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Of State, Politics And Happiness

By Ghulam Mohammad Khan

17 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org

I do not know whether the idea of ‘happiness’, as we usually understand it, is true or something as really meaningful. But, whatever it is our world – don’t know of any other world – needs it desperately. Happiness is never unrealizable; it is something every person of the world can realize/actualize within the space affecting his/her ‘condition of being’ without actually investing a lot of physical or mental effort. It really feels chocking to accept the truth that the birth of the new state with new version of politics and interests (modern state of modern technology, industry and weaponry) has almost annihilated all the possibilities of ‘happiness’ on earth.

States are now capable of manufacturing the incredible disasters like war-planes (how unabashedly, beastly and dreadfully the drones rip through the entrails of the dead space and shower the avalanches of unimaginable pain on the innocent people below!), billions of tons of weapons and horrible policies, but can’t manufacture happiness. In this ‘age of the image’ internet can magically crumple the whole globe into the palm of your hand, the availability of the abundance of knowledge and information can boost your understanding of the world, the state can build the walls of weapon to guard you, the robust new inventions can make your life a hell easier, but nothing similar is manufactured by the state that could be the source of your happiness.

Politics can terribly intrude into the territory of education and forge it according to its purpose, state can institutionalize xenophobic tendencies in the name of national interest, a media-manufactured consciousness can claim to be universal and dictate history, a mere political issue can divide billions of people (millions of them not knowing the political issue at all) for ages across the so called national borders, a state can minimize the budget allocations for health and education and invest billions of dollars on the import and export of weapons, but still none of the state owned industries happens to exit where human happiness is preferred over such noxious constructions as nation, border, technology and weapon.

We live in a time where our natural right ‘right to happiness’ is also controlled by the state. The whole expanses of human thinking are conquered by the state. The will of the state dominates the will of the people. Once the individual is born, the state seals him – as if it were a product manufactured in the factory, packed and dispatched for sale – with its own artificial consciousness. In this conditioned consciousness the basic human desires, instincts, impulses or other natural capacities to think and analyze are mutilated beyond repair, whereas a simulated-sate-friendly version is cleverly installed in place of all these. There is only a nationalistic people now, a nationalistic consciousness and nothing like a human consciousness.

Let’s consider! Where is happiness in nation and nation in happiness now? There is a consensus of opinion that the state of America is the most powerful sate on earth. But there should also be the consensus of opinion that its power does not come from the happiness of its people. The state that introduced us to the world of Google and Facebook is not the happiest. According to a 2013 Harris Poll study, only one in three Americans say they are happy. Its power comes from the High-Tech weapons. According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) based study, America was the world’s biggest arms exporter from 2010-2014; the arms sold to 94 recipients to destroy happiness wherever it was found. The Middle East, burning in the cauldron of conflict, is the place where most of this arsenal can be heard exploding and pounding and killing and maiming people these days. How can these new fearful inventions buy a state happiness when all it can do is kill a human being or decimate a full civilization?

Look how happiness has wilted away from France, how a fear or a sense of insecurity nettles every French inside even when shielded by one of the most reliable security systems in the world. The changing international political equations and national interests have become a great threat to human happiness. In the subcontinent, India, the largest democracy in the world where 670 million people live on Rs 33 per day, where 3, 00,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1995, where only 1.3% 0f GDP is spent on public health and only 3.8% on education, can now shockingly spend a whopping 45.2 billion dollars on weapons and military equipment for a single year (2015). Similar condition is that of Pakistan and many Central Asian countries. Let me not mention the destitute African countries where it more dismal. The way our states handle politics at present, only the state of human happiness is going to be bleak. The state has discarded the knowledge and wisdom of yore and installed a destructive intellectual terrorism in its place. Science is also turning out to be a great threat to happiness, but not to the state. The time has come when state has to seriously choose between the harsh political mechanism and the human happiness. The powerful politics of the state has brought the great wheel of history to such a turn where it can indiscriminately crush human civilizations to death. There has to be a check, because the interest in question is not the national interest of any modern state but the interest of human happiness.

Let me not conclude without mentioning that the possibility of happiness has not completely faded away. Happiness is still achievable; it is still very much realizable. Remenber! When all politicians of the world will speak and follow the truth they always know but hide, when power is used judiciously and flows properly through all social structures, when the blight of ego evaporates from the discourse of whole human thought, when knowledge is disimprisoned from illicit power equations, when ‘The Self’ and ‘The Other’ are converted into ‘Us’, and when histories are written impartially, happiness is absolutely realizable.

Ghulam Mohammad Khan, PhD Scholar at Central University of Haryana Email: [email protected]



 



 

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