Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Tag: equality

  • On Norms, Freedom and Equality

    The following essay will probe the nature of social norms, the problematic relationship between the perceived social norms and the ideals of freedom and equality, and finally, if and how the resolution of this problem is possible.

    First, i will dissect the colloquial term of “social norm” in order for us to be able to understand it better. In the very term “norm”, there secretly hides this repulsive and scrupulously unsupported assertion that humans, in certain situations, are supposed to act in predefined ways, to the effect that all uniqueness is ultimately labelled aberrant, and individuality virtually curbed. Granted that there had to be some sort of generic code of action in order to protect people’s freedom from the remarkable uniqueness each one of us is bestowed with, why then did it have to go on and curb the very thing it set out to protect us from, as it happens with the social norms? Moreover, if there had to be such a thing as a norm after all, why then did it have to be defined by the society anyway? Because to me, it only seems to suggest, in simpler words, that everybody is the slave to everybody else, obeying unquestioningly the orders (or norms) without needing to understand the rationale behind them which, not to mention, is non-existent more often than not.

    One often hears this complaint that genuineness no longer exists in our world and that artificiality has permeated the minds and hearts. You might first question how one defines genuineness. Even if one is not able to articulate it, one often has a clear idea that nature is genuine. Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Arts & Sciences, employs the very same construct i.e. nature as that point of reference from where he projects criticisms on Enlightenment – the modernity of his era.

    The problem of modernity is that, with all its virtues, it inevitably brings along inequality and takes away the freedom of the masses. Rousseau puts this blame on the two wheels of modernity: arts and sciences. Allow me to illustrate this more clearly by stating the reciprocal statement: Without arts & sciences, equality and freedom would prevail. The most visible of the signs of modernity at work is the birth of sophistication in mannerisms due to which certain more natural ways are qualified to be crude, and once the modernity is victorious, what was natural and hence rampant now exists in the periphery, and the concept of social norm is invented to safely label the crude (or natural) as deviant in order to eradicate it.

    Is there a solution to this rapid artificialization of human race? For Rousseau, the answer to this question is a yes, but only if we return to Nature. Thinkers have launched blisteringly sarcastic criticisms on him for having tried to reverse modernity and push mankind back into the Middle Ages, but his solution makes a lot of sense to me. That is, when i recall that Hadith in which Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) implies that Nature is Islam. But i think i need to do a lot of thinking over it before proceeding any further.

  • Whore

    It’s fashionable to write about prostitutes these days. Men generally write because they want to be looked upon as compassionate beings, capable to view the misery of prostitutes above and beyond their own assaulting nature. Women write because they have a continuous need to be hailed as feminist warriors. Nothing else seems to catch as much public attention on the media. Clerics write fatwas, reporters about raids on brothels and all this drama interests an ordinary man very much.

    Teenage writers are perpetually on the hunt for such hot topics to get noticed so I, once one, jumped the bandwagon and began a story with: Once upon a time, there was a whore.

    I knew the opening line was good and the content could not be a problem as i knew reasonably enough about the prostitutes from Hollywood and hearsay. But then i found myself confronting the question if that would be honest to ascribe the character of glamorized fictional prostitutes to the genuine character that took birth in the opening line. Then i asked myself if i could state the facts. More importantly, if i knew the facts. Even more importantly, if i could put them down while not trying to tip-toe about the taboos. These rather unlikely questions brought me some insights that i felt i should share.

    It’s really easy to create literature and make a seemingly intelligent drawing-room talk when maintaining contact with reality is not a constraint. One might even get some applause but not knowing the difference, one ends up turning a prostitute into a whore that way. At the end of the day, i don’t feel it’s a good bargain. A quintessential writer, you may disagree, creates all his characters from first-hand experience. The technical difficulty in creating a prostitute’s character, however, is that one, in our conservative society, most likely never has an experience with a prostitute and therefore all one’s ‘observations’ and details about one are actually only speculations based on hearsay, and hence lay invalid.

    I read the opening line back and though hard it might be to trace them earlier, it was replete with insensitive inaccuracies. I realized there was no “once upon a time” because every conceivable story about a prostitute is already cliched. Secondly, there was no such thing as there was. The story ran in the present – in the very moment that ticked by. Thirdly, i was not sure if “whore” was the right word for a woman who left her bastards every night to be able to put food on their table but only managed to produce more of them in the struggle.

    I backspaced and the words disappeared fast until i was left with a clean sheet staring back at me. I absently typed “whore” at the top again and flinched; old habits died hard. I backspaced once again and this time, not knowing why, I typed “human” instead. It felt better. Acknowledging the humanness of a downgraded human fellow always makes you feel better somehow.