A pause for thought

Shelley Walia

Advertisement

FOR or many of us, 2019 has been a challenging year – it’s had more than its share of setbacks and challenges. It will also go down in history as a year of great pain and struggle for many. A need arises to take a pause and remember that these are dark times full of ruthless economics, dogmatism, aggressive sectarianism and unbridled violence. The human race has outrun the rapid tempo of advancement inciting nature’s fury by self-indulgence and acquisitiveness. The frenzied shopping at festivities takes us by the scruff, making one wonder how predatory consumerism overwhelms our very sensibilities. The reckless and uninhibited course of human civilisation becomes the contributing foundation of the toxic politics of indifference, hate and fear, of doublespeak and subjugation.

Why then should I be reminded of the eminent Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, as I sit trapped in my car amid a mass of other cars belonging to people who are out like me on this freezing evening; and this despite the gloomy broadcast of an economic slowdown or the nation-wide protests against the state? Why should I think of revolutionary songs that the activist, Pete Seeger, says “are sneaky things that slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells”?

There’s been a growing sense of urgency in this country to ensure that the public has the freedom and independence to stand up against the abuse of power and safeguard our constitutional democracy. Critical thinking and dissidence, therefore, becomes central to Gramsci’s essay of 1916 “I Hate New Year’s Day” where he describes the first day of the New Year to be as monotonous as a fixed deposit that makes life and human spirit pretty much a “commercial concern” with its “neat final balance” and “outstanding amounts”. We unthinkingly succumb to market hypnosis or thought control. Our collaboration with the state is so apparent. Blindly following dates or forms of knowledge that goes against our very being have no “resonance” in the free human spirit.

Gramsci was undoubtedly reacting against the hegemony of fixity or the tyranny of thought that imposes preconceived assumptions on the public. His essay becomes relevant to our times in many ways than one, rich in its notions of freedom of thought and for liberation from the dictates of the state. The fact that the young are becoming wary of the notions of the centre, the origin and the end, the three cornerstones of authoritarianism, is a vivid sign of struggles against repression. The question of the rewriting of histories, the problem of interrogating authoritarian narratives, the practice of bringing down the structures of power all show how politics has penetrated every area of public education and critical thinking.

My mind also goes back to a counter-hegemonic revolutionary song of Pink Floyd resonating with a similar existential response in “Another Brick in the Wall”: “We don’t need no education/ We don’t need no thought control/ Hey teacher, leave them kids alone”. In many ways it implies assault on political and social structures signifying revolutionary acts of resistance seen in student uprisings, anti-war engagements or the struggle for free speech, all of which are a cry for secularism and fraternity irrespective of diverse faiths, ethnicity and language.

What joy can such dates of festivity bring when rapacious capitalism ignores the approaching climate apocalypse bringing in its wake bushfires fueled by raging heat waves, high tides that threaten the very existence of Venice or the paradisiacal islands of Maldives? Democracy becomes meaningless rhetoric and narrow racist nationalism becomes the New World Order. Religion sadly becomes the basis of determining citizenship. The cold-hearted forces of a ruthless free market economy add to the ongoing malaise of discrimination.

Moreover, the audacity of the outcry: “this land is my land, this land is your land,” an apt quote from a song by Pete Seeger resonates with the violent politics of jingoistic borders and barricades that fracture nations. People of colour are forced into slavery; incarceration is imposed disproportionately on the deprived and the persecuted desperately on the run. The brute force of the state keeps dissidence in check. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s iconic poem “Hum Dekhenge” indeed strikes a significant castigation of the totalitarian rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, a poem that was, to use the words of Pete Seeger, “The right song at the right time which would change history”.

In the face of this endless suffering, how can we think of joy on the ushering in of a new year? Maybe, before being swept by the nightmare of recent history of the proliferation of populism and majoritarianism, we can respond to the present existential crisis where any sense of individual freedom stands trampled by the hypnosis of the culture industry of unquenchable consumerism. And more importantly, maybe we could set our minds on the egalitarian need of social cohesion, envisaging every day of our lives, a connection that embodies the spirit of humanity, the idea that we are one people collectively evolving an edifice nurtured not from trepidation, foreboding or anger, but from hope and love for all. Should we then drown ourselves in empty meaningless pleasures at the end of the year when each day is really the same as the previous? I wonder.

The human race in the coming years can only wish for the strength to struggle for what is right and good, alive to its spirit, but more alive through acts of connection, reaching out to a dear one, a stranger, or even someone with a different political perspective.