Skip to main content

Overcome

Image from Fluidsurveys


You may feel oppressed at least occasionally. Even in a well-oiled democratic system, the citizens can feel oppressed by various policies of the State. As poet Louis Macneice said in his poem, Prayer before Birth, the world can convert us into “lethal automatons,” make us “a cog in a machine,” or blow us “like thistledown hither and thither.”

The State and its various machineries may decide what food you can or cannot eat, what kind of dress you should wear, how much money you can save, and so on. The State can make you feel powerless. There are even States which encourage one section of the citizens to eliminate another section. Both the eliminator and the victim are powerless. You want to overcome the lies  that create powerlessness.

There is only one way of overcoming that kind of powerlessness: living in your personal truth.

The State compels us to live within a lie, as political thinker Vaclav Havel said. You don’t have to accept the lies foisted on you by the State. You may have to accept those lies in order to be a law-abiding citizen. You have no choice in that matter. You have no choice but pay the umpteen taxes, for instance. You have no choice if your State decides to ban a certain food in the country. There are thousands of people in many nation-states who are forced to wear a particular kind of dress much as their hearts rebel against it.

The State cannot exercise any power over your soul, however. Your spirit. Your conscience. Call it what you like. The powerlessness of those in power begins there: in your soul.

Power has its rituals like making and enacting laws or foisting certain lies and illusions on the citizens using protean propaganda or terror agencies that look like political or religious organisations. But power cannot kill that part of our being which relentlessly yearns for freedom, truth and dignity. As long as we keep that spirit alive, we can overcome oppressive powers.

We can begin by expressing our feelings and ideas in social media or other places like political meetings. We can express solidarity with those whom our conscience commands us to support. We can reject certain rituals of the State and break certain rules of the game. We may have to pay certain prices for our actions. But redeeming our soul from oppressive powers is worth the prices. We cannot live in a lie for too long without losing our dignity.

Every time we choose to accept the State-created lies, our spirit shrinks and the nation becomes more of a quagmire. When more and more people begin to assert their right to live in truth, the power of governments and other oppressive systems begins to erode and the nation becomes richer. A great nation is made up of people who overcome the lies of political systems.

PS. #BlogchatterA2Z



Comments

  1. Rajeev MoothedathApril 17, 2018 at 9:33 PM

    "A great nation is made up of people who overcome the lies of political systems."- Good one!

    ReplyDelete
  2. SubrotoApril 19, 2018 at 3:10 AM

    "When more and more people begin to assert their right to live in truth, the power of governments and other oppressive systems begins to erode and the nation becomes richer."
    Most excellently said. Absolutely agree with you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more