Disempowerment and Rapes in India

(An earlier essay that I wrote on the horrific frequency of rapes in India.)

A series of observations:

1. India disillusions its citizens with a theoretical promise of democracy and freedom (we do celebrate an "Independence Day") and a reality of utterly shameless corruption, disempowerment and humiliation in daily life.
   
   
2. There is a drive to power, fulfillment and autonomy in any normal human male.
   
   
3. This drive is thereby strangled and trampled upon in daily life in India, leading to immense neurosis, feelings of helplessness and despair.
   
   
4. Men and women therefore become despotic, exercising their power in vile and criminal ways.
   
   
5. Indian women routinely exercise their despotism in internal family dynamics, while Indian men, being by nature more brutish, want a more tangible exercise of that un-channeled energy.
   
   
6. They either exercise their drive to power by being arrogant and domineering to the men weaker than them, or to harass, humiliate and assault any un-defended woman that they can.  They will rape a little girl or an elderly woman if they get a chance.  A rape is of course about sexual gratification, but it is as well an act of wiping away the experience of being an impotent incel that one lives through every day.
   
   
7. The society can keep prosecuting the rapists, but it is the society itself that is producing them.  What factors in Indian society are leading to an ever-present population of rapists?  An important factor is the vicious cycle of being humiliated and dominated by ones stronger than oneself, and then indulging in the humiliation and domination of ones weaker than oneself.
   
   
8. The default condition of a man and a woman in India is that of having been socially and systemically raped.  In many (too frequent) cases, this rape is the actual act of physical assault and physical rape.
   
   
9. To solve this problem in the long term, we have to look at slowly reducing the almost universal occurence of the dehumanizing exercise of domination in India.  That phenomenon starts at the very top of political and state machinery, and continues in families, schools and marriages.  We are a country of bullies and the bullied.
   
   
10. Without checks and balances, despotism is inevitable.  And in a despotic region, those who the despots treat with disdain will occasionally and brutally erupt in ways that will seem exceptional but should be expected.

Rising Above the Past

It is a common but a "loserthink" habit to blame one's childhood or one's past for one's bad behavior in the present.

I know three people: a man, his wife and his brother, all of who had less than ideal childhoods.  The man spent his childhood in relative deprivation, doing odd and sometimes menial jobs.  The woman spent her childhood away from her home, with a horrible aunt who was mean and vile.  The man's brother, like the man himself, had a similarly deprived childhood and perhaps took on even more responsibilities than the man himself during their mutual childhood.

The man grew up to be a bitter, insecure, selfish (almost narcissistic) individual.  The wife turend out to be a gentle, meek and un-assertive woman in her adulthood.  And the man's brother became a happy-go-lucky, jovial and living-in-the-present kind of man.

All of them spoke of their childhood with hurt and pain.  But they all became different kinds of people.

You will find it everywhere.  People go through the same circumstances and turn out to be very different in character and personality.

Our childhoods are mostly spent in relative unconsciousness and un-self-awareness.  As adults, we have a responsibility to be self-aware, to strive to be better, and to try and transcend our past.

Carrying the wounds of the past is perhaps inevitable, but I believe many of us can choose to live a better life despite those wounds.  We need not consider the implications of those wounds as inevitable and inviolate.  

We can learn from those wounds, and choose not to inflict similar wounds on others.  We can be better than many others who may not have had those opportunities of learning.

Some experiences are too traumatic, but most experiences, if one is willing and reflective, are springboards to a higher level of consciousness and sensitivity.