Monday, May 24, 2010

Punching Bag - An excuse to punch


The Punching Bag

===================================================================

One can't deny that from time zero, we have been striving hard to get rid of all 'bad guys'. There is a considerable amount of space devoted in our consciousness for describing, delimiting, defining and identifying such bad guys. And of course that makes perfect sense, after all if the goal is to have a perfect, serene, peaceful, transparent society, then that's necessary...you need to identify and eradicate the 'bad lot'. Then what's perplexing is that we have hardly made advances towards achieving such a goal. True, that we have developed better methods, laws, etc..but then these are being countered. There's this saying in bengali "niyom ache jokhon, niyam er faak o ache" (if laws are there, there are loopholes too).....anyways, I feel I needn't try hard to convince that there are too many bad things lurking around us (not that we are not a part of those things) and we also know most sources of these, which can be surprising considering all the effort in trying to control these.....
Its a cycle....try controlling them...they bounce back....and again you try...Every year the demon is killed by the goddess and again comes back to be killed....the cycle continues....the demon keeps coming back like a punching bag and gets punched and comes back....looks like some unknown force is putting it back to its original position...
I am a believer of "if it keeps on persisting, it has some importance" school of thought and so I wonder.....

I have heard expressions like -
"they always find a way, an individual will always capable of evading everything"
"humans are instinctively criminal, its just fear which keeps most of them dormant"

Well, these rather dramatized statements doesn't say much...there are two main things here - why is these rather undesirable elements bounce back and what may be this unknown force which allow them to bounce back????? I don't intend to explore psychology of criminals....I would rather take an easy path....I would try to imagine a criminal free society..lets see

Think of this serene and peaceful society where crime doesn't need to be suppressed as it has been eliminated...so no more 'badguys'...no more villians.....no more 'your favourite whipping boy' or the punching bag....so, no more excuses to monopolise oil supplies.....no more blaming others for your misfortune....no more saving the damsel in distress....waste of all arsenals.....no blackmailing....Looks like so many other things will evaporate with crime...Do we actually need villians? do we need to keep them so that whenever we need them, we just have to point at them...but when we need them? do they somehow make our life easy?!!!
I don't know about our life, but surely I can remember countless movies where villians make director's/scriptwriter's life much easier....remember when the leading lady had to make up her mind between two equally good suitors, and then suddenly one turns out to be a person who had actually killed her father or may be who is marrying her for money...in short a villian...a much needed villian...no more probs for the heroine or the audience...of course the scum would be taken care of by the hero, who would beat him into pulp before being compassionate.....
or remember when there's everything perfect for a break-up between our hero and heroine, and the story is so complicated that its unlikely that this can be avoided in normal circumstances or by proper discussions (which anyway won't be value for your ticket's money), so now there only one person who can save the day; yeah here comes the super-villain....now its easy...the macho hero needs to save her girl from getting raped and then they can live together happily......
Without them how can you point to a group of forest guerilla's for being the reason for not allowing development.....now suppose you need lot of oil (you got a hell lot of cars and other such stuffs) and you also got nice fighter planes, ships, nuclear missiles...what would you do? Well, maybe if it were some 300-500 years ago (maybe even 100), you would have attacked middle east...but no, you also need to keep your reputation intact and that's a problem...that's a price you need to pay for being hypocrite...tch tch..sad.....well, you are saved...coz there are villains who urgently need to be get rid of....yup, just attack Saddam and laden....you would be laden with oil!!! But, seriously, you have also done nice thing by eliminating them...it would also be a great injustice if you have all the capabilities but you don't do anything....and of course, the cost of such a mission would be enormous so you also need to have some profit from it.
So, coming back to our original discussion, yup it seems villains are precious....we all take get advantages from such villains....... whenver something messes up, just point the finger....cool...
We are cricket lovers, right?...so we have azhar/sachin/saurav/rahul/Dhoni being abused coz they (one of them, who it is doesn't matter) won the toss, elected to bowl and of course lost the game quite embarrasingly.....so they question is why they chose to bowl...well as far I can guess, it is quite likely that this have been a team decision, I am sure the captains don't decide such things instantly during toss...teams discuss all these together....but anyways it always a nice feeling to hold someone by his neck and abuse him, convince ourselves that we are doing this for a valid reason. So, essentially we all have our favorite whipping boys in different contexts. I imagine it will be difficult to sustain our ideals, heroes, feeling of greatness, pride or even normal life without villians....Looks like its the society and all its goodness which had nurtured crime....no good without the bad!!! the unknown force is not around us, but within us...we constantly need to reincarnate the demons. So, every hero needs a villain, every goddess needs a demon, every Batman needs a joker, every opposition needs a ruling party and every ruling party needs a opposition, every disaster needs a terrorist....every you needs me and every me needs you
Next time you see the above pic, spare a thought for the demon, who repeatedly needs to be evoked and stabbed to keep the greatness alive....