,yet again we cannot ignore our impulses. And after few bittersweet experiences we understand what we want or not. But these often leaves us with trauma. And the everlasting cycle of anxiety and depression never ends. There is no definition about the boundaries and the balances that we can make to take choices. If we want a life of pleasure we are already far away from society , but again if we live a life only by small things we never live a happy life. And everyone has to suffer that.
It is high time we try to define the small balances. And accept how other people find happiness in those balances. Yes it is not that easy. Wonder a people who work hard to earn money but has less friends. Society will judge him as being sad . Then again someone living honest lives may also feel bad times when people judge him for being poor. The problem here is people are going through so much. We have already set a limit for the perfect way of things. But we don’t know where to set the balance, the boundaries. But even if we do know we still suffer from this endless misery of not being accepted by others.
This is the curse of the generation. We have the ability to see through and go through so much. But we only have the ability to achieve very few. We do not know the tools to justify our actions based on modern society. And even when we are satisfied with what we want rest of us can’t be. We are cursed not because we have the knowledge, its because not all of us have the tools how to deal with the knowledge.
