Jaipur Diaries: Me vs We

I live in a primarily collectivist society where the group tends to take priority over the individual. I say primarily because India is a large & diverse country, with a complex interplay of various ecosystems, some vastly different from others. Mine is a particularly backward city where this sense of collectivism runs deep and manifests itself in palpable ways. 

One particularly repulsive quality is that of groupism. On a basic level, people always go in groups whenever possible. They find people around them to whom they can latch on, thereby increasing their own social capital, the essential currency for this city's people.

Money is still largely important, but relationships are valued even more greatly. For Jaipur's people, it's more about who you know than what you have or what you can do. People cling tightly to their parents and extended family, putting up smiling faces to even the most hated members to gain benefits. To alienate and ostracize is the greatest punishment imaginable, and one which is rarely administered clearly. Instead, people will quietly pull away with a smile, for they might become useful later on. 

By and large, everyone neatly remains in their assigned roles and follows their orders. Sons participate in the family business, women get educated and married, and kids are pumped into the farce of an education. The status quo remains the same, and life carries steadily on with the dullness of mediocrity. For context, it makes sense for the people to act this way. The desert area has little to offer in terms of natural resources besides the skill of the working communities of craftspeople. Meanwhile, there is also a severe lack of modern skills in terms of education, awareness, training, and capital investment on one hand, and an overabundance of people, most of which are poor. 

But beneath the facade of honest work, thrive some of Groupism's more sinister aspects. The grossest of these to me is the us vs. them mentality. Being so concerned with their own people, what defines them, and the safety found in their collective resources, they are threatened by those who are different. Whether they are poor, of a different faith, lead different lives or face challenges is irrelevant. The "other" might even be wealthier and better off. The most important thing is a clear distinction between your people and the others. As long as you can tell them apart, they will always feel threatened by them. 

Unfortunately, the most apparent differences tend to be of faith, wealth, and status. This is a real shame as mass religious movements tend to bring out the lowest common denominators. Nothing could be worse here than belonging to a group that lies in the minority of all three categories. Such is the case of the Muslim people, who might work enough to keep the city's engines running, yet live in concentrated poverty-stricken areas with access to worse education, employment options, and connections while also being part of the religious minority. 

The way I was raised, such discussions seem trivial and fruitless, like talking about garbage segregation or global warming. There is an implicit idea within me that everyone is quite aware of these things and we are well beyond such basic understanding. Of course, prejudice is bad, aren't we aware of the civil rights movement in America? Racism over faith can be disastrous, just look at WW2. That's what I believed before I set out of my house. 

I quickly found out that I had been living in a bubble. My parents had broken off from their joint family to go nuclear. Being liberal, they found these archaic mindsets toxic and chose to join a Buddhist organization as their chosen faith practice. This would've put me in a religious minority as well, except for our clever choice to call ourselves Hindu (by birth) as and when it suits us. 

Belonging to a middle-class of working people & businessmen, we also had some status and connection. Despite all this, my parents wanted to protect me from this blatant ugliness and I grew up in a vacuum with plenty of privacy and freedom, although I rarely left the house to exercise it. Instead, I left my town asap and found many like-minded people across the supremely diverse country. 

Yet, when I eventually returned, I realized a devastating reality: The town was full of ignorance and stagnation. It is a place where the vast majority of people will ask about your cast as a conversation starter to know who you are as a person. This is not to be confused with a lineage or culture, the way a person in America will be considered with a certain regard for being Greek or Irish, but something far more primitive, like the class system of the medieval era. 

My father belonged to a class of businessmen (Baniya) and my mother, to the ruling class (Rajput). They met in their school years and got married out of love, in a place where arranged marriages are the norm to this day. Mind you, the city is changing rapidly, but somewhat dangerously. Nevertheless, this put me in a very fortunate, yet unique position. While I always found it difficult to connect with the people around me, I never had to suffer the indignation of outright injustice faced by the more easily identifiable minorities. 

Ultimately, the flow of commerce is slowly shaking things up. The older, more traditional folks look increasingly defeated nowadays. They tire from watching all remnants of productive talent migrate from the state. Speechless against the indisputable power of money, they see that perhaps the road to development is wrought with ruthless change, abandonment, and gross pragmatism. All this is understandable and even acceptable, as I have learned. What irks me are the sneakier parts of this cultural environment. 

I'm disturbed by this tendency to view all forms of value only in the context of other people. Firstly it contributes to a transactional mindset regarding others. Secondly, and most importantly because you can't truly have meaningful connections as primarily a member of a group. That's the bone I aim to pick with this collection of works and what I wish to unpack here today. There is an alarming trend today where people are trying to have the best of both worlds. They want to have freedom and choices while keeping the safety found in groups. 

So parents tell children to choose their own paths while expecting them to be of service when the need arises. Children also feel entitled to greater freedom while relying on their parents for their needs. It's okay to pool resources in a poor economy. Transactions are a part of life. They are necessary for survival and civil peace. The problem arises when people are forced to forgo their traditions for new lifestyles, without understanding what makes those lifestyles possible. 

That is what I am seeing today. To make meaningful choices, you need the privacy required for exploration. To truly give more choices to your children, you need to accommodate for the cost of that space. With the freedom of making your own choices, comes the burden of responsibility. This entails a robust apparatus capable of complex decision-making and a strong sense of identity. This is where group identity does more harm than good. Individuals need to be able to stand alone.

Just as we need a sense of connection to the group, we also need to differentiate ourselves from it. The richer the inner world of a person is, the more they can peacefully incorporate into a group. Why is it so? Because group-thinking and mob mentality might be real, but they are also very much temporary. At some point or another, we all must live as individuals. If everyone you meet must exist as an individual, then the more you know what it's like to be alone, the better you can understand and connect with them. 

If the safety of groups is all you have ever known; if you only see other people as what they can offer to you and your tribe, then it dehumanizes people and reduces them to a series of numbers. People are emotional beings that rationalize, not algorithms that coldly calculate their best path to survival. Without the process of self-discovery so essential to human existence, people lack the dimension of inner truths in their lives, which brings them off-balance. So you search for a mate that has a higher status, uplifting your sense of self-worth, along with the value of your group. 

You don't see people as people, but rather as tools to be manipulated for the gain of you and your people. You dehumanize the others and see them as a threat to your success. After separation comes demonization, and with a little pressure it quickly turns to violence. It might seem like these are very separate issues. That so many of these aspects are common throughout the world. Yet in my life so far, it seems to me like these things are strongly tied together in the people around me, one habit feeding the other, until the loop closes, creating a perfect kind of perpetual cycle of hellish suffering. 

If everyone simply saw each other as a fellow human, and all humans as a small part of the world at large; if we all made space for compassion, self-discovery, and acceptance, would it lead to an end to our problems? I'm not so naive as to believe that. I don't think liberation from all suffering is possible in this reality, nor do I believe that it should ever be the goal. We all want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for ourselves. At the end of the day, that's what drives each of our decisions. 

I believe that making space for ourselves while trying to connect with others, immediately brings us closer to a world where the pain is less harsh, and the pleasure runs deeper. An ache that's imbued with meaning is palpable even when it outweighs its counterpart. Nothing is sweeter than a pleasure that's earned, even when it lasts for just a moment. When you embrace the horrors of living with yourself, the group's comfort is supercharged with meaning. This kind of sincere, curious, and compassionate acceptance makes both the pleasure and the pain something to treasure dearly. 

Whether miserably lonely or suffocating in company, I hope this message gives you peace.