In the name of 'Order'

"Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies it's cries."
- Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz.

Recently, I spotted a Spider web at my brother's corner, where he keeps his computer. Immediately I made a run for the broom stick. My brother stopped me and asked what harm did the web ever do to me? I responded saying that it was not neat, clean blah blah blah. He reminded me that it was a creature's home. The little blotch that it created in our anyway untidy room didn't make that much of a difference to us, while it meant life to the spider. He was telling about how it kept the mosquitoes at bay and so on. He had a point. I was too hot-headed to agree. As I kept listening to this, I kept justifying myself saying things like how it was my parent's home, and that mamma would definetely support cleaning that little corner, how my brother had an innately untidy nature, I told myself that he was too lazy to care and justified his laziness under the pretext of flexibility, kindness, acceptibility and so on while he hampered my desire for order in the name of rigidity and passiveness. Well, he did call me those names and a lot more, and they hurt. He usually come to a conclusion as to what I think, and why I think so and lays them out like facts. The names happent to be by-products of those observations. That hurts. On one hand I'm too proud to give him an explanation saying it wasn't so and on the other, too angry to nod and let it pass. And then we had a fight along the above lines, I ended up crying. He ended up close to screaming. I ran out saying I had whatever right I had and went to the broom. I couldn't take it. It was too horrible a thing to hold because when I talked about the web, I forgot about the spider that built it. I was just trained to think of it as something untidy, and I did. It wasn't that I harmed the spider. The rest of the argument, the twisting of it towards personal facts and so on.. had been to win the case, indeliberately of course. But I did that just the same.
So irrespective of all the why's and what's, I think, why did I feel so compelled to clean it in the first place? Why is the 'desire for order' a right thing? Is it not a pretext a person uses to fill his otherwise blank time into pushing people to do things they are not interested in doing? Most often I see that the people who push, who dictate/ discipline people aren't even pursuing their aims through the suppressed but just do so to show their superiority (?).
My aunts very often reproach my 70 year old grandmother for not keeping her house clean. Her house, them being visitors. And she accepts it and tries explaining it to them that she has been trying but there is no time only. They use the word 'Orderliness' or 'cleanliness' to dominate the lady, and the lady doesn't even try to hurt them back or utter a truth for the fear of offending them. She loves them too dearly. Inspite of them liking their mother, they fail to give her the minimum age reservation, carried away by their ideas of how things should be.
Isn't it the same reason that the RSS gives us to justify beating couples on Valentine's days or the girls who go to pubs? Isn't it the same reason that can be given by the English teacher who hit me on my knuckles with the edge of a scale till the hands bled and clotted, in my third class? I was about 8 years old with small pale trembling fingers as she 'disciplined' me one sharp rap after the other.
All kinds of publicly accepted violence in one way or the other, is justified in the name of 'order'. While in some cases we realize it, in some cases we don't.. realize the 'violence' of the act. At max., we simply use the 'order' justification to override the guilt, if we have any.
That things were meant to be that way and you are just doing your part in putting them so. 'For greater good' as a young Dumbledore would say.
But it remains that 'order', 'discipline', 'greater good', numerous 'rights' and 'wrongs' donot simply exist by themselves. They are a result of human perception. The opinion of majority. By inclining with which we possibly feel a vicarious sense of shared power and pride of belonging to the winning group. However, it must be remembered that, non confirmation to set standards is a silly and absolutely unjustified reason to hold someone at a fault.
If one agrees to the fundamental reasoning that there is no fixed way to see a world, (owing to the changes in environment, the government, the peer group, parenting, books and by the sheer presence of a multitude of psyches), does it not imply that there exist no single sense of an idea called 'order', or 'right' that justifies oppression? Does that not mean we can pursue our ideas of freedom and let ourselves be anything that we choose to be, without holding ourselves at fault for violating others ideas of 'order' as long as it does not lead to another creature's oppression? Does it not make one person free from boxed images of another person's and his own? Isn't it happier to not judge and not be, and live free, instead of trying to chain everybody to the invisible opinions of the 'majority'. Because there exist no majority that agree upon everything. No sect, home, nation or couple, that express the same opinions of right and wrong. Even assuming that they exist, it doesn't mean that the person who likes an orange is wrong because 9 out of 10 prefer apples. Such a situation doesnot in anyway justify the superiority of apples over oranges. Eventually, by time, there may be too many apples in the market and the majority might drift towards the oranges with one left back. It doesnot imply that the one left back is at fault, or at a greater realm, but that attributes are simply so. And that there is no 'right' answer that can take the place of tolerance.
P.S.1 : If one still finds a necessity to judge, is it not happier to frame your own values, keep them at a point fixed enough to act upon them, yet flexible enough to be modified, and not push anyone, ever, to act upon your whims?
P.S.2 : Yes, the spider lives and the web thrives :) Happy ending, isn't it? :D!?




 

Comin Thro' The Rye                                         

O, Jenny's a' weet, poor body,
  Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
  Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need the warl' ken?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
  The thing's a body's ain.

- Robert Burns

Just sharing a poem that I like a lot. Especially because every time I read the poem again, the meaning seems to change over horizons. And every meaning felt dear and close. Social stigma/ erotica ? I wonder what played in his head as he wrote it. Was he smiling because he knew how confused I'd be, was it why he put in the ambiguity, or was the ambiguity a shroud to hide something clear? How are we to know?