Red and Blue Make Purple

If you were born in the late 1970s, then you have been playing attitude vs altitude game with burgeoning technology boom. The lines between real feel vs. reel feels have been gradually thinning out. What were days of patiently tending have now been replaced with a time-lapse video of a flower blooming on the windowsill. Not to forget, the generation before us never had a chance to formally be introduced to the big task of the changing scenario.

The fast-track route of growth has been mushroomed into a perception gap. We are now talking about a generation obsessing over labels and compulsively organizing to the woke behavior. And finally, cancelling and replacing all the conflict behind the cabinet of retrospection.

Arguably, roadway and traffic rules to hot foot a steam car will be different than driving an electric car. At every point in history, the new era has needed new set of ordinances. However, are they efficient to cease the political gridlocks or bureaucratic accidents that we experience today?! The answer is rhetorical and an assertive ‘NO’. The divide between belief vs. ideologies, facts vs. opinions, intolerance vs. forbearance, conservatism vs. liberalism, right vs. left, have been cleaved wider.

Are we suffering from slowly emerging amnesia? A symptomatic PTSD from drowning in a flood of information? Should we take a moment to reflect on the fact that the Democratic-Republican party was introduced to us as a single unit? https://perceptiongap.us/

The Founding Fathers ensured a strong government and central banking systems under the epigraph of ‘The Federalist’. Differing political views among them advocated for more decentralized government, forming the Democratic-Republican party. At the beginning of the 19^th century, the D-R were largely victorious. The Federalist slowly faded by 1815. Lacking effective opposition, the D-R party factioned as two separate sides that we see today. Statistically since 2012, Americans have seen strong conflicts between the two parties and gradual deterioration. The result is an unprecedented disappearance of the political center. A political center is a system that demands compromise and accommodation to bring change. This center is vital to the policy making. An absent political center has increased partisanship and polarization. This in turn has led to public distaste and distrust for politicians and political process. Not to forget the political pandits who live on the growing discord and introduce fear to the mix. Their extreme views gaslight the outliers. They create a schism between mindsets and skirt in their followers to tilt the axis to further their gain.

On reflecting, maybe we need a more philosophical approach in tackling the chaos on hand.

Perhaps what has been long handed in scriptures thousands of years ago is equitable even today and seems to stand the test of time. In Brahma Vaivrat Puranas¹, Dharma² manifested as a bullock from right part of the God. The almighty instructed him to protect the mankind from all the evils and sins. Four feet of Dharma signified four virtues – truth, purity, penance, and charity. In Satyuga³, Dharma had all four feet intact. In Treta⁴, the feet reduced to three. The subsequent eras of Dwapar⁵ and Kaliyuga⁶ saw further decline in which Dharma had two feet and then one foot left, respectively.

Footnotes: ¹Puranas are stories and literature about wide range of topics, particularly about legends and lore from Hindu signifying intricate layers of symbolism through narrative style writing.        ²Dharma is defined as cosmic law/ universal truth    ³Yuga is a unit of time consisting of five solar years each yuga is shorter than the preceding one, corresponding in moral and physical state of humanity. There are four yugas. ³Satyuga (1,728,000 years long), ⁴Treta yuga (1,296,000 years long), ⁵Dwapar yuga (864,00 years long), ⁶Kali yuga (432,000 years long)

⁷Kurt Vonnegut is an American writer known for his satirical and dark humor novels                                                                                                                        As Kurt Vonnegut⁷ says, “the universe is turning into kibble.” And we have observed that science seems to corroborate with philosophy here with the second law of Thermodynamics. All things tend to move towards disorder. Entropy is a measure of disorder of universe. A hidden force that complicates life. As we go forward in time, the net entropy of any closed system will always increase. In short, chaos is inevitable.

• Refraction (bending rules)
• Entropy (leading chaos)
• Disintegration (falling out)

Explaining metaphorically: each new perspective descends on a messy game table of billiard that once was played by the old faulty concepts that do not work anymore. Old models gradually grow myopic and become unserviceable for the new paradigms that we face. Hence, the need to reset the game with a billiard triangle rack of new ideas. Insight from the old pattern, vision from the new worldview to cue in the white wisdom ball. Introducing a new mindset over the old broken ideologies.

We need an unambiguous prescription glass and a reset of the weakening and collapsing system. The four-way intersection on Democratic-Republic Road is congested with philosophies, ideologies, theories, and doctrines and causing gridlock. Maybe the time has advanced to bring an end to beating the dead horse. To broaden the roads of our cognizance. The time has matured to make a roundabout for easy flow of new proposals and postulations. To nurture and empower the divider lane between us with Bougainvillea’s and Hibiscus Rosas.

With election season upon us, the consensus is that there is a disassociating resolve between our perspectives. When we watch our leaders instead of living up to the values and trailblazing a way for the ideals, pass snarky remarks at each other during debates for the presidential candidacy on national TV, the war of opinions seems to exacerbate in our country. It is an ignominy to watch the chaperons elected for the governance of the country slowly corrupt the nation with their deficient codes of conduct. A vicious cycle wherein a degraded population lulled by indifference and heedless wokeness elects more indecency and disgrace to preside leaving no chance for change to flower and grow. Unless we come out of the closet of narrowed views, we are looking at an eye to eye gridlock with the winter queen who predicts an eternal political winter in the Narnia of democracy.