On tyrannies we inhabit
Dileepa
Lawrence-Hewa, someone who occasionally sends me comments on articles
and directs me to interesting articles and ideas, wrote to me this
morning. He recommended a book, Wayne Dyer’s ‘The sky’s is the limit’.
Dyer, he says, observes that life is by and large describable as
conforming to others’ expectations. He calls it, Dileepa says, ‘being
sucked into authoritarianism’.
Now this reminded me of a book whose title I’ve mentioned many times
when discussing ‘power’: Philip Gourevitch’s ‘We regret to inform you
that tomorrow we will be killed with our families’. It was published in
1998 and refers to the massacres that took place in Rwanda around that
time. The telling line was this: ‘Power consists of making others
inhabit your version of their reality’.
Decision-making processes
Dileepa’s email made me realize that Gourevitch’s definition can have
applications outside the classical associations of power, i.e. the
State, the military, use of force, visible subjugation and hierarchies.
Authoritarianism is not only about keeping people out of decision-making
processes, imposing arbitrary laws and creating and forcing people to
inhabit a culture of impunity. There is also a soft and non-intrusive
kind of control which persuades a different kind of inhabitation, a
quiescent, this-is-how-it-is kind of residency.
There is no god or a vile set of big bad men out there plotting the
dimensions of residency, but society does get structured in ways that
are more likely to produce the outcomes preferred by the powerful. The
structures as well as those located in arm-twisting positions within
them define the parameters of resistance for the most part. Rupture is
not impossible, but remains a rarity. While laws and guns can obtain
obedience, the more insidious instruments of subjugation are those which
are so goes-without-saying that few will even question why or how they
came-without-saying.
Social coherence
It is also called taking things for granted, in the worst sense of
that term. We inhabit realities which we believe or are led to believe
are not only unchangeable but are proper or at least the best they could
be. Or we throw our hands up in resignation, convincing ourselves that
even our best efforts would not change anything.
I
am not saying that all conformities are enslaving; a certain code of
ethics, for example, can be necessary, some can argue, to maintain
social coherence and keeping volatility out. It would be quite alright
if it was a conscious choice, but for the most part people are
ill-informed and less given to reflecting on the ‘things-as-they-are’.
It is one thing to make sure you don’t step on tyranny’s foot because
you know the consequences and quite another to give that foot a wide
berth because ‘that’s-how-it-should-be’.
If you take some time to analyse the last 100 acts, i.e. from the
expression that materialized on face at a given moment to choice of tie
and the use of certain words over others, you will know that we inhabit
‘rule-universes’ as though it was second nature to do so in the ways we
do.
Communications campaign
Not all authoritarians arrive with a big placard and a comprehensive
communications campaign claiming tyranny and demanding acquiescence on
this account. The use of one word instead of another, the choice of
voice over silence or vice versa in specific moments, the preference for
this friend’s company and not that of that friend’s, none of these
things are totally innocent although we might brush such claims off as
‘nonsense’. The most pernicious of tyrannies are not those which we do
not have the strength to overthrow but those which we embrace on account
of ignorance and sloth.
Greatest lovers
Do we pause to ask ourselves why we picked up a particular brand of
soap from the supermarket and not another? Are our life choices really
ours? Are we really who we are or are we products of a striving to
appear ‘acceptable’? Do we live our lives or the lives that others want
us to live?
I am not making a case for non-conformity, by the way. I see nothing
wrong in being what Sunil next door wants me to be, but only if I
believe that’s who I want to be, makes me happy and feel wholesome.
Too often, though, I feel that we do the easy thing of uncritically
accepting residence in the moulds that are made for us, instead of being
who we are.
This is the way that tyrannies become entrenched, the way in which
ideologies creep into our systems and we end up affirming them without
even realizing that this is what we do.
Again and again, I arrive at the teaching of Siddhartha Gauthama.
Reflection. Reflection. Reflection. Especially on ‘self’, that unreal
and unrelenting, apparently inescapable prison and in the final instance
the wall of illusion that has to be systematically broken down.
The tyrannies that we inhabit, the realities defined by others that
we take residence in, these things are only part imposed. Much of it is
of our making.
We are our greatest lovers, most pernicious of enemies.
I am the tyrant that suppresses me, the guard that watches over my
incarceration, maker of my sorrows, maker and breaker of chains.
I think Dileepa would agree.
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