In Denial.... Forever

“In order for us to maintain our way of life, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable, but merely that they be erected as barriers of truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all cost be avoided.” Derrick Jensen, Language Older Than Words.
We humans have this amazing tendency of denying self evident truths and obvious facts. We are unwilling to see the connection between interlinked events and issues. We deliberately avoid connecting all the dots and seeing the entire picture. And we do this only because we need to internally deny realities or else our present lives will be impossible to lead.

Crime rates are ever increasing. Everyday we read brutal stories of murder, rape and theft in newspapers and watch gory images on television and shake our heads in disbelief. We keep discussing these issues and question how humans can bring themselves to commit such hideous atrocities. We then conclude that increasing security, not trusting fellow humans, imposing checks are the only solutions. But not once do we stop and ponder why these incidents are rising. We are unprepared to acknowledge that it is the increasing social divide that is leading to these crimes. None of us wants to take notice of the fact that too many goods, services and facilities are available for a select handful of the population, whereas a major portion of the population is unable to fulfil their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. A very small part of the entire population is amassing a lot of wealth while too many are starving. In such a scenario crime rates are bound to rise. We cannot expect a majority of the population to sit on the sidelines and watch, while a few gorge on the goodies our society and economy has to offer.

There is all this grumbling about population growth but we do not want to understand and accept the reasons for this growth. We wonder why those silly farmers, workers, servants and beggars cannot understand the simple logic that the lesser the children the better off they will be. But we deny the relationship between poverty and population growth. We turn a blind eye to their logic that more kids leads to more hands for work. There is sheer ignorance on our part to their lack of education and exposure, lack of availability of contraceptives or medical facilities. We dismiss their inability to foresee the problems to be faced tomorrow with more children over their need for higher income today.

We conveniently shy away from the link between poverty and capitalism and globalisation. We refuse to accept that far more people lead a worse life today than they did a couple of generations ago. Very few have benefited from this greed and capitalism. Globalisation, free market, capitalism are basically designed to enrich a few and impoverish the many. A very small part of the population has access to and can afford Levis, Body Shop, Nike, Mc Donalds, Pizza Hut, Banana Republic, Volkswagen, Ford, and the likes. Not many people can frequent multiplexes, shopping malls and fine restaurants. Most people do not have access to basics like water, electricity, medical help, sanitation and we want to believe capitalism benefits everybody, that it is the common good! “ We prefer to believe the myth that thousands of years of human social evolution has finally perfected the ideal economic system, rather than face the fact we have merely bought into a false concept and accepted it as a gospel. We have convinced ourselves that all economic growth benefits humankind, and that greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. Finally we have persuaded one another that the corollary to this concept is moral and just: that people who excel at stoking fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born on the fringes are available for exploitation.” – John Perkins, Confessions Of An Economic Hitman.

Do we feel any differently on the issue of climate change? We have convinced ourselves that we can grow exponentially and the planet will support our reckless behaviour. We have come to believe that God created Earth for us, and we humans as a superior race have complete right over all resources, plants and animals, they are available at our disposal. We choose to ignore the changes taking place everyday around us. We do not notice depleting ice shelves and increasing forest fires. We call Katrina, the Heat Wave of 2005, The Mumbai Rains all one offs. We do this only because if we were to accept the connection and our involvement in making this happen we will not be able to continue our present lifestyles. We will not be able to burn cheap fossil fuel, deforest, build dams and bridges, or do any of the things we do today. Thus we assure ourselves and others that global warming is a myth.

Terrorism is no different. There is global ire towards terrorists and towards Islam. But not once do we see where the roots of terrorism lie. The cause of religious fundamentalism and bigotry is conveniently ignored. There is complete ignorance to where the funds come from, who supports them and against whom, who protects, nurtures and shelters them, in which circumstances are terrorists born and for whose benefit. We avoid noticing the link between poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. There is blatant denial that one community has been marginalised for too long and there will be retaliations to that. And we do this simply because the answers to these questions are too inconvenient for us to handle.

Our denial is true for anything that will alter or inconvenience our existing lifestyles. And thus we internalise our denial. Be it dams, SEZs, factory farming, racism, atrocities against women and children, social do’s and don’ts, we believe it is right and the best way of life. We have to or else we will not be able to live.

But a stage needs to come when our selfish need to internally deny and continue living will be overcome by the need of our conscience to be right. A time will come when we will need to choose the right things for the right reasons.