THE IDEOLOGY OF EMPTY GESTURES

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 also known as Jhoot-puraai in Bihari dialects, 

governs all of our bourgeois social life. You ask for tea to someone even if you do not want to serve tea and you wish they say no and they say no because they know you do not want to serve tea and it is just an empty gesture. But the message is propagated. The message of being nice to each other. Fake niceness of course which helps to break the continuity of directly coming to business. 

Directly coming to business somewhat sounds materialistic and hence to add a flavor of spiritual kindness, one behaves in this fake kindness.

So, the question arises? Are these empty gestures that empty? The so called empty in the philosophical discourse is never a null discourse. It is filled with a message, often an ideological message. This message can vary according to its use. Why it is essential to understand Empty gestures? 

Empty gesture is actually an accidental discovery of Human where it can safeguard its unwillingness to conform with the societal and psycho-social norms and just for a bit, breathe in some air of freedom. 

Let us take an example. There is a spouse or say to be specific, a husband, who loves his wife. A husband should love his wife, so far so good. This is what society expects from you. But the human tendencies are not always in sync with this monotonous feeling of always in love. I assert that Love in transit is the only revolutionary entity there. A constant feeling of affection and love is a bourgeois and a conformist category. Love, which is passionate, and revolutionary has always been transitory and to some extent evil. I am all for the Selfish love which categorizes few over all and says, I will love only these. Universal and spiritual love is a facade and is fake. Love in its foundations has to be evil and there is nothing wrong with it.  The only wrong here is the fixation of human nature to establish a universalist category of love. 

Coming to the example, So, since he truly loves his wife, he is not always in pro-active loving mood. But the pressure upon the couple is great and hence, we see inventions of emojis, and heart reacts on social media. I recall the example of the Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek, when we watch a sit-com with a laugh track after every joke, Zizek asserts the function of the laugh track is not to induce laughter but to laugh on your behalf. Similarly, the function of the emojis is purely ideological. It does not induce love. It is an empty gesture which loves your wife on behalf of you. It is like you hired a person to kiss your wife when you are not in mood, and it kisses your wife through a Kiss emoji. 

In this sense, the function of empty gestures is exactly in the service of the neo-liberal economic structure, to de-humanize human tendencies and make them extremely ceremonial. I however, advocate the use of them because only through that you can survive in the system. A true revolutionary act, however, would be to rebel against even this miniature ideology at work. But I do not think it is advisable if you want to live a happy life. Empty gestures are actually now a way of life. 

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