Freedom of thought and conduct is something that everyone strives for. Despite being free at birth, humans rarely live this way. This is due to the large number of norms, standards, and laws that society expects both individuals and groups to abide by. The maintenance of social harmony and order is often thought to depend on this conformity. History, on the other hand, demonstrates that social structures and the norms that underpin them are not really designed with everyone’s well-being in mind.
Most of the time, deliberate agendas intended to provide long-term support for the wealthy few reveal themselves as social orders and psyches. As a result, such societies hardly ever result in inclusive benefits or comprehensive social progress. Such a society is clearly evident in our own.
The results shouldn’t come as a surprise because the functioning characteristics of institutions and practices are determined by structurally underlying norms that enjoy implicit or explicit agreement. Our society has become the center of the multifaceted crisis as a result of the graciously accepted colonial legacy, twisted history, state-sponsored fallacies and propaganda, chronic elite capture, classical and dividing educational and pedagogical culture, and a compliant bureaucracy.
Violent mental tendencies have seeped into our social psyche as a result of skillfully designed poisonous narratives and backward-looking socioeconomic, religious, and political systems. These inclinations continue to shatter the hopes of an inclusive society. As it turns out, the underlying rules of our collective communal attitude include jealousy and fanaticism, a judgmental mindset and intolerance, hypocrisy and intellectual corruption, insecurity and compliant public behavior, and duplicity.
As a result, each person and society work together to oppose anyone wanting to rebel and set out on a personal journey through life. The harmful chatter confronts and constricts everyone, even the few who dare to break free from systemic social and mental slavery. The majority of our institutions, laws, leaders, curriculum, media, academics, and intellectuals demand that we submit mindlessly to the elite-centered social mindset. Any resistance to historically propagated incomplete narratives is met with defiance on all levels because anyone who questions them is branded as a criminal. Anything that compromises the fundamental values of the status quo is considered taboo. This is how rational dialogue, respectful disagreement, anthropology, philosophy, logical argument, and innovation hardly ever receive their just due.
When we aspire to accomplish anything big, the majority of our society works against us, in contrast to civilized nations. One little instance of this is the expression “what four people would say,” which is frequently used. These four individuals, who represent socio-psychological restrictions in a metaphorical sense, police the lives of others through toxic criticism and discouraging rumors, even when the socio-psychological constraints may be operating at their peak. They rarely exhibit dictating behavior as a result of superior intelligence, selflessness, or an unselfish attitude. Instead, they are the results of their own self-imposed inferiority complex, social enslavement, passivity, envy, and sense of worthlessness. They are continuations of and brand ambassadors for the institutionalized social servitude that the nation has been suffering from for the past 75 years. Although the number of these characters may vary, they all attack anything that defies unjustified uniformity.
The only genuine entity and leader of the four persons, as opposed to the metaphorically speaking three, is the one who constantly comments on our ideas, plans, and behavior. Such people turn to absurd gossip instead of helpful criticism in an effort to minimize the effort other people go through.
The negative conversations squander our time, drain our brains, and take our focus away from what really matters to us. We should not engage in harmful social gossip on an individual level. Extensive social reform is required for a holistic release from the bonds of social and mental servitude. We could break the rusted chains of social slavery with the help of altruistic leadership, institutional reforms, and educational improvements.
The author can be reached at ey**********@***il.com