Festivals, Capitalism and Sense of Belonging.
Wishing you all a very Happy Diwali but here are some questions.
My Dear Close Friends
When the pandemic started, I signed up for a course on Leadership, and we had a very interesting chapter about ‘A Paradoxical Concept of Group Dynamics’ which talked about co-existing within a group by practising your individuality as well as practising groupness. It is not at all easy to achieve the ideal group dynamics, trust me. It is a paradox that one experiences in any group size like friends or family or religion or country or even the world. Here are few a paragraphs from that chapter
To build a group out of a collection of individuals, members must express their individuality. For people to become fully individuated, they have to accept the groupness upon which individuality is predicated.
The paradox of individuality is that a group relies upon the energies brought to it by its members as individuals, yet it is threatened by that very individuality, an individuality which ironically develops only when members invest themselves fully in the groups to which they belong, an investment which itself appears to undermine individuality. Freud in 1922 elaborated on the individual side of this in his explication of how individuality develops as one works on one's "groupness".
It is the impairment of one's connections to the primary group, the family, that stirs the intense desire to be individuated in the first place. By learning how to deal with one's groupness, the importance of individuation fades, and through its fading, individuation is realised. Benne in 1968 pointed out the group side of this paradox in his observation of the way members divide into camps over whether the group exists for its members or members exist for the group. He indicated that development depends on moving beyond this polarised perspective to the stage where members accept their groupness and the group accepts the importance of its members' individuality. The paradox is that the group gains its solidarity as individuality is legitimated, and individuality is fostered when the primacy of the group is affirmed.
The paradox of individuality runs counter to the instincts we all have on approaching a group for the first time. To imagine throwing oneself into a group before developing a clear sense of what it is like sounds insane. Yet, it is members' reluctance to engage that makes the group feel like a hollow cocoon, an unsafe place to take risks.
One special irony of this paradox is that members usually join a group to deal with some part of life that feels a sense of inadequacy. The inadequacy can grow out of aloneness leading to the search for friendship groups, out of the desire to develop new competencies that cannot be acquired in isolation triggering the joining of educational groups, out of the requirement to earn income for survival stimulating the connecting with employment groups, and out of the need for intimacy and social support forming the basis for creating family and emotional support groups. Hence, individuals come to a group looking for what they can get.
However, when everyone is approaching the group this way the question becomes who is going to do the giving?
This puts the group in the position of looking at its potential members in terms of what they offer the group, not what they need to be given, communicating the message to new members "if you want anything from this group, you are going to have to first do some giving!" So potential members look to see what others are getting and giving. What emerges is ambiguous. If it turns out that others are in this group because they have similar inadequacies, the individual will fear that the group will demand more than it will give, making joining seem pointless.
The paradoxical perspective emphasises that the group exists, grows, becomes strong and resourceful only as the individuality of its members is expressed. At the same time that a group requires connections, conformity, and similarity for its existence, it also requires discontinuities and differences. Both the differences that come as expressions of individuality and the similarities, expressed as connectedness, simultaneously jeopardise and strengthen the group.
In like manner, the similarities and the differences both support and threaten the individuality of group members. The expression of differences risks individual disconnection and collective disintegration while providing the possibility of connection based on personally meaningful commonalties. Similarly, the connections risk the stagnancy of conformity.
The paradoxical struggle is again within the individual and within the group, to live with the tensions that emanate from the group's dependency on the individuality of its members and the individual's dependency on the commonalty of the group.
There is no clear understanding of how to solve this paradox because the majority of the times it is very subjective and depends on the nature of the group. At the same time answering this for co-existing in the world is too complex a problem.
Now Diwali is a time where I feel more inclusive about being part of the family and I have always looked forward to this festival and some other days like Birthday, Ganesh Utsav, New Years etc because these festivals give me the sense of belonging with the culture and with my people.
But what really is a sense of belonging?
Well for me sense of belonging is a state of mind - when you are at peace with yourself. When you are comfortably YOU, when you don’t have to make an effort to ‘fit in’. You don’t have to censor your speech or moderate your behavior to fit the ‘social environment’ of the place.
Having said that, a person does not have a static sense of belonging at all times. Most adults have varied aspects of their life. You have a personal identity, a professional identity, a sexual identity, a cultural identity, a political identity, and many more but these are the important facets of your life. When we are talking about a sense of belonging these contexts play an important role. And like everything else in life, these identities are not airtight or demarcated. These identities are overlapping and influence each other constantly.
Since yesterday was Diwali, and all of us were immersed in the festive spirit, I was thinking a lot about festivals and what role it plays for a community. So I asked you people on the whatsapp group about the significance of festivals in relation to sense of belonging. For most of you, festivals provide a sense of belonging may be because you are together with your family and friends, which is a valid point if you live in different cities and hence are separated from them for the rest of the year. But what if you are someone who stays in their hometown with their family and still only the festival days give you that sense of belonging?
Let me give you a personal example, every morning I have tea with my parents and Bruce. We start our day together, updating each other on what’s happening in our lives. I am reading the newspaper while having tea, my dad is forwarding Good Morning creatives on 17537 whatsapp groups, my mom is talking to Bruce and then he is just intently listening to hear the words ‘Khana’ or ‘Royal Canin’. And I think nothing gives me more sense of belonging with my family than this half hour of the day.
That’s it, simple as that I don’t need 5 religious or culturally approved days a year to connect with my family and feel that sense of warmth and joy!
I am going to bring in Karl Marx reference here where he says these two important things about religion and capitalism based on this article
Karl Marx's celebrated dictum, "religion is the opium of the people", had a quiet genesis. He wrote it in 1843 as a passing remark in the introduction to a book of philosophical criticism he never finished. When he did publish it the following year, it was in an obscure radical journal with a print run of 1,000. It was not until the 1930s, when all things Marxist were in vogue, that the maxim entered the popular lexicon.
Yet it still resonates. In many parts of the world organised religion remains the most powerful force in society: more than 4.5 billion people identify with one of the world's four biggest religions, and that figure is rising. In Europe, though, religious faith and expression have collapsed in the past 170 years. It's hard to think of anything that has taken their place—except perhaps, for a while, Marxism itself.
Marx was not exactly against religion. For him, faith was something that "the people" conjured for themselves, a source of phoney happiness to which they turned to help numb the pain of reality. It was "the sigh of the oppressed creature". Organised religion with its churches, doctrines and priests followed on from that, a useful tool by which the ruling classes kept the masses supine.
Now it may seem elitist, even sneering, to ask what the opium of the people is, what keeps us—or, worse, "them"—down when we could be up, soporific when we should be fighting for a better world. Are we really dim animals, willing ourselves into submission?
The question is uncomfortable. Yet there is something in it that speaks to a niggling sense in most of us that were it not for time and energy wasted in some direction—be it a penchant for pints, an obsession with runs, goals or tries, even too long spent at work—then we too might have changed the world, staged a revolution, or even just written that novel.
So what do we drug ourselves with today? Society is more diverse than it was in Marx’s time. Our writers reflect that here in their intriguing selection of obsessions that distract us from reality’s dark truths.
Money must be another contender—so many lives are filled with dreams of it, pursuit of it, spending it. It's a faith with many faces: credit cards that let us buy more than we can afford; houses for which we borrow and borrow; lottery tickets that we know make little sense. Perhaps this is Marx's ultimate defeat: is capitalism now the opium of the people?
There is also the ever-expanding realm of mass distraction. In 1957 Edward R. Murrow, an American journalist who helped to fell McCarthy, labelled television the opiate of the people, in despair at its passive audience and poor programmes. Americans still watch more than four hours a day, despite being equally addicted to other screens. More than a billion people use Facebook, and mass communication by phone, text and e-mail means we are never alone, always "in touch"—or perhaps, as Marx might see it, forever out of touch with our true selves.
One day, Marx argued, man would wake up "as his own true sun". If the world were reordered—through revolution, of course—we would have no need for religion. In fact, our consolations have multiplied in glorious technicolour. If Marx were writing today, that snappy soundbite might be rather more cumbersome.
Marx stated that capitalism was nothing more than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society. Marxists define capital as "a social, economic relation" between people -- rather than between people and things.
I don’t associate a sense of belonging with festivals because belonging is very personal and intimate and festivals are regulated and laid out by religious and social norms.
It’s time for personal example number 2: so my mother was nagging me for the past few days to buy a new kurta, and I said to her that I don’t need a kurta I need a sweatshirt because it was 10.6 degrees a few nights ago in Pune. I buy a sweatshirt every winter and then wear it legit for 4 months straight, you will not see me in any other piece of clothing for 4 months. Her response to this was “it is a custom to wear new ethnic clothes on Diwali so you have to buy it”, do you see my point here? Festivals mandate us to do certain things because it is the norm disregarding our natural needs or desires. Society imposes on us what is ‘appropriate’ and ‘suitable’ based on age-old practices.
This is also why societal norms are incompetent because they are not flexible and hence completely contradictory to the sense of belonging. As you grow and evolve as a person your needs and expectations change too, whether its friends, community, religion, or politics your preferences and interpretations keep changing. You don’t and should not hold concrete views that never change.
But society fails to keep pace with your transformation. It fails to accommodate your new abilities and thoughts. And if you draw your sense of belonging from a rigid structure, then you will no longer feel that sense of fulfilment.
And if the whole point behind sense of belonging is to feel at ease with yourself and the whole point behind festivals is to follow customs and rituals because society demands, how can these two feelings co-exist?
On the other hand, an excerpt from Guru Granth Sahib states that “He who abides by the will of the God, alone knows the mystery behind God”. I am sure every religion states the same thing in some way or other i.e., unless and until you immerse yourself completely in the divine experience it won’t make sense to you. From that perspective, Religion is a way of knowing the absolute truth, and festivals, rituals, and customs are a part of that truth. And thus festivals can provide a religious or spiritual sense of belonging. If this is true then we have to ask ourselves what is it about festivals that provide me my sense of belonging? Is it my faith? Is it the celebration of my faith? Is it the observance of rituals? Is it the congregation of people?
We also have to acknowledge that festivals or celebrations today are fuelled by capitalist intentions.
The actual ancestral or cultural significance of festivals has taken a back seat and the guy with a pocket full of money is in charge of the steering.
You buy and buy and buy, you buy clothes, food, gadgets, jewelry, home decor, gifts, and what not? It is less about puja and more about the ‘Great Indian Festival’. You keep on buying in the name of ‘Diwali ki tayyari’ for at least a month to celebrate Diwali for 2 days!
Swagger told me that in his youth he had robbed security vans to buy clothes from Prada. "I felt bad inside," he said, "and wearing the clothes made me feel good."
Every aspect of our life today is hijacked by capitalism. This is also the reason why Marxists today think that religion is compatible with socialism. And that religion in its true essence of self-discovery and faith provides refuge from the cruelty of capitalism.
Then what or where is my sense of belonging? Well as I said in the beginning, to belong is to be YOU. To have that sense of fulfilment, first, you have to be content with yourself and only then you can find agency and empowerment in a community or a group. Sense of belonging is intimate and unique even though it is shared, only you can measure its importance in your life or assign importance to it.
Sense of belonging does not fulfil what you are missing, it only enhances the values you already have. It doesn’t give you a voice, it only gives you a microphone to amplify your voice. It gives you the courage to explore and embrace who you are, but you are your own making.
If you want to dive deeper into this rabbit hole, this conversation might help you to understand some mental models for success.
1. Mental Model is like a map when you are lost.
2.They way you navigate unknown territory is go by your intuition, stumble upon things and see where you land up.
3. When navigation from a fix starting point to a definite end point, navigating randomly is inefficient. Thats when Mental Models come in, They tell you where you are and all the possible path you can take to reach your goal. Some paths are sub-optimal some are difficult to tread on.
4. World is chaotic, coming up with ideas also has infinite dimensions and the map(mental model) helps you laser in towards you goals.
I want to end this piece by sharing what Nainika told me what sense of belonging and belongingness means for her
Belongingness. It's this complex, multilayered feeling of affection, happiness excitement with a twinge of euphoria. It's complex because it's a feeling that is evoked in you in the presence of others. Personally, I live in my head most of the time. I'm caught up in a web of imagination and fantasy and thoughts. I live in this dimension of half dreaming so much that coming back to earth becomes a whole event. Being around other people who gently knock me into my senses is definitely an act of kindness. I guess that's what belonging is to me, the instances when I'm so aware of the world around me. When I'm not an individual person, but a part of a group, a singular sliver of a living breathing crowd.
Festivals are collective experiences. My family has this whole ritual of cooking sweets right before Diwali. Over time my responsibilities have changed. From days of childhood where the only help I provided was taste testing, to now where I actually help with the cooking (I still do a lot of tasting). It's about getting together with my aunts over rolling dough for gulab jaamuns and getting up to speed on all the gossip about the extended family. It's about annoying and bothering my grandmother while roasting rice puffs and listening to stories from her youth when she spent a few months in Bombay.
Covid has taken away a lot of instances of belonging and collective experiences, but I will look for whatever small instances I can collect in this time. In a year that has taken so much of our regular life from us, it's even more important for me to cherish the most important things.”
What I was reading this week?
1. Memes bring the sense of belonging on the internet. There's nothing more resilient than a meme in that it spreads itself. It kind of adapts, finds little crevices that it can poke into. It's like a fractal. With meme as a culture, I think we have to sit with ourselves and understand how much control we want to give to the collective and how much control we want to protect for the individual.
2. Multiple journalist in the US are turning towards Substack and Independent form of journalism and now it is the Co-Founder of VOX Media himself. We will be seeing this trend in India very soon.
3. Preparing your mind for uncertain times. Humans abhor uncertainty, and will do just about anything to avoid it, even choosing a known bad outcome over an unknown but possibly good one. In one British study participants experienced greater stress when they had a 50 percent chance of receiving an electric shock than when they had a 100 percent chance. Intolerance for uncertainty puts people at greater risk for ailments such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
4. Conversations on polarising topics are possible if you are up for it. Here is how to start it. Many people don’t discuss controversial topics with their friends and family in an effort to avoid the seemingly inevitable fights and hurt feelings. My extended family now staunchly avoids talking politics for that very reason. But some topics are impossible to ignore, especially if you’re trying to understand or even challenge the opinions of others.
Despite our political differences, my father showed me exactly how well active listening works at fostering understanding and connection when talking about a fraught topic.
5. A three part series about Making Internet things with Data Making Internet things with Design and Making Internet things with Storytelling.
I think everything in this newsletter edition is a must read and instead of bombarding with more information I want to end this with a question and I really really hope that you all will reply back with your answer whenever you get time today.
Do you think the COVID crisis has brought in a sense of togetherness or belonging within our society? Feel free to reply anytime throughout the day when you get time.
Here are some quotes or tweets I came across this week.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. - Neil deGrasse Tyson
Have a great day ahead folks, I hope I did not give you a brain fog with today’s newsletter post.