Culture under threat, or imagination on fire?

 India is rife with cultural-socio-moral uncles and aunties who allege that Indian culture is being "threatened" with the cool crowd joining their gang lately. Their list of grievances ranges from Hindu temples being lost or neglected to the mass switch to choosing western food over Indian food. While they may have a case, let's take a deeper look at this threat that they perceive. It has four main stages: the emotional, the delusions, the justification, and the damage.

The Emotional

We know that sensitivity runs high in India. It's deep in our blood. We're, after all, an emotional bunch. What we're particularly sensitive about status quo. It defines who we are basis our relationship with somebody else. It's like always defining India via the idea of Pakistan, and not what India is inherently without Pakistan. It's our norm which becomes our comfort & soon enough our identity - and then all we know and love (however toxic the idea).

The Delusions

We assume the positions of power play to protect it. How it works? Everyone's either sitting or standing. There's a hot seat, and you're either sitting on it and standing up to it. You're doing either one or the other, and you don't choose your fate. You just wake up to it and stay on the same side of the divide. You're locked in and have zero mobility options. Whether you suffer it or thrive on it, you're supposed to live up to that fate like it's your religious duty that you will be beheaded for if you fail.  

The Justification

There are three kinds of responses.

Suffer your fate
(You're lucky if you don't have to)

Fight your fate
(You just have to be an ingrate who is absolutely not thankful for what's handed to them)

Reason through fates
(How dare you even attempt to change the way things are, even if both sides don't get a good, equal deal in the end)

If you enjoy the status quo, you protect it. If you suffer from it, you oppose it. You could also try to be a better responder (because status quo has pushed the morality of everyday society into a form too depraved to rationally address for anyone to be the bigger person anymore). Whatever you choose to do, you will be opposed because we've assumed the delusion that is the status quo, and it becomes your life, living, and being. Chipping away at it because it is unjust simply means chipping away at a little piece of us, a little at a time. I mean, just because those standing have directly inherited some of the places they can go, statuses they can hold and, therefore, happiness they can experience that those standing can't ever because someone decided to toss a coin and arbitrarily decide that doesn't mean we have to turn things over, does it?

The Damage

While emotions have steeped us, delusions have eaten us, and justifications have driven us, the damage is killing us. We can simply turn tables over (or fight to keep them as is) and protect our own at any cost - whatever kind of monsters it turns us into. Whoever wins, there will always be sitting & standing, sides, oppression, anger, pride, undue privilege, and more enough to cause delusions, justification, and damage that is even worse. There is no monster you want to become that's worth the effort. Yes, we are our history, and history isn't taught by questioning it into non-existence after applying to it better standards of humanity. It is always taught by simply propagating it further without question, however inhumane, and power tags along. As we go along, it is natural (but not justified) to justify our delusions and wash our hands of the damage we cause in the simple name of pride.

This is a cycle that mankind had gone through a gazillion times and more. We have come to survive on threat systems after pitting us against one another. Our instincts are normalised to fear and defense. We believe that we have to be aware with eyes at the back of our head and on the sides, watching out for people who will take our way of life away from us with respect to food, fashion, God, values, belief, and freedom. That's how we were taught in the absence of a threat - mostly because those who taught us needed to justify the cultural ego they held onto in their head. It found its way into the centre of our brains and made all of that real to us, even when it wasn't. We created threats out of thin air by shaving off beards, raping and murdering lower caste people, and killing people who fit our stereotype of those who kill a sacred animal, among a few examples.   

Threat perception is a highly emotional response - especially when it comes to the delusions that play to our advantage. We respond with snap reactions and don't revisit them. Our mind slowly tries to justify them (in support), and they turn into genuine threats - whether or not they are real. What is an actual reality we should reasonably be in fear of (knowing why), and what is just a bad dream that haunts us because we refuse to live with our feet on the ground becomes very difficult to decipher. Somehow, it is easier to decipher other people as a different species that deserves less than what ours does - though they are just the same.