Reinventing Ourselves

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Reinventing Ourselves

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• Middle age dilemma: A key challenge for people in middle age is stagnant working life revolting against the need to reinvent oneself. This urge to stay relevant and fresh screams out. What applies to people, applies to societies, countries and institutions also. Evolution spares none.
• The US story: The US democracy evolved over 200 years, and localised reforms and changes impacted it constantly. The past hundred years saw movements like BLM (Black Lives Matter), Me Too (Women's rights) and Occupy Wall Street (anti plutocracy). These street movements lacked state backing like for The New Deal (FDR), but change happened.
• More perfect union: The Americans keep talking of this, thereby indicating that change is good, and new ideas must keep bubbling up. One more step in the right direction is welcome every day. The US national anthem too undergoes changes, with one master theme unchanged, but 12 variations ongoing!
• The Flag: It shows pride and protest both. The Americans raise it on 4th July (independence day) and also burn it at protest rallies, or use as underwear. The dynamic symbolism comes from shifting alliance between positive and negative intent. If you freeze it with no change allowed, it loses both private meaning and patriotic grace. That's the case with India.
• French architectural symbols: Institutional reinvention was most visibly needed in France, and the success of the Eiffel Tower (a modern design) in a city like Paris (19th c. neo-classicist mode) shows what courage to accept a futuristic technology can achieve. The vertical structure in a horizontal city was an act of subversion. Truly French! The French later repeated this with a radical modernist design for the oldest museum of the world, the Louvre. 
• Indian situation: So brave societies allow such grand acts of subversion from time to time. India is investing huge sums in redesigning the Central Vista, and in building a new Parliament complex. Will the designs have elements that are radically new, or simply an extension of what has always existed?
• Source of courage: The courage of American and European societies springs from the ability to alter, enlarge and dismantle existing symbols. Pandemic gave India the big opportunity to reinvent herself. Every aspect of citizen life could be altered - schools, health, hotels, art galleries. Many institutions anyway are crumbling and weak, and barely functioning.
• Philosophers in government: The annual state of India may perhaps be better assessed by a philosopher thinker in the government! Colombia reduced its drugs problem by building libraries in cities. Can crime in India be controlled thus? How can civility be brought back to the Lok Sabha?
• How to reinvent: India can reinvent if we ask questions we never usually do. It can happen if we enlarge the scope of our thinking. Lateral optimism is needed, and untried ideas must be supported.

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