Left to itself, our species is one that believes in survival at the cost of everything else. And this characteristic is not unique to us. Survival of the fittest is the rule of nature. Only the strongest, the fleetest, the smartest have survived. The rest have dwindled into oblivion, “by chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d.” The ecological circle demands it be so, and we comply.
The same drive for self-preservation, however, has led to the decimation of the jungle within which the entire exercise of violent defense was perpetrated, for lack of a better method of survival. Concrete jungles of soaring sky-scrapers have evolved, and in these impregnable dens, man sits and lives in redolent luxury. All the animals that ever posed a threat to the species have either been decimated or imprisoned in zoos and “wildlife parks”. But man still needs to reckon with other powerful animals around him: Others of his species.
Prizes have changed; the fight continues unabated. Better lives, prettier wives, more money, more property, higher designations…. man fights man more fiercely, more violently than ever before. The world has already witnessed two world wars… more are on the anvil. Stay with us… the worst is yet to come. Hell shall freeze over.
On the road, cars cut into cars; drivers curse loudly, buses refuse to give way and hog the entire road. Disease? No. Symptoms. There is violence in the air, and man is trapped in a gyre of increasing hatred, violence and sadistic pleasure. A simple accident leads to abnormally flared tempers and fist cuffs blossom into full-fledged blood baths. The heart itches for a fight; pines for it, and the soul craves the freedom it’s lost.And yet we survive. Man has not decimated his own species yet. Something holds him back; saves him from shooting like a comet into the sun of extinction that lures him constantly using the same drive that got him going. In thy beginning is thy end, Adam!
What preserves us? What mollifies our desire, our almost undeniable need – so strong it pains in the lungs – for self-annihilation that threatens to send us whirling into an abyss of contented death? It is a corpus of dicta, axioms that tell us what is on and what isn’t. “thou shalt not!” said the ‘Lord’. Palliatives of a wider variety than confronts a wide-eyed child at the candy store lie displayed around us, and we pick and choose. Syrupy messages in dulcet media to lull the senses, sweet savories and spice to make us want to persist in our folly of breathing… the world is charged with the wool that is pulled over our eyes. The biggest industry in the world? Enter-tainment! Sports, cinema, television, theatre, radio, computers with multimedia drivers, thousands of mp3s and online games, and the biggest abomination of them all: cell phones that offer all sorts of absurdities: cameras and games and variety of alerts and what not! We wrap ourselves in luxury to dull the grinding gnashing violence boiling over all around us.
Of all the palaver that traps us in our bodies, the root lies in what passes for literature. The day the first man thought “Now that my food is cooked, let me stretch my hand to the fire and garner some heat I don’t really need,” literature was born. Literature is the voice of leisure, the voice of the celebration of man’s victories over his opponents. Literature is the repository of what has happened. Literature is gyaan palatably packaged. “The right word in the right place,” quoth Robert Frost, one of its more celebrated perpetrators. To smite hardest when it is most necessary, methinks. Literature packages the wisdom of the ages, the insight of our forefathers and that of other’s forefathers, who still make us all want to live on despite hating each other by turning our minds towards abstractions and ideals and that killer concept: beauty!
Why write at all? Why create these masterpieces of deception? Milton, one of the most fluent liars of this class responds: To justify the ways of God to man. God needs justification? To Man? God wants him out of the way, so he can get on with the task of sending the planet another deluge. Long time no sea! God does not need justification. We do. Why have we not killed each other yet? Because my love needs to live, say the romantics. Because life is hell, howl the existentialists. Because that is all we’ve got, moan the realists. Because momma’s in purgatory, and until she’s able to find her way into the inferno that ought to be her inevitable telos, I cannot digest my soup. Bosh! I need to live because if I die, a better shall come to roost over the Earth. A better? On my Earth?! On your life, may be… not on mine! So fine… I shan’t kill you if you don’t kill me… come… we’ll both sit and read Shakespeare!
“The opium of the masses,” said Nietszche, referring to the pathetic concatenation of sauce and soup; shady: Hot like summer; cold like winter! What we need is not literature. We need Superman; we need Alladin’s gjinn; we need “a two fisted humdinger… a bona fide supraman!” Who needs that shady Swinburne crap anyways!!! Damn Swinburne; damn literature… and damn… errr… ummmm… Shall we read some Shakespeare? :D
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