power here power there - part 2

That’s the right song to start this second part of the power blog. Nopes, it’s the blog that is powerful but the blog is about power. Seesh. Bad comment.
Why this song? I guess this is the perfect aggression anger anthem. It’s got an expletive at the heart of the chorus, repeating itself again and again. I couldn’t help shouting my throat hoarse while I was listening to this song in the car. Just a few days back I met a respondent in my research in a southern city. A decent corporate sweet guy. He took us out for a coffee in his car and played this song loud. He apologised but said he couldn’t help but like this song. This is the aggression anthem. It is telling the world to go screw yourself. What is it about rock music that is a so dam bloody aggressive release? Is it the screaming, the straining of the guitar strings, the tempo, what? But it does feel like an aggression release. I also think the bhag bhag bhag (run run run) in the song contributes to the effect. The trader we met was an aggressive investor and like all aggressive investors, sitting on a net loss.
Aggression. It never helps. It probably helped man survive and grow from a roaming Neanderthal to a stable farmer and progress as a species. The problem is that these aggressive genes are impossible to control when you are younger. Your brain starts working for the first time in a manner that you think is logical. You see the gross injustice being meted out to you or probably to others. Your natural empathy and reaction takes over and you want to do something. Your brain is not well developed to handle the overflow of emotion and your willingness to do good and pop, aggression becomes physical. You use what you are best at, using your arms and legs.
Also when you are growing up simple things attract you. I always wanted to join the army and ‘serve the nation’. I guess today I believe nation can be better served in many other ways. But why would I want to join the army? I guess there is a simple explanation that I have to offer. It was the uniform and the machinery they have at their disposal. I wanted to join the tank unit. It guess it is no better than the young boy who wants to be an engine driver as the guys seems to be in charge of a large big engine or a fire fighter in charge of a large big red bus. It’s important for the bus to be large big and red. I think the best recruitment drive for the army would be to have these army barracks in the middle of the city which don’t have walls. There they should be doing military drills in shiny uniforms and they have these big tanks roaming around for young kids to touch feel and dream. In the good old days I guess sexy equipment and smart uniforms were only available with the army and hence the young impressionable minds would be inspired by them. Now the sexy equipment is the iphones and the blackberrys and the laptops and the music players and the …. You get the point. And they all wear the uniform to work. They wear their suits and ties and the formals and go to work. Jispa notices when I wear a suit and leave office. She looks at me and wonders something. I guess she is making an impression in her mind. A positive impression I think. These are critical cues that get formed in an impressionable mind. I wanted to join the army and I ended up being firm on it when I got a chance to visit the national defence academy at Khadakvasla while I was around in the fourth or fifth standard.
Two can play the same impression game. Both the books, which I mentioned in the earlier blog (Curfewed Night as well as Hello Bastar) talk about impressionable kids being drawn to the rebel cause. There are mentions of the locals seeing these rebels flashing guns and in uniforms moving with a purpose. It is enough for them to want to enlist with the cause. And I guess that most of these young kids don’t even know what they are really fighting for or don’t really care about it. They just are swayed by the system and they are then drawn into the quagmire in which they possibly perish or possibly grow old and have no other option but to be a continuous part of it.
I think that’s the case even for most of the other rebels from the city. The young aggression which wanes in a few years gives rise to power dependency and these guys might just stay on for their thirst for power. What else will a 30 year old do if he has spent the last 15 years fighting ‘the force’. He has no skills else but the cause and the reason he fights. And then the power game starts. His interest is clearly in maintaining his power equation. He has to survive and this is the only way he can.
While we attract the best talent in office and other places, it is important that we realised that what attracts them here in the first place is not the reason why they should stay on. Dreams change, people change, and if we are able to constantly upgrade skill sets these people will also move with us. But if we let them remain there, forget to upgrade them, worry that if we do upgrade them; they will run away; then they end up being power brokers. They will cling onto their existing equations and become satraps in their own rights, ruling over their dominions. They will naturally be threatened by their status quo and would protect fiercely. The problem when they not only protect fiercely but when they start proactively attacking other dominions in anticipation of their attack. There is a reason why as you grow older and higher in an organisation the attacks increase gets more vicious. It’s a proactive attack by someone who is not increasing his dominion but protecting it.
If we constantly improve these skills the person knows that he can get hired elsewhere, he knows that his status quo is constantly changing; he is busy using his brains productively. He knows he has an option other than where he is present. This option in his mind will free him from his inward circle of control.
Big rebel leaders know that violence is pretty much useless and it will annihilate the very class it seeks to protect. But the wisdom comes after ten years of sloganeering. He can now not eat his ego and say this can’t work. You have to work with the system to change it. You must embrace peace. It is possible to work from inside and given the effort these guys tackle in recruiting friends and putting implants, I can’t believe it’s not possible to do peacefully. Without being the enemy of the people you seek to protect.
Sigh… too much gyan for someone who is basically an arm chair critic. I haven’t been to the jungles and I haven’t been inside their homes, huts and existence. All I know is that they don’t deserve ot die like this and have their livelihood snatched away. Both sides are guilty. The rebel is as much the culprit as the oppressor.
No one is bad to start with; it’s when the situation leads you to become power hungry, when you want to maintain what you earlier stood by, when your ego does not let you admit; that is when the rot sets in. it is easy for me to say all this and extremely difficult for me to understand and see it happen and stop. It needs an amazing ability to constantly see yourself from a few feet away, and ask yourself – what, why where? Are you sure?
Too much philosophy is definitely not the core of my blog and most I know simply get bored by it and move on from my blog. I try and stop writing once I exceed one page – but this blog is not meant for these people. It is meant for me as a father. It is meant for Jispa to once read and understand if something hits her.
Jispa I hope I didn’t bore you too much. You are a sweet imaginative and sensitive kid. I hope you face your share of shit and grow stronger for it. I can’t make you a good or a bad person. But I hope after you read this, you will realise what my belief of a good or a bad thing is. Or if shit hits you and if I am not around, you know what I thought of the shit hitting me. And I sure hope you find your own answers. Your own answers.