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I am not talking about you defending yourself, your ideas, your philosophy or your body of work.
The question here is, why do we defend others, others whom we don’t know personally and the others who don’t even know you and you are just a number (in their followers list) or you are just a vote to them.
We all have those people around us, or we are one of those, who are busy defending the Prime Minister or chief minister or captain of cricket team or a player who got axed or any film star or family member thereof and we know no boundaries in the process of doing that.
It is absolutely normal for us to defend our politicians, celebrities from the world of sports, movies, art and probably from every walk of life.
Though we also defend our God, but that’s a different topic altogether. That’s part of our belief system and our identity and we can go to any extent to defend what we feel is right, regardless of being completely ignorant of the reality. This is a very deep & sensitive topic and I am not intending to discuss this in this article.
The purpose of this piece is to discuss our inclination to defend people and personalities, who existed in past or are in power in current times. That power could be money or fame or position or influence etc.
The questions I have are:
• Do they seriously need our help in their defence?
• Does it really help them?
• Aren’t they more powerful and influential in order to manage these issues in question?
• Don’t we trust the system enough?
• Isn’t it the same system which is going to help us, in case we are in trouble.
• Do you do complete research and make sure what all you believe or say is based on facts?
And the most important ones are…
• Are we trying to help ourselves by defending them.
• Are we fulfilling any need of ours by doing so.
• Don’t we have anything meaningful in our life to discuss and improve upon.
There are more questions than answers and do we ponder over any of these before going ahead rather going overboard in the endeavour of defending our ‘so called’ celebrities or leaders or heroes.
In my view, we humans have natural tendency to grow & expand exponentially, and by virtue of defending these ‘powerful people’ we feel we are somehow connected with them and feel elevated for the time being.
We become self-appointed representatives of people in power, in order to satisfy the false sense of belongingness. Unfortunately, if this continues for a significant amount of time, that leads to a state of delusion wherein it has become our new identity and then we can go to any extent to defend ourselves because then it’s no more about them – it’s about us.
That’s where our mind gets completely shut to the facts, new information, ideas or thoughts. Because we are scared to the core that the new information could challenge our own ideas, opinions, and even identity. And therefore our mind choses to dismiss such information at the outset.
From a practical viewpoint, it makes some sense to do it, if there are any tangible benefits for you. Otherwise there is no merit in bringing your mind and thinking faculties to a point wherein it stops serving you.
The idea is not to become alienated towards all these, you can keep yourself updated if you want and you should use your intellect to exercise the powers you have at the time of voting or similar events, when you can actually make the difference. But for you to do that you need to have open mind which is capable of seeing things as they are and can analyse every situation.
The only way for you to be able to use your intellect is to have the real understanding of your limitations – in realising the fact that we have absolutely no control as far as outcome on these instances is concerned.
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” – Christopher Hitchens