Wake up to reality
Madara did it first, or Eminem? Ah snap, there goes reality
Given the (debatable) fact that we come into this earth tabula rasa, or as a clean slate, its is very interesting to observe it being slowly written on, and erased, time and time again, becoming more of a used slate, with dust traces from the past settling as biases withhold (there is a word for exactly this, which my dumb self will later use google to figure out — EDIT — Palimpsest), and new spaces made for me to be sensitive about issues which I was till now unaware, or simply ignorant of.
Yours truly, has never been much of a politically inclined person, social issues were never a concern for an upbringing, which was middle class enough to allow glimpses into the fact that something was potentially wrong with the world around, but also privileged enough to allow the bliss that is ignorance.
Well, shit changes…..sometimes, when you least expect it.
While reading books is usually seen has a harmless hobby, a mere pastime of the intelligentsia, a thing people do on lazy Sundays, with a well brewed cup of coffee in hand and the sun shining through the window, (totally not describing my own Sundays.. ahem) sometimes, they are not so harmless, and might change the entirety of your being, in just a few pages. Afterall, most of society, is driven by a few religious books, and most political philosphies, were first written as a book or a manifesto or a treatise.
While I started my reading journey, with typical young adult, coming of age books ( the harry potters, Percy Jackson, Colleen Hoover? ) , over the last 1 year or so, there is a whole new genere which is starting to attract me. And with it, came a whole new phase of discovering a new sensitivity to the society around, which I inhabit.
This is not a political piece however, I still don’t have a political philosphy of my own, and as someone who hasn’t even voted yet, ever, I am the last person to say anything about any social issue, but I will do so anyway, cause…it’s my blog lol
When talking about social issues, does it make sense to only talk about the country you live in? or are you supposed to talk about the issues which are faced in the world in general. Should I talk about racism in the US, or castesim in India? Is a global problem like climate change one that demands attention, or the threats to democracy in the world’s most populous country the issue? With so many things wrong in a world, which pretends to be working absolutely fine like clockwork, what problems do you claim as your own, what problems you chose to ignore as somehow less worthy of care, how do people develop their own socio-political agenda? I have no clue.
Are you supposed to follow a bottom-up approach, trying to make small improvements in the world immediately around you, or do you take a top-down approach, and campaign the fix the largest problems we face as a society. I personally feel more attracted towards the top-down approach, since I feel powerless against the tyranny of the masses, and the pestilence like nature of the inertia to change, renders a bottom up approach inefficient and a Sisyphean attempt at best.
I have never felt much attached to the nation I was born in, I didn’t chose to be born in this weird as hell world, with more problems than solutions, I didn’t chose the religion my family adopts, nor the cultural surroundings which have tainted my view of the world, in their view. I believe that the first 22 years of my life, were a blip, with barely any identity being formed, or maybe I have just dissolved whatever identity I had created in the past.
For the future, I hope I find issues that I think are worth solving, people I want to support, movements which feel like my own, identities I adopt, and maybe again discard as the time goes by.
Whatever the case be, its finally time for me, to wake up to reality —
