Society: an Illusion

Have you ever been in an illusion for so long that you can’t see how you been so dumb for not realizing it? I guess most of you would say, No!

But if you ask me, I say we all are still living in an illusion, we have been in that for all our lives and not many were able to come out of it in their lives. And those who did were either considered mad or considered as Gods, again casting themselves into another illusion.

You might be wondering what such illusion it is? My answer for one such illusion is Society. Don’t you agree?

Every day in our lives, everything we do, even in our thoughts we go by the norms set by society. We go by following most of them never even questioning them. To give you an impression of one side of this illusion, I would like to quote Feynman.

“What ceremonies do we believe in? Every morning we brush our teeth. What is the evidence that brushing our teeth does any good against cavities? And you start wondering. Are we all imagining that, as the earth turns and the orbit has an edge between light and dark, that along that edge all the people are doing the same ritual — brush, brush, brush — for no good reason? Have you tried to picture this perpetual line of toothbrushes going around the earth?”

Here he simply exemplifies that we do the regular deeds without ever questioning why we have to do them. How many of us really questioned why we have to brush? I take it most of us might have done so. But we stop questioning when someone says “It’s good for teeth, to fight against foreign material”. But have we really tested it. Did you ever stop brushing for a week or so and checked for the effects. I am not saying we should. I am not even arguing whether brushing is good or bad for our teeth. I am merely speculating the idea of us following the acts and rules set in our society.

It is just a small part of it. There are many other aspects to this. Our mind gets so used to this illusion that it closes itself in. One of the most basic questions that might come to one’s mind is “Why do we have to wear clothes?”. Yes, seriously!
Yeah, Yeah! I get it, for protection from the environment. Then answer this, In India and Japan, we lose our footwear before entering a home. We wear them for protection. And since we know we don’t need it inside a shelter, we lose them. Why don’t we do the same with clothes? Then again, why female wear was maintained differently from the male ones from the beginning? Few justifications can be made for sure. Hadn’t we tried to cover ourselves in clothes, I am sure evolution would have taken care of our protection by now.

And why do we have to stay in families? Why parents must take care of children? Take a look at the lives of animals. Have we ever seen an animal being attached to its parents after growing up? You might say, for a better living or for better societal development, one must follow such rules. And again I am not saying that it’s wrong to do so.

To give a better impression of what I am writing about, I will try to make a comparison between an Indian and a western citizen. If you question an Indian how he pictures his future, he speaks of whatsoever job that he wishes to do, living in a nice home with parents. You might notice variations in the part of his job and the prospects of his marital expectations, and even you might hear from that he makes sure his parents get to live in a good home in cases of his wishing not to stay together.

But in the case of a western citizen, my bet would be that most of them never mention anything about their parents. I mean they won’t have given a thought about it. Well! yes, I am being partly stereotype here. But my intention is just to state that the effect of society on one’s thinking, how it makes one narrow-minded.

It’s just that I stayed in this society for more than 20 years now, I am unable to provide you with good examples. As I am typing this, I think I found another example. Beside me, sat one of my friends in the library. He is speaking to someone on Phone. Since it’s the library, rules say we are not supposed to make calls inside the library. So a Security guard came near us. And the scene goes like this...
Guard: Sir, stop the call. You are not allowed to make one.
friend: Why?
Guard: You will disturb the people around you.
My Friend turns towards me…..
friend: Rey Goutham, are you getting disturbed?
I nodded saying no. I am being faithful here. He is speaking in a low voice.
friend to Guard: see no one is getting disturbed here. why don’t you resume your walk!

In this situation, the general mindset of a student as imbibed upon him/her by the society demands the person here to either cut the call or to go out and resume his/her call. But the main motive the society set the rule was to see that no one gets disturbed. Since none is disturbed by his call, there is no need for the rule to be followed. Here my friend temporarily was out of the illusion of the society.
But then again he is limited within the outer rings of society. The society demands one to not disturb others. This very rule is again set upon us by society. Why one is obliged not to disturb others? Why must one respect others’ privacy and their views?

Many such doubts and questions can be raised by someone who can think. Yet I doubt that even the craziest questions are still bounded by the rules of society one follows or by the knowledge of the way of life of our ancestors.

I merely scratched the surface of illusions that we surrounded ourselves in. All our habits, thoughts, likes, preferences, wishes and many more which I am unable to state here are the results of societal constructs.

One of the easiest ways to try to realize this is to question everything and everyone that we face in our lives. And in trying to come out of illusions, one might sometimes get into a new one, which might be in contradiction with the previous one, but still an illusion.
As I finished typing the previous sentence, I realized since it is difficult to come out of all such realizations of illusions, what good will it do to come out of one, than to live on one, if it feels good. I am being out of my mind here, Hahha!

I hereby, end my article, hoping to have implanted the idea of illusions into your brains, or in the case of few people who already did realize it, I wish to know from them if I am on the right track of realization, as if it matters…..Hahha! An implanted idea is the mother of many illusions, one must know. So beware of what you let into your mind….It’s me trying to be scary.

Adios, until my next appearance.