Systems

Everywhere around us we see systems. Set procedures some people make and others follow. They include a vast range of things like governments, academic disciplines, religions, languages, blah blah blah. I hope you've got what I mean.

The reason for this tendency of man to make and follow systems is that we get caught in inertia. Some people, however, believe that they are a must for the better functioning of the society. I agree with them only partially. I feel, in a way they are both developmental as well as deteriorating for an individual. Developmental because they make the world get organized, function as it is, without hiccups. But what they also do bring with it is a kind of complacency, stagnancy, an innovative halt. This is a general tendency of any system.

The more a system is acceptable to change, the more flexible it is, the better it is. Such systems last longer. I'll give you an example. Sanskrit is undoubtedly one of the most systematic languages in the world. It has great grammar, great phonetics, all scientific. But has anyone wondered why anyone doesn’t speak it today in spite of it being perfect. It's because Sanskrit had always been a strict language, a stubborn language. It hardly left any breathing space for people to innovate, to experiment, to add inputs into it. It was considered throughout its lifetime as a sacred language; a language of scholars, learned people. And these learned men never wanted to spoil its sanctity through the development a lingo or slangs. That's why it never percolated deep enough in the society to be spoken by the masses. And so it happened, it lives mostly as a gnome in our society.

Same is the case with many other systems. It's like a fist full of sand; the more you tighten it, the more it spills out. There was a recent survey by Google which showed that most of its searches for words such as 'sex', 'porn', etc originated from the west and south Asian countries. Topping the list was Pakistan. India was third. These are countries with a conservative society, having strict tacit decrees about sex, or any physical expression for that matter. The bottom spots of the list were occupied by the north European countries. These countries are the ones with a very liberal outlook (which many people will call shameless and profane) towards such things.

So, it is easy to comprehend that the stricter a system gets, the more adherent it gets, the more inertia it occupies, more is the itch people feel to break free. That's why we have rave parties; to show ‘the middle finger’ to all one has to do and be all the time and just break free. We try things completely opposite to it. We want to experiment. If this is profanity, I guess I like it.