AUTHENTIC HELPLESSNESSES AND WHERE TO FIND IT?

Help is a wonderful category. To help someone can be an interesting experience. Even to the ego. The philosophy of Help or Seva is in Indian philosophy given a very central status. "Seva", in its pure meaning, is the losing yourself in the service of others kind of thing. 

Interestingly, the addition of suffixes, "-full" and "-less" makes it much more interesting. 

The feeling of being helpful to others contains within itself the feeling of being helpful to oneself. But there can be instances when the person is not able to help himself, but he can be helpful to others. 

"Helplessness" however is more or less an abstract totality. It is implicit in it, that If someone is helpless about himself, he cannot be helpful to others. In other words, here we are dealing with a Hegelian Negation, which means, the negation of being helpful, that is being helpless, is a different state. It is not just negation of helpful. 

Helplessness, although negates helpfulness, but it is much more radical. This overwhelm is much more intense. 

In Post-modern capitalist societies, Helplessness, where exactly are these found? 

Are these found in the tiresome bureaucratic structures of Indian Democracy? Are these found in the hierarchical oppressive structures of caste? Are these found in the seemingly sadistic patriarchal structure with a twist of feminist individual martyrdom of women that is seen nowadays, with men committing suicides due to torture and women demanding alimony? 

I guess, these might be helplessnesses on an individual level. A man living in these times might find himself in a state of helplessness, whom to marry, to marry or not to marry, or if the category of love can be trusted anymore? And similarly on an individual level, these things might feel helpless, but these are not collectively hopeless. 

For something to be helpless in the most authentic way, I believe, it has to be in a collectively hopeless state. That is, even if Humanity tried on a collective level, to help itself, it should fill humanity with an unprecedented hopelessness. 

I think the greatest hopelessness can be seen in the context of Ecology today. The fate of the commons is in dooms. No central authority to regulate. It is much easier to imagine the death of humanity from Climate change, but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism which actually caused it. Even on a collective level, if all of humanity tried, it can just extend the last date of humanity on earth, the feedback loops of climate change have now started. LA is burning, not enough air and water in Delhi, Africa we all know, drowning with waterlessness. It is a surety that we are living in end times, almost 40-50 years we have here on earth. 

And Ideology has rendered us anti-climate in this time. To talk about climate today is still a conservative talk. We do not have a progressive theory regarding climate change. The same old conservative thought process, "Mother Nature" and the religious connotations attached with Nature. I wonder what the leftists are doing. I think they have accepted suicide. They left theory long ago. When Fukuyama wrote that, "End of history", Leftists believed that dogma. Now, they think nothing can be done. 

Theory was the only hope left. But the central theme of today's time is that Marx's quote, "The fact is to change it!".  Change without a plan is just nature's way, not human's way. You raped mother nature. And now Mother nature is here to torture you to death. And still, you are personifying that bitch? 

The personification should be stopped. Is humanity still in its adolescent age? That it needs to personify abstract categories, like it imagines Gods, as his Saviour?  How hard is it to not hallucinate? How hard is it to see that you are creating a terrestrial and aquatic mess that no extra-terrestrial entity can solve.

On the deathbed also, man will not leave its "Other-worldly beliefs". It is so interestingly horrific that Ecology, a branch of science, still has a non-secular undertone to it. We still use terms like "Mother Earth". 

Wtf is "Gaia Hypothesis?" I think, it is "ulti seedhi baatein" or topsy turvy talk to avoid doing real work. 

Another area of Authentic helplessnesses can be found in the freedom to consume. Freedom, being a highly philosophical category, is now a commodity. You can literally buy yourself freedom when you buy a data pack. Freedom has been reduced to the freedom of consumption. 

Do you want to see a desperate devil's face? Just try to question someone on their usage of social media. 

The way they defend their internet consumption, is horrible. The withdrawals that they get when they are not using it seems like they are now zombies of information, content, and dopamine. This helplessness that I see in my friends, my peers, my parents even, is the helplessness to enjoy. 

This is our second category. If first one, the ecology one was, the helplessness to suffer, this is the helplessness to enjoy. 

We are forced to enjoy. Enjoyment is forced down our throats in this day and age. The only rare commodity, if still exists, is boredom. Boredom is difficult to find. It is so easy to enjoy nowadays that men do not do nothing but to enjoy. 

And men complain. How can you complain while using your phone for whole day? When did you assume that this has to become a fundamental right? Right to internet? It is such a weird category. But theoretically, we are witnessing something very profound here. We are witnessing, how a sense of entitlement is created. How an artificial demand, created to sell freedom to men, now has transformed to become almost as a pillar of democracy. What do we infer from it?

The fake sacredness that we attach to democracy is apparent now. There is nothing so sacred about democracy. It is just a set of juvenile fantasies of humans. What are rights in 21st century but a set of dopamine inducing desires of a 21-year-old. 

Mature societies, if they exist, need fewer rights, as they self-censure. They know the boundaries and limits of existence. To consume information all day long is maddening. It is utter madness. 

This pressure of enjoyment is not only with regards to Internet. In general, we are an enjoyment obsessed society. India, why it became a dopamine inducing factory for internet providers? This is because we are a bunch of restless jerks. We cannot sit still. We need almost 150 festivals a year to enjoy. This is not a matter of pride but a matter of shame for us. Mature societies have fewer occasions to enjoy and more occasions to work. We need work nowadays more than ever. But, work has been severely tabooed. Work is instantly associated with workaholism and then drain, and then suicides. It is same as when someone drinks a lot, and then comes to work late, he thinks timing of work is the problem. No timing is perfect, you are a drunkard. 

Why do we have so many festivals? It is because we have so many categories. We celebrate almost everything. We have so many divisions based on caste, class and gender, Indian-western dichotomy. Do you know the celebration of an Indian category called Chhatthi or the sixth day of birth of a newborn is now complemented with the birthday celebration. So, we adopted both the western and the Indian way. 

We are a dopamine addict country, not just a dopamine addict generation. It is not just GenZ that has this problem. I am not a conservative who criminalizes the newer generation for everything. I think it is in humans, they do not know what is good for them how much. It is like you have attached micro-rods in the brain of a rat and given him the remote. He will stimulate himself to death. He is now "free" in the post-modern sense now. 

Freedom in this day and age, is only one freedom. Freedom of self-destruction. The conservative good values of Discipline and regulation and control are now tabooed. That is why I often say, good conservatism is better than idiot progressivism. 

Conservatism had only one good virtue. It used to work on the individual capacity building of pain. How much can one man suffer? what is his limits? And that is tabooed the most today. We need to be conservative in one aspect today. We need to be self-disciplined; we need to self-regulate, we need to self-censure. 

If not we do it, the state will do it and we will reinforce a state of totalitarianism. 

So, in a nutshell, true helplessness is found in areas where you are mostly sleeping. You cannot even fathom the concept of helplessness there. You find yourself sleeping in enjoyment there. That is why, the concept of awakening is important in Adhyatm. Awakening has nothing to do with person in pain, rather with person in pleasure. A person in pleasure has to see that there is nothing more lethal than moments of pleasure, at least, the way pleasure is forced down our throats in this day and age. 

I read these lines in Class 7th. The couplet here is written by a 20th century, almost unknown poet, Balkrishna Sharma "Navin", it means more than ever today, "The secret of life has been understood today, the stimulations of eyebrows, a symbol of pleasure, is actually has roots of destruction." More than ever we need to internalise these lines. 

Bhru-Vilaas mein hi hai Mahanaash!