Indian constitution say, India is a socialist country. Equality is a very nice concept. Feminism is based on communism and we all know where we are heading today.
We also know how communism screwed up States of West Bengal and Kerala. Once prosperous industrial West Bengal is today no longer a leading State of industries.
What does communism do to people and organisations?
Communism focuses on equality between the people. So, it keeps the high performers and low performers or lazy people at the same level in the name of equality. The high performers are discriminated and the low performers are rewarded with dole or special privileges.
For example, in a communist framework the young husband and wife are considered equal. As the husband is older than the wife with higher earnings, for the sake of equality the husband has to be cut to size and the wife has to be showered with privileges like monthly maintenance. Needless to say, the husband is also constantly reminded of his duty to work hard so that he can keep paying indefinitely for a person, who chooses not to work.
A communist system does not reward people who take risks and innovate. Because, they may change the status quo and sudden inequality may get created if their innovations succeed.
Status quo is maintained. High performers and innovators are stifled. Then an environment of jealously and distrust starts prevailing all over the place. Rigidity of ideas start taking roots.
However, communism sounds very nice to ordinary people, while they pay through their nose on a long run by living inside a rotten system. Once in a while, they wonder: why the hell we are not getting results? Why our condition is getting worse day by day? They feel the pain as they are badly trapped. But, the idea of breaking free is scary for them.
What is happening in Indian Men’s Human Rights Movement?
India’s men’s rights movement had no communism inside it, in the beginning.
However, after initial few successes the Indian socialist mindset started taking roots inside the movement.
First, it started with eroding the sense of accountability. Instead of focusing on being accountable, people started believing in status quo and communist kind of equality. Today, people do not know, who will be held accountable if things do not work. No one really knows who the leader is and who is to be held responsible if there are failures.
Then there is insecurity. People started thinking, what if someone else starts getting opportunities to go to media instead of me? What if someone else has more followers than me?
The respect for people’s hard work and contribution eroded. They are taken for granted just the way society takes men’s contribution towards family and the society for granted.
If you look carefully, serious contributors have responsibilities and duties with no rights in this framework. They ended up as the protectors and providers with no rights and they rarely even get any gratitude for their work. Of course, nobody imposed responsibilities on them and they themselves have picked up the responsibilities.
But, the message conveyed is: if you are taking responsibilities inside the movement, forget about your rights or any gratitude. Often the right they lose is, the right for peaceful existence. Jealous people will pull him or her down.
The worst part is, if you are a serious contributor to men’s rights movement, you are considered equal or lower in status compared to an ordinary non-committal guy who does absolutely nothing. So, a non-performer guy can create nuisance and he can even put roadblocks in front of you. All this is done in the name of brotherhood, our noble cause and most importantly unity, which sound very nice. But on a long run this starts to stink.
A serious contributor can get abused by a non-performer because he does not like something the serious contributor did. Such abuse is allowed and even encouraged. There is no disciplinary action at all. So, after a while the hardworking guys also get at each other’s throat, defame, degrade each other and indulge in false propaganda.
Needless to say, today leaders of India’s men’s rights movement watch their own backs more to protect themselves from potential backstabbers than protecting themselves from feminists. Everyone has created his own local fiefdom and lives inside a castle, often with fear and distrust. The fear is, what if I lose my fiefdom? The guys have become territorial.
The risk takers, high performers, risk takers and the innovators are not perfect just like all human beings. However, in an environment of distrust, they cannot afford to make even a single mistake. They fear the attacks from insiders. This kills innovation. This demotivates hardworking people.
The spaces for dialogue, debates and intellectual discussions for a strong movement has shrunk. Some kind of superstitions have taken over. Rigidity has developed. People are told, if you try this idea, the sky will fall and there will be some kind of natural calamity. The focus has also become more about how to stop people from speaking or how to block people from communicating.
Our overall attitude is more focused towards creating roadblocks than to deliberate, listen, collaborate and facilitate.
The attitude is, “We will not file Public Internet Litigations (PIL), we will put road blocks in front of anyone else who tries to do the same. We will not create domestic violence shelters for men and we will indulge in false propaganda against anyone else who tries to create them. We will maintain low quality of services and will defame anyone who tries to provide better quality of services (to men).”
On a long run, what we have got is not a nice brotherhood as often promised by communism, but a stinking system, where one group of men’s activists are more afraid of another group of men’s activists than feminists or Government.
It has become all about how to tell lies and mislead people with false propaganda to evade accountability and cover up one’s insecurities. In the end, the communist system undermines the goodwill of the very people who come to us with high hopes. Most leave being confused and disappointed. Most do not get desired results. The men’s condition worsens day by day as they face violence, human rights violations and they are converted to wage slaves by the courts.
A communist system with no real growth, no innovation or no production breeds fear, anger, distrust and a sense of insecurity. What we lack today is a solid vision, planning and accountability. The space for discussion and debate on this has also gone.
A nice brotherhood without vision, innovation, tolerance for one another or accountability goes nowhere. It is fake. This is like a South Indian Monkey Trap. The monkey falls for the food inside the jar rather than seeing risks to its life and gets its hand trapped in the jar.
South Indian Monkey Trap and Value rigidity
“Value rigidity skews the value we attach to facts. It is one of the traps we most often find ourselves in and one of the easiest traps to escape. Changed circumstances demand reappraised values. ”
Recently Robert Pirsig passed away. He wrote about the South Indian Monkey Trap in his famous book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance: An Inquiry into values”
Robert M. Pirsig uses the story of the South Indian Monkey Trap as a metaphor to illustrate the concept of value rigidity in human beings.
Pirsig defines value rigidity as follows: “[A]n inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.” The South Indian Monkey Trap is indeed a striking example of value rigidity at play as it shows that when you believe strongly in a value system which once served you well, that very same value system can prevent you from seeing objective reality in your present circumstances and thus lead to poor decisions.
People rigidly stick to past methods and values even though newer and easier methods may exist due to changed circumstances or opportunities.
The leaders are trapped by an idea, unable to see that some principles that served them well can become lethal for themselves and hundreds of thousands of other men.
This kind of value rigidity has to go.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/14/how-to-avoid-monkey-trap-oliver-burkeman
The way forward
The first step is to recognize the problem of our communist mindset and value rigidity. Once one recognizes the problem, half of the work is done.
Instead of talking about great things that we have done, we have to also look at where all we have failed miserably. Please understand that one will get disconnected from reality if he remains inside a communist framework for a long time. It is not easy to see the failures if he is a leader inside it. He will only get praise from sycophants and others who have thrived in it. Hero worshiping can further worsen idea rigidity.
The failures of the Indian men’s movement are in front of everyone.
Get ready to pay 25% of your salary as monthly maintenance as Supreme Court recently ordered. Young fathers are still not getting access to your children. Men are threatened and blackmailed by human rights violating police stations, women cells in the name of mediation and counselling. Men are getting lynched on roads. Are counsellors in men’s NGOs even picking up the phone when a guy is facing an emergency? Are counsellors even allocating 5 to 10 hours of time to counsel every new guy who seeks help and counselling? And what about quality of counseling? When can we see community centers for men, who choose to go their own way (MGTOW)?
We have to move beyond the past. Past is gone. What is achieved 3 or 4 years back is already over. We have to focus on now and the future.
We have to promote open platforms again as they used to be many years back. The platforms must be used to discuss, debate and reinvent the movement. We have to focus on creating peace, not just for the men who come to us with hope, but also for ourselves.
No doors should be shut for poor and helpless men. They must be counselled and helped. That does not mean, one has to stay at the same place for years with rigid ideas. Helping poor men is not communism. Refusing to acknowledge or reward the high performers, risk takers and innovators is modern day communism.
There is a need for creation of domestic violence shelters and community centers for men across India. Poor and jobless men in financial distress need to be helped with free legal help at courts. Suicidal men need effective counselling. Public interest litigation for justice of male victims of domestic violence or malicious prosecution have to be filed. No doubt this is challenging. But, these challenges have to be faced by defeating the communist attitudes that we all have developed inside our minds.
This is not going to be easy. Socialism is very addictive, while it destroys people on a long run. So, people interested for men’s issues must discover the socialist inside themselves and then start respecting hard work, innovation and growth. They must create structures for peace, discipline, innovation, open communication and accountability. The day it is done, that day progress will start happening all around and one will see results.
In the end, it is ironic that people have became communists while fighting feminism. Then, what is different between us and feminists? This seems to be the biggest joke of this decade.