Of Enmity, Freedom, And Other Things

When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
“Come out, you dogs, and fight!” said I,
and wept there was but once to die.

Now I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, “The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won-
The difference is small, my son.”
(From ‘The Veteran’ by Dorothy Parker)


Angry young men and women, virile socialists, juvenile reformists, wanna-be-revolutionaries, modern day communists and the young unshaven boys- all of them together going to one school, spectacled by many of their inert fellow students do not make a very desirable sight when observed rather objectively and from a slight distance.

The greatest tragedy of many of these confused, misdriven folk is that they do not have a tragedy- none of their own to be sure. Sometimes, along with the desire to exercise a considerable degree of power, even idealism can be blinding, which is a direct consequence of the circumstance: intellectual and social that they have apparently found as not very desirable. Therefore, they seem to have this ‘cause’, which is why they are toiling as much as they are, and which is why, they are ’so angry’.

A number of examples one may come across in many colleges and universities, and wherever there is room enough for the freshly triggered boys and girls to spread the word (both overtly and covertly), and which may have no tangible meaning.

Few days back, a friend was offered to join a feminist group which was apparently being lead by a young girl whose brother happens to be quite an active communist at school. That was one reason, my friend, who happens to be very disapproving of some aspects of the stereotype model of communism, refused. The continually ridiculing attitude of these communist friends towards religion has been a fat source of infuriation for many, especially the unshaven boys and the invisible girls. Heh. Quite a few of them have been beaten up by the unshaven boys for their bold endeavors at heresy. In fact, the present picture of grad-school-communism reveals nothing but a severe and stubborn contempt towards the generally respected conception of religion which many of the infamous and the bold justify using their so-believed coherent cognition.

The greater question that such a circumstance may give birth to is that of freedom which they think they do not have enough of in order to spread ‘their’ word rather overtly. It is quite an understood idea that the phenomenon of personal freedom does exist, regardless of all circumstance, in the way that, none can forbid what the other may think. Freedom in the plane of thought can be ideally real whereas on a more tangible level of experience, it remains really ideal. It goes without saying that the kind of freedom I am referring to in the ongoing paragraph is essentially a carte blanche, therefore, absolute. But as man has not been living in isolation, therefore, referring to ideal individualistic circumstances may will not be quite valid or productive of any difference-making results. Therefore, when taking into consideration a socialistic paradigm, the degree of freedom available to one can be well understood by using the old aphorism, which says that the freedom of my fist ends where your nose begins.

This maxim even though sounds more like a terrible cliché, is one sound principle which if carefully regulated and synchronized at an individual level can help the society in order to develop into a more of an at-peace and a tolerant community which would eventually become respectful and considerate regarding another man’s personal freedom quite voluntarily.

The dilemma of some of the factions of contemporary youth is that they are not willing to be patient as well as being realistically rational. (If there exists a possible case of realistic rationality as such a situation can be more strongly identified with a pragmatic paradigm rather than with a rationalistic one.) The blunder that is being made by these neo-communists is that they are not only displacing outside their own boundaries of freedom but are also trespassing into someone else’s territory which is not only giving rise to a controversial air among students which should really not be a happening part of a grad-school but is also arousing an intolerant debate among the candidates involved in the conflict. The neo-communists are not very large in their number but there is a fat chance that their number may increase very rapidly though still not as rapidly as that of the unshaven boys. Whereas those who focus on minding their on businesses will have to be ever more focused and try hard enough so as not to lose their concentration from the real reason they have been attending school for.

It is a sad fact that many of our educational institutions are being abused for purposes that are not only unacademic but are also generating enmity and paranoia among people. These issues are not trivial, they exist and therefore need to be addressed by authorities concerned, as people have been suffering because of them and nations like ours, need to disentangle the cluster of antagonism that is as existent in its reality as you and I, before moving on toward our attempts at dealing with issues more grave.