I sometimes wonder about the people in the generation before mine. They seem to be so confused about their identity. They seem lost trying to find their place between the liberals and the conservatives. They choose selectively when they want to be liberal and when they want to be conservative, depending on the situation presented to them. Most of the times this leads to very confusing outcomes for all involved making then look almost hypocritical.
Maybe the reason for that is the exposure that we have. Not to say that they are not exposed to things but i think exposure when you are younger makes you look at things with more tolerance. When you are older, the convictions you hold become prejudices. Prejudices are hard beasts to break.
We are living in a rapidly changing world, faster travel is making our societies homogeneous. We have large migrant populations and that causes a lot of lines to become fuzzy. Even though they are different, the migrants have one common factor, xenophobia. I remember school. I went to St. Vincent's High school in Pune, this is a school run by Jesuits and is situated in the Bori hartland of Pune. You can imagine the cross-section of people studying with and teaching me. Even here there was a very clear Maharashtrian lobby, the Marathi language uniting them. That obviously led to the non-marathi junta bonding.
This did create a rift but the teachers did see to it that there were no weird groups coming up. One thing they did was to enforce the mandatory speaking English in school. That aside, the point I am trying to make is that I did learn a very important lesson in school, the hard way of course, to co-exist with different kinds of people and not hold prejudices about people based on their backgrounds or lineages.
As far as I can remember this was never discouraged, to the contrary this was encouraged. But the boundaries were never set, not explicitly at least. Maybe at that point it was cool to have sociable kids. On top of that there was unrestricted access to plethora of books, TV channels and the Internet. That made my view of the world far more homogeneous. I never remember ever saying "your people" and "our people" in any context. In fact I consider that offensive. I am a product of an era which had the Mandal commission and the OBC reservation bill. The way we form my social circles cannot be based on some archaic set of rules. Those rules may have helped in the past but now, at least to me, they have very little meaning. In fact I don't even understand their relevance in the current social context.
Is experience alone the only basis on which decisions become valid or invalid? I believe experience is only one part of the story. It tells you some choices which you have made are either right or wrong but what about the set of choices that you have to choose from. What if that is limited? Will you be apt enough to make a good choice? The choices you have are a function of your exposure levels. A good choice is made with a combination of experience and exposure. That said, I think that I am not way off in the statements that i made in the previous paragraph. I may be low on experience but my exposure levels are definitely on the higher side.
When things come to some important decisions though this whole notion of a homogeneous society is thrown out of the window. Take marriage for instance. I have seen this happen so many times. Twenty - something year olds are expected to somehow acquire a more conservative approach to the whole "Indian-way" of finding a mate.
Something there is ludicrous at the very core. Leave alone the shift in ideology for a minute, look at the psychology of the whole situation. Independence has been taught and encouraged in kids for the last 'n' years but suddenly the independence is pulled from under his feet. What do you expect this kid to do? The only thing he can do is to rebel. The absolute absurdity with which most people deal with a situation like this amazes me. Experience, that is taunted all the time is nowhere to be found. People suddenly become like children who won't listen and who won't stop throwing a tantrum until they get the bright red candy in the store. The idea that young lives and vibrant futures can be sacrificed for a whim or a set archaic set of rules is just so hideous.
With smaller decisions it is easy to relent and given in, but with the bigger ones it is just plain difficult. How do you argue with some one who is twice your age about prejudice? Prejudices and stereotypes are so difficult to fight over because most of the time they don't have logic attached to them or the whole underlying concept is so old that nobody remembers why the stereotype came about. What do you do in a situation like this? Where do you begin a conversation and where do you end it? It seems like a concrete wall which is unsurmountable. I am certain there is a way out and an answer can be found. I hope to do that some day and I am sure it will be one heck of day.
It is high time though that the white hair comes to play and people realize that if they think they have created Frankenstein then the onus is on them to accept it and move on. It is too late in the game to rework the monsters they made.
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