Prejudice Community Threatens Human Survival:
The recent news on the Indian rape cases reported the law enforcing agent to be holding the attire of the female rape victim responsible for causing the crime. Muslim women are covered fully and still rape cases are high in numbers in Muslim countries. This shows that the sexy female attire is not the cause of the rape crime. In the same bizarre manner, victims of harassment in government organizations are normally held responsible for creating their own victimized condition. The closed minds are so blinded that they cannot see the culprit as the culprit and so the poorly analyzed problem encouraged victimization. The supposedly intelligent beings in the system also simply ignore the truth in their twisted brain.
The twisted thinking taught by a culture to dislike a particular group perceived all the problems to be caused by the disliked group. Victimizing the victim is not just an error of individual judgment on the victim alone; it is a bigger error of societal judgment against a particular group held in disdain or in low esteem. When the mind is conditioned to perceive the victim as the defaulter, the prejudiced mind treats the victim as the culprit that effectively places the culprit as the victim. Such prejudiced mind will search for reasons to blame the group considered lesser beings or dangerous to the community. This kind of mindset justifies all actions of the culprit on the targeted victim group as deserved and so the criminal action is not to be questioned. The repeated criminal action in the form of discrimination, harassment, victimization and torture produces a series of negative outcome on life condition of the disliked group.
The worst outcome is the smothering of the spirit to live. In many cases, the torture uses an invisible technique to exclude the group and deny them opportunity under flimsy grounds. The invisible technique is preferred to the visible technique because the crime cannot be evidenced making its application shielded but very lethal.
The invisible technique is used to kill the spirit to live and this produces more cruelty than the instantaneous physical murder. The cruelty of applying a slow death process through reduced life condition to an unbearable level is meant to trap the victim for self-annihilation. The self demolition manifests in alcoholism, drug addiction and adoption of unhealthy lifestyle from depression. The depressed life condition may even tempt the victim to commit serious crimes like suicide and murder. The victims who could be rescued too have little chance of survival as they normally suffer from psychological trauma. The damaged condition denies the victim the opportunity to lead a normal life like others. The most disgusting part is when the victimization continues unchallenged and the crime condoned for the criminal to continue the crime. This kind of a societal attitude and behavior towards a particular targeted group certainly does not project a happy community living.
Prejudice Exalts Myopic Existence of the Few:
The cultural attitude of looking down upon a particular group passively endorses the dependence of the perceived weaker group on the stronger force as a natural equation. In other words, the culture justifies the unequal treatment. By accepting the inequality, the culture does not recognize potential, creativity and strength of the disliked group. So the common attitude is to silently approve the unequal treatment and be apathetic towards the sufferings of the prejudiced group.
The myopic group exalting only itself as worthy is the culprit in the crime against humanity. Such myopic group exists in backward communities as also in advanced societies. It is observed that traditional cultural outlook acted as a main feeder to prejudiced attitude. The western historical racialism forms the social milieu for today’s social prejudice on certain groups. The historic Jewish holocaust and the general tendency to view Jews differently today have both been derived from the same social milieu. Indian tradition offers another prominent example of prejudiced existence. Victimization of a schedule caste or tribe in India hardly exudes sympathy from other castes communities. Similarly, the female sex held in low esteem is looked upon as the temptress in rape crime. The Middle East dictatorial torture legitimized by the cultural belief of the divine right of the ruler is unquestioningly accepted under a similar culturally conditioned mind.
Unhappy Condition Makes a Nation Unhappy:
While USA is fortunately blessed with questioning minds to pursue the truth and seek justice, the Muslim community under airtight-controlled system is unable to question the authority. And while the Indian citizens are loud in their protest these days, they barely measure up-to the desirable level of inquisitiveness or have the audacity to question the authority. Today, democratic India lay buried in qualms of life hidden by the bubble of GDP. Rising India saddled with rising population over 2.5 billion has also witnessed increased in the size of the poor in hunger who are existing in ignorance and illiteracy. Rising India is rated as the world’s capital for infanticide, rape and suicides with possible distinctive position of the largest numbers of insurgents in the world. Paradoxically, shining India majority struggles under unequal access to opportunities and unequal distribution of the newly acquired national wealth. Shining India’s poor majority are the culturally looked down upon category belonging to low-caste and tribes including Muslim minority broadly termed as the deprived group.
Undeniably the unhappy majority poor condition, the silent sufferings under dictatorial rule and racial victimization are indicative of unhappy condition.
What you Measure is what you get:
The British government recently introduced measurement of happiness. The policy initiative is meant to help assess life condition from the impact of social and public policy in order to measure happiness. Measurement of happiness as a policy will help the government to understand the needs of the people better. It will also help the people stay focus on how to get happiness instead of diverting attention on trivial issues to cause social tension and increase the crime.
Measurement of happiness will direct all citizens towards a common goal of attaining national happiness. It will teach the people the real problem facing the country and urged them to stand in unity instead of wasting time hunting the disliked group. It will show that a nation need not assumed global power to make its people happy. It will reveal that corporate profit has neither improved living condition nor the high GDP automatically alleviate life condition of the poor. The vast majority struggling under poor condition do not feel the comfort of a fat salary earned by some individuals who benefited the economic growth. For a fat salary earner too, happiness does not lie in working for a big reputed organization either when happiness is how one is treated in the organization.
In the ultimate analysis, happiness is how an individual feels about the living condition and gets treated in the system. Happiness comes only when one feels protected, secured and ”enabled” to lead a meaningful life. Happiness is when the individual is ‘enabled’ through equal access to opportunities without anyone being denied the opportunity to feel the change in life condition. Happiness is when every individual earn, live and grow through the given opportunity under shared national wealth without prejudice with equal access to opportunities. Happiness is when treated as deserving legitimate citizen and not as criminal for protecting the interest of the nation.
Happy individuals from happy life condition make a happy country. Although emotion cannot be measured, the impact of social and public policy on citizens can be assessed to measure happiness.
Author’s Note:
This piece is an outcome of exchange of thoughts and information via the internet interface. My recent published article on institution building touches upon the emotive aspect of governance in the Indian context that recently has been flushed with news of suicides. With increased trend of suicide in service, the subject on ‘happiness’ becomes most relevant sustaining productivity management in both private and public affairs. Western countries are well informed on the theory and practice and recent survey rated Scandinavian countries as the happiest countries. Surprisingly, Israel locked in Middle East crisis scored very high rank. The ratings revealed that happiness is not about GDP and money alone; it is about a feeling given and received. This writing is meant to warm up interest and generate discussion on such a critical aspect of governance based on emotions and human feelings. The article is written from my own experience and strengthened by current information on developments in governments across the globe with special attention to deeply troubled regions. The article is an opinion contributed by me as a creative resource to benefit readers of wide spectrum.
