In every crisis, scholastics tend to unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way out is for the horse to decide. But unless the horse and the cart are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by our supreme thinkers and their respective mouthpieces.
In the Manipur of today, that path is never towards maturity. The task has dithered in a distraction over the lesser of two evils, which has only turned out to be a detour along the same highway. On the calendar of standard-issue write-ups, the arguments and counter-arguments have offered, over the years, a relentlessly shrinking menu.
As now constituted, dissertative contests focus almost exclusively on the post mortem of events, and are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for constructive debate.
Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are matters exclusively for discussion in any public forum: the role of the underground, economic redistribution, crime, punishment, forest policy, AIDS, alcohol and drug dependencies, the corruption of the system.
The most significant outcome of the intellectual process is usually imposed on prospective readers almost as an afterthought. The consensus of the supposed issues makes up a readable agenda. And also an eminently forgettable one.
We have a recuring problem today in Manipur. Call it a shortage, call it a supply side problem, call it a broad reluctance to play the game. The idea of an appreciative reading class is a useful one that has served newspapers well for centuries. So why are its reactions outmoded, and who outmoded it?
Not too long ago, most writers possessed a bedrock of faith in the clarity, power, and reach of the media. And a great deal of it was justified. When thoughts and ideas occur freely, the maximum amount of consciousness is created for the largest number of people. There is no social system more effective for consciousness and wakefulness than the newspaper. But while papers today are efficient, there's nothing inherently inspiring about them.
Of course, the concept of inspiration is quite complex. The idea emanates from social comparison processes - our tendency to compare ourselves with our people - and the need for boosting levels of self-esteem. People have a need to believe that life is controllable, and that life's outcomes are fair. But life isn't always fair. Our circumstances are quite diverse and subject to chance events. Thus considered, any sense that true stimulation exists at all is an illusion. Albeit a widespread one.
How will you know if you are really commited to changes for the better? For finding and expressing ways to get out of darkness? There are several ways of finding this out. One is to ask yourself if you have always been yellow and slant-eyed, or if you are only yellow and slant-eyed on purpose.
Another way of finding out which class you belong to is by how well you sleep. If you wake up in the night and delight in the endless possibilities in the night sky, you are probably part of the select group of positive thinkers. If you are afraid of other people less often than other people are afraid of you, you are probably a snob or a violent criminal.
There is a distinct overlap between these two groups. If people you are speaking to do as they're told immediately and apologetically while you are not holding a gun, then you are most definitely in the group. Thinkers are hunched from years of careful reflection, not from necessity. Snobs and the unconcerned stand tall from a lifestyle of lifting noses away from the dirt and the stench.
Yore. There's a word you probably haven't seen used in a sentence for a while. Get ready to see it a lot more.
Lots of well versed readers will find their vocabularies strained to new limits trying to describe their dismay at how predictable and compliant the new writings are. And they will have lots more time and motivation to get out their thesauruses. The days of yore were the wondrous bygone times when there were actual, well-educated but idle thinkers sitting on fence-posts with pencil and paper, watching the brightly-clad peasantry bend picturesquely in the fields between moments of sheer genius.
I, for one, plan to be a poet as soon as I make sure I belong to the aristocracy of bestselling authors.
In the meantine, say hello to a more picturesque life, whether you are on the clear-browed, expensively-shod, idle-houred, poetry-scribbling side of the equation or the bending-over, screaming-out-in-the-open, rag-tag side.
If you are on the good side, rest-assured you will have lots of new friends to celebrate with. And another thing: good authority has it that you will inherit the earth just as soon as we writers and poets are done with it.
* Thathang Lunghang , a resident of Kangpokpi - Manipur, writes regularly to e-pao.net
He says "The pleasure of criticism without restraints, is as usual, entirely mine"
This article was webcasted on 18th May 2005
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