Thursday, December 2, 2010

Irrelevance of Relevance



“I don’t know what you are saying, doing, writing or thinking. Neither do I want to know. Yet I do know, whatever it is, it is wrong—in fact bound to be wrong. And I say so because I know for sure.”

I know these words are bound to evoke amused expressions—not the least furrowed brows—all precursors to, in all probability, in their unanimity…the conclusions, that I have taken leave of my senses…that is if I had one according to some people! But let me assure you that I couldn’t be more in synch with my senses. I might be out of my mind, but not out of my senses…and that I prefer because it is my senses and feelings that I have helped me realize a number of things which the sole dependence on mind would not have catalyzed.

Well, this is a preamble to the fact—and you are free to contest it—that when we do not agree with something: it could be an action, person, conversation, writing(s)—we start calling the person and the issue concerned irrational, illogical, irrelevant, incoherent, pointless, imagination running amok…and what not. The list is actually endless!

All because we do not agree with (to) it?

But do we not know that likes and dislikes are all relative—and not absolute…quite contrary to the way we proclaim it to be? True, sheer acts of criminal nature shall always be absolute acts of crime—carried out for selfish reasons at the cost of the welfare of others. But apart from these acts, we cannot label the sundry, as mentioned above, just because ‘we think’ them to be so.

Are we really thinking or are we truly capable of investing the effort required to get under the skin of the corresponding topics concerned and do we really want to make that attempt?

Generally we pass mere statements—a by-product of our myopic perception—as declaration of truth. And, this generalization as ‘we’, includes me too.

If we really want to know the truth—which is of only one variety…Absolute—we would definitely opt for the best option which is to ask the person concerned as to what led to his/her action…eg: an author of a piece while criticizing a piece of writing. Each and everyone—the creator as well as audience—both have a right to their opinion. But the audience before forming an opinion of the opinion—the piece of writing—should take proper measures.

But instead of doing so, we opt for a ‘reaction of resistance’. We prefer to utilize our ‘freedom of speech’ too freely. True, if it is freedom it has to be free and we have that right to our right, but to be used in the right manner.

Disagreements are very normal phenomena but that doesn’t necessarily imply that to disagree we need to be disagreeable. But quite unfortunately this is what happens and the glaring examples are less than desirable reactions most frequently observed in disagreeable retaliations to literary expressions…books or an article. And the reason behind these disagreements is mostly found to occur what we cannot comprehend or which is juxtaposed to the conventional.

Since we human beings are too concerned with our image and external satisfaction we fear that if juxtaposition to convention gains acceptance that would lead to a paradigm shift in the thinking, and hence beliefs, of fellow humans. This thought instills a fear in the followers and propagators of ‘the conventional’. We are unable to accept the new because that would render our long-standing views—that we call beliefs—false and also because we are creatures of habit. Last but not the least, this generates—an irrational but factual—insecurity given the fact that we as propagators of ‘the conventional’ find our followers to decrease in number. Looked at from other angle, liberation of people from dependence—on us—makes us feel insecure.

There are various reasons…in fact many more…than the ones I have touched upon here and some, which I might concentrate later at some other time. This outright rejections of something, just because it had been hitherto un-encountered though might be ‘normal’—given the human nature emanating out of conditioned and habitual thinking—but to me is illogical, as I realise now. Illogical are not the views—newer ones—but is definitely so for their rejections.

So instead of accepting that it is we who are rejecting something just because we cannot come to terms—or don’t want to make even the minimum effort to do so—we label it to be an act of a person who is not normal—again a relative term. That person is either said to be insane or propagator of blasphemy. And in worst case called a spiritual person—spiritual being pronounced as some disease, if afflicting a person before a ripe, right and respectable age of sixty!

Hence many Relevant issues are put away as Irrelevant. After all Truth being always the difficult to accept—which is another paradox of life. Whereby Irrelevance of Relevance is flaunted though actually through the act—of outright rejection—Irrelevance of Irrelevance gets projected.

Yet to me NO THING is Irrelevant—as nothing happens without a reason and there is a season for everything. Even Rejections become incubators of Expression yet again hitherto Unexpressed. So while for some there is Irrelevance of Relevance to me there is Relevance of even Irrelevance.


Copyright © Sushmita Mukherjee.