The Human Squeeze

This society built on the philosophical underpinnings of “Karma” – i.e., to do one’s duty, is a society built on a very abused notion of the term, the most complete culmination of which is the American standard of capitalism. A structure built on the precept of the thought that nothing succeeds like success. But as we are all part of one, can one’s success determine true success? Man in order to find an identity for himself, and to sustain that identity has ventured into uncharted territories, often vigorously and on the societal support of the notion of human individuality. Capitalism, in its truest glory is the height of an individual’s achievement in establishing an identify for himself, set completely different from the identities in which he was born into. If everyone was a millionaire, then to be a billionaire becomes the idea of success. If everyone was a billionaire, then to be a multi-billionaire would become the ideal of success. It is this constant race for achievement of a sense of individuality, and for constructing a sense of individual achievement, that man tends to run away from the identities existing in his society, or otherwise the lack of a sense of individuality and of an individual purpose can be crushing for a sole human being’s heart, who is most veritably, right from the start of his birth, fed with the notion of attaining personal achievement, as ratified by the norms of his society. 

But this quest, which has so remarkably resulted in the constructs of capitalism, has also had its side-effects. That side-effect is most reflected in the human squeeze which this blatant sense of race for individual identity has resulted in. By, "Human Squeeze", I refer to the countless score of the undiluted masses, that taken together, represent those who could not make sense of the ways of this society and who have then fallen into the trap of an amorphous representation of themselves, or perhaps not even that. I wonder about how this “Human Squeeze” perceives itself. 

Why do I call it the human squeeze? Let me explain by an example. When we wish to drink mango juice, or sugar-cane juice, we squeeze the fruits till we get the most richest concentration of their juices, while the “juiced out remains” of the fruits are thrown away for being useless. Likewise, this sense of individualism, attaining which has become the norm of our society, is expressed through squeezing the structures, facilities, and resources which the current human society has to offer. Capitalism reflects the rich concentrate of fruit in the form of juice, while the resultant crushed out remains represent the “Human Squeeze”, that group of an identity-less mass, that are considered a “nuisance” and an ugly appurtenance to the wonders that Capitalism has offered or that it can offer. 

Today, I was lounging around at Connaught Place with my Sunday friends. As we exited the Mohan Singh Palace, that houses the “India Coffee House”, me and my friends headed out towards the nearest Metro Station. On the said way, we started walking off from the PVR Rivoli, one of the ever present houses of modern-day entertainment. There, a shiny piece of utensil jutted out into the dark, handled by an equally dark shirtless human entity, with open and festering scars on his face. He wailed out, “Badey Bhaiya, kuch toh de do”. Whether streams were flowing from his eyes to the open wounds in his face, that made the wounds gleam with a watery sheen, or whether his wounds were filled with sweat ridden pus in this hot summer; I could not know. His wail trailed off hauntingly in the background as we walked on. 

As we neared the metro station, after crossing the road at Pind Balluchi, and by moving closer to Palika Bazar’s gate no. 1, I was trailing my group of friends and walking in silence while listening to their incessant chatter. Suddenly, out of the dark, a dark human emerged who was walking with a limp, and who offered Sunglasses for us to purchase. We, as usual refused. I, however, was left wondering of this system that is presently so horribly unconscious of everyone’s different abilities. That a person had to learn how to sell Sunglasses to Sunday revellers who were thronging at Connaught Place, just like thousand others who were mindlessly sucked into the same activity as was prevalent everywhere around. Everyone, constituting the countless and faceless masses, forming this “Human Squeeze”, is trying to work along the very principles on which Capitalism is built, only in order to regain entry into a system that had thrown them out in the first place, due to its inherent characteristics.  

Is not it ironical, that a sense of individual achievement, which is the very back-bone of capitalism,  could lead to the masses engaging in activities en masse, and which no longer took account of their individual skills and abilities? If this system has lost connect with the reasons of its birth, it deserves a rightful transformation.


Image from here.