There are a lot of
things about the way people go about their lives. There are certain givens - assumptions
– which are incorporated into our thinking and attitudes, the way we deal with
our worlds, which have their influence in most of our decisions and
indecisions. Sometimes one of these assumptions act as pillars for what a
person is. Many people go through their entire lives without addressing what
these assumptions are and what they stand for. The one such belief which is most
addressed is religion. People choose to specifically accept it or reject it.
But many other axioms go unnoticed. Passively accepted or rejected but never
addressed.
One such feel, a
certain hypothesis that doesn’t get analyzed enough: Life as a whole right now
isn’t as good as it used to be in the old times. Old times can be a person’s
childhood or teenage or their grandparents times depending on whether the
person is question is a teenager or middle aged man or a loser. I can’t say
that majority of people feel this way but a significant bunch do. And majority
of us feel this way with lesser consistency.
For instance, how many
times have I heard - Yesterdays songs are gold. Today’s, just too ripe.
Yesteryears lifestyle (with barriers and scarecrows) was too good. Today’s
lifestyle (With Independence) is messed up. It is kind of a curse to have a
drunk around you unless you are drunken enough yourself to ignore him coz this
is the stuff that inevitably pops up with drunkards. Too much philosophy with
too much bias. As if philosophy of any kind is good at all.
Yet, let’s
philosophize. It can be fun if I you know how to take it.
We need to go deeper
into the concepts of Music and Independence the drunkards talk of, as they
define a lot of who we are in general. Also, because this space isn’t about
stuff that matters.
Music is subjective. It
is dependent much on the quality of the musicians as the genre. And on the
person listening. So when we say old time music was good. Mostly it was the
melodious music of 70s/80s/90s (which was the only kind then) which is good.
Wait, 90s was shit. It was the transition of everything (at least that is how I
feel as I grew up then) where they were just learning to use guitars in places
of veenas. The music currently seems messed up because there is too much to
take from too many musicians. But if you choose with ears, the music today was
not even conceivable 20/30 years back. In types of music available, whether classic
Bollywood hits or western albums on charts, history is being made every week
with music so beautiful than ever before. This goes for many things apart from
music. You can always say there is nothing as soothing as Kishore Kumars Tere
Bina Zindagi.. But Kishore Kumar may have done much more today, and better!
You know what else was
not conceivable 20/30 years back? Technology. Just by the presence of all that
is available to us, we of today are superior to ourselves of yesterday. And
technology takes everything with it. To some extent, mindsets. Independence is
such a victim. People take it, play with it, misuse it. When it backfires, they
say that its evil. It’s like writing ‘the bike was drunk’ on an insurance claim
paper. Fact is, our education,
especially at home, doesn’t take into account the freedom a man gets after he
turns 16 or so.
When there were
restrictions on how to live. People asked for freedom. In fact it was fought
for and rightly earned. But, when their loved kids get spoiled because they
were not taught how to deal with all the options freedom gives, the confusion
the options create and the threat pushing the wrong button poses. When the
naïve click the bad habits button which is colorful and gives immediate
returns. When a kid suddenly turns stops showing respect. People confuse their
failure as failure of independence. The failure of ‘today’s generation’. Fact
is, yesterdays generation must have been knowing what’s coming and prepare for
it. Too bad our that dads didn’t. We can safely say today’s generation will be
equally screwed when the tide turns and the next generation shows up. Planning
is for losers anyways.
As a sub note, it must
be said that not everything is getting good and creamy. I Look at the IT
engineers out there who don’t know as much about SQL as me (I don’t know shit)
and think, where are we anyways! Population just stinks. This has to be the
major negative today. Children everywhere. I am getting allergenic to kids (and
people in general). Maybe a huge cleaning program takes away one-third the
whole population and there will be smaller Qs in petrol bunks and Theaters.
Fingers crossed.
Foolishly hopeful, wandering
mind, mine.. Anyways, what was the bottom-line again? Evolution says that we
learn from our shortcomings and learn do things better without/despite those
shortcomings.
Another thing that is
degrading, other than population, is the quality of articles I could think of
for this page. Wait, this one looks fine.
PS: confused whether
the above constitutes philosophy.