The Cunning Instincts and the Vanity of Display
Almost a decade later, while watching a familiar play, an
old saying suddenly resurfaced in my mind. I had gone to see Nandikar’s
Football. After a long time. After so many changes. Lines once spoken in
another age suddenly took on a contemporary resonance in the new context. Old
wisdom, like vintage wine, intoxicates more with the passage of time, never
less. New experiences can be steeped in that wine and thus reframed in a wholly
fresh idiom. That is how moral lessons are born. Human beings memorize proverbs
for this reason. Whenever the immediacy of the present resists explanation,
pseudo-intellectuals anoint it with the fragrance of old mustard-paste
metaphors. Watching Football that evening, I too became one such apprentice
commentator, uncovering again that same ancient thread which links past,
present, and future. Countless apprentices before me had “discovered” it and
felt satisfied. It has been invoked again and again. And yet—how
strange!—hidden beneath its apparent crudity lies a subtle truth of immense
relevance today. Something written, spoken, heard innumerable times had to be
absorbed afresh in my mind, as if thrust against the stark realities of the
twenty-first century. Realities that have remained still, immutable, from the
very first lessons of human society.
“Mäi khelta nahin, dekhta hoon!” cries Hari, a mad devotee of the game. From the backstage rises a roar of supporters. The sky and the air quiver with the shouts of those who do nothing but watch. Row upon row of spectators. Their dark heads bobbing like waves above the dust of the railway station. They go to watch. At home, outside, in news and gossip, on paper, on television, on stage, in the field—they go ceaselessly, only to see. To see the expert players at play. Having bought their tickets, with tax included. And those who play? They become history. Their victories and defeats, their skill and recklessness, their lifestyles, their speeches, their deaths—these forever circulate from mouth to mouth of the watchers. In the oldest democracy of the world, Athens, of its four hundred thousand citizens, two hundred and fifty thousand were slaves. Of the remaining one and a half lakh, only about fifteen hundred were actual participants—players. Only they had the right to enter the Ecclesia or General Assembly. The rest were but spectators, the common folk. Alas! The philosopher Plato, in his vision of a democratic society, had instructed these fifteen hundred wise representatives to live humbly, in simplicity. He had urged them to renounce gold coins, self-advertisement, arrogance, luxury, and excess, and to serve the State in plain living. That is, to serve the other three lakh ninety-eight thousand five hundred souls. But what happened? The very opposite. Long before Darwin, both Plato and later Marx had to acknowledge humanity’s great defeat before primitive instinct. For the Darwinists, this was the defeat of optimism before the cruel logic of science.
In the twenty-first century, of course, the names of players have changed. Plato’s bureaucracy and Marx’s politburo have long had their obsequies. There is no king and kingdom, no general and his foot soldiers. No church, no oracle, no priests with feudal disciples. Those who now exist are called chairmen, presidents, prime ministers, chief ministers, governors, generals, captains, coaches, sportsmen, showmen, celebrities, entrepreneurs, film stars, eminent personalities. And there is one title that rings truest of all—V.I.P., Very Important Person. These are the ones who play all the games of the world, whether behind curtains or in the open. What was once the elite class has now become the VVIP. Every society, in every age, must nurture and maintain a handful of such players. Those who watch—the multitude—must pay from their own pockets for the comfort and security of these players. In every nation, in every era, in every structure of society, it has been so. It has never been otherwise, nor will it ever be—except in imagination.
If one surveys the history of philosophy, one sees that the towering thinkers fall into two broad schools. One group follows Rousseau, the other Nietzsche. Rousseau declared: “Nature is good, civilization bad; by nature all men are equal, they become unequal only by class-made institutions; and the law is but an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak.” But who are the strong? Rousseau said—and Marx agreed—that the wealthy and powerful were the strong. Voltaire argued that the learned were strong, for by knowledge they had grown richer and more powerful than others. Darwin’s science proclaimed that the strong were those fittest to survive.
Nietzsche’s view stood in violent contrast. He said: “Nature lies beyond good and evil; by nature all men are unequal. Morality itself is an invention of the weak to limit the strong. Power is the supreme virtue, and the supreme desire of man. And of all forms of government, the most natural and wisest is aristocracy.”
What a paradox of hostility and coexistence between these two views! Any society, at any time, if examined closely, shows the scales of humanity leaning towards Rousseau. Yet in practice, in lived life, societies follow Nietzsche. It may be said that the source of diabolic materialism lies in this perpetual contradiction and counteraction. Whoever peers at Athenian democracy under the lens of critical scrutiny will see how profoundly undemocratic it really was. Be it Akbar’s India or Alexander’s Greece, Lenin’s Russia or Mao’s China, Lincoln’s America or Churchill’s Britain—everywhere this inequality pierced humanity like a thorn. Beneath the democratic mask, the same divide endured: the privileged few, and the marginalized many.
A handful of players, and the multitude of watchers. Needless to say, in every political system the spectators have always vastly outnumbered the players. If Darwin’s dictum is to be believed, then perhaps we must concede that some people are born superior, or that through adaptation they become so. Are there then within humanity a few who are destined by birth to a higher station? Hitler, after all, declared that the Germans were superior to other races, and the Jews an inferior kind. Yet reality revealed otherwise: some of the world’s greatest minds were Jews. More than revealed—the very names still startle the ear: Jesus Christ, Moses, Spinoza, Marx, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Freud, Paul Samuelson, Yehudi Menuhin, Noam Chomsky, Anne Frank, George Soros, Spielberg—whom shall I omit? Indeed, it was the Jewish émigrés fleeing Germany before the Second World War who provided the flesh and blood that shaped today’s mighty America.
The British once scorned the colonized Indians as “natives,” “barbaric.” Yet in the year 2001, one of the chief pillars of Britain is her expatriate Indians. They manage her trade and commerce. Silicon Valley’s distinguished scientists and entrepreneurs are Indians. Men and women from India now fuel the engines of science and technology in America and Europe. Perhaps it is because man is human that natural selection, as applied to mankind, does not operate in absolute terms. A player is made into a player by the social structure. And the same society produces Hari—the fool of a spectator. If Hari had been raised amidst the privileges of the elite, would he still have been Hari? A big question. Yet, truth be told, many who are born among the elite still end up no different from Hari. If every child were locked away in a room like young Rabindranath, they would not all become Rabindranath. Each person carries within him a unique genetic inheritance. Human beings cannot be manufactured by formula. Thus, alongside Rousseau, Nietzsche too must be acknowledged.
Every human being is born into a distinct environment and receives from his parents certain virtues and vices. This does not mean that the son of a politician must be a politician, or the son of a tea-seller a tea-seller. Rare indeed is the lineage where both father and son are world-renowned scientists or sportsmen. In monarchy, the king’s son becomes king; in politics, the leader’s son a leader; and where there is wealth, the businessman’s son a businessman. Wealth and power sustain this dynastic cycle, which is not natural. For this reason, though history is full of kings’ sons becoming kings and businessmen’s sons becoming businessmen, it is far rarer for a great artist’s son to be an artist, or a writer’s son a writer. Thus, in essence, players and spectators are divided by these very formulas, generating the diversity of society. But alongside this, history reveals another formula: through education and knowledge, many have transcended environment and adversity to become giants. Lenin, son of a bourgeois family, became a communist. Van Gogh, son of a priest, became an immortal painter. Charles Dickens, son of a poor clerk, became a towering novelist.
Through education and earned knowledge, the spectators have always, in every age, produced a few who enter the realm of players. But their path is never smooth; they must struggle more fiercely. A democratic society, at best, can create conditions where every man may attempt fair competition. Yet here too opinions diverge. Rousseau would argue that class-made institutions and laws are contrived precisely to prevent spectators from becoming players. Since such institutions and laws are created by the big players themselves, they bind the spectators in rules to keep them out. Nietzsche, however, would say otherwise: since the transformation of an ordinary man into an extraordinary one is such a complex, tortuous process, the would-be player constructs instead the opposite ideals—justice, morality, conscience, honesty, tolerance, and so forth.
And humanity’s greatest deception is this: the spectators who do finally rise to the rank of players often discard these very ideals—compromising morality, conscience, honesty—accepting instead the recognition of the powerful and wealthy. In their own fields, they become tyrannical—ambitious, arrogant. The grand tragedy of the universe is that intellect and wealth can never mingle with the masses, the mob, or the foolish. These rise above, preferring solitude. They become a handful, a breed apart, another species from the crowd. In the multitude there is no wisdom. Not the proletariat but the politburo becomes the face—yet a face far removed from the masses.
Thus, a handful of players forever keep the vast spectatorship engaged in play. Sometimes in democracy, sometimes in autocracy. If a spectator leaps the railing into the field, he is an intruder. Those who enter by the light of knowledge or by arduous practice must forget their past identity. Ideals, knowledge, discipline, principles may raise them, but once within the field, morality vanishes. What remains is aloofness, and the rhetoric of norms. Hence, man by heart may be Rousseauan, yet by nature, from birth, he is Nietzschean.
This inequality can never be eradicated by any ideology. For the masses, there will always remain the gallery of spectators. They will shout, grow excited, divide into factions, quarrel, riot, struggle. But the strings will always be held in the hands of the players. As in puppet shows. The players remain unseen. What is visible are the puppets—the people—dancing.
“Mäi khelta nahin, dekhta hoon!” cries Hari, a mad devotee of the game. From the backstage rises a roar of supporters. The sky and the air quiver with the shouts of those who do nothing but watch. Row upon row of spectators. Their dark heads bobbing like waves above the dust of the railway station. They go to watch. At home, outside, in news and gossip, on paper, on television, on stage, in the field—they go ceaselessly, only to see. To see the expert players at play. Having bought their tickets, with tax included. And those who play? They become history. Their victories and defeats, their skill and recklessness, their lifestyles, their speeches, their deaths—these forever circulate from mouth to mouth of the watchers. In the oldest democracy of the world, Athens, of its four hundred thousand citizens, two hundred and fifty thousand were slaves. Of the remaining one and a half lakh, only about fifteen hundred were actual participants—players. Only they had the right to enter the Ecclesia or General Assembly. The rest were but spectators, the common folk. Alas! The philosopher Plato, in his vision of a democratic society, had instructed these fifteen hundred wise representatives to live humbly, in simplicity. He had urged them to renounce gold coins, self-advertisement, arrogance, luxury, and excess, and to serve the State in plain living. That is, to serve the other three lakh ninety-eight thousand five hundred souls. But what happened? The very opposite. Long before Darwin, both Plato and later Marx had to acknowledge humanity’s great defeat before primitive instinct. For the Darwinists, this was the defeat of optimism before the cruel logic of science.
In the twenty-first century, of course, the names of players have changed. Plato’s bureaucracy and Marx’s politburo have long had their obsequies. There is no king and kingdom, no general and his foot soldiers. No church, no oracle, no priests with feudal disciples. Those who now exist are called chairmen, presidents, prime ministers, chief ministers, governors, generals, captains, coaches, sportsmen, showmen, celebrities, entrepreneurs, film stars, eminent personalities. And there is one title that rings truest of all—V.I.P., Very Important Person. These are the ones who play all the games of the world, whether behind curtains or in the open. What was once the elite class has now become the VVIP. Every society, in every age, must nurture and maintain a handful of such players. Those who watch—the multitude—must pay from their own pockets for the comfort and security of these players. In every nation, in every era, in every structure of society, it has been so. It has never been otherwise, nor will it ever be—except in imagination.
If one surveys the history of philosophy, one sees that the towering thinkers fall into two broad schools. One group follows Rousseau, the other Nietzsche. Rousseau declared: “Nature is good, civilization bad; by nature all men are equal, they become unequal only by class-made institutions; and the law is but an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak.” But who are the strong? Rousseau said—and Marx agreed—that the wealthy and powerful were the strong. Voltaire argued that the learned were strong, for by knowledge they had grown richer and more powerful than others. Darwin’s science proclaimed that the strong were those fittest to survive.
Nietzsche’s view stood in violent contrast. He said: “Nature lies beyond good and evil; by nature all men are unequal. Morality itself is an invention of the weak to limit the strong. Power is the supreme virtue, and the supreme desire of man. And of all forms of government, the most natural and wisest is aristocracy.”
What a paradox of hostility and coexistence between these two views! Any society, at any time, if examined closely, shows the scales of humanity leaning towards Rousseau. Yet in practice, in lived life, societies follow Nietzsche. It may be said that the source of diabolic materialism lies in this perpetual contradiction and counteraction. Whoever peers at Athenian democracy under the lens of critical scrutiny will see how profoundly undemocratic it really was. Be it Akbar’s India or Alexander’s Greece, Lenin’s Russia or Mao’s China, Lincoln’s America or Churchill’s Britain—everywhere this inequality pierced humanity like a thorn. Beneath the democratic mask, the same divide endured: the privileged few, and the marginalized many.
A handful of players, and the multitude of watchers. Needless to say, in every political system the spectators have always vastly outnumbered the players. If Darwin’s dictum is to be believed, then perhaps we must concede that some people are born superior, or that through adaptation they become so. Are there then within humanity a few who are destined by birth to a higher station? Hitler, after all, declared that the Germans were superior to other races, and the Jews an inferior kind. Yet reality revealed otherwise: some of the world’s greatest minds were Jews. More than revealed—the very names still startle the ear: Jesus Christ, Moses, Spinoza, Marx, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Freud, Paul Samuelson, Yehudi Menuhin, Noam Chomsky, Anne Frank, George Soros, Spielberg—whom shall I omit? Indeed, it was the Jewish émigrés fleeing Germany before the Second World War who provided the flesh and blood that shaped today’s mighty America.
The British once scorned the colonized Indians as “natives,” “barbaric.” Yet in the year 2001, one of the chief pillars of Britain is her expatriate Indians. They manage her trade and commerce. Silicon Valley’s distinguished scientists and entrepreneurs are Indians. Men and women from India now fuel the engines of science and technology in America and Europe. Perhaps it is because man is human that natural selection, as applied to mankind, does not operate in absolute terms. A player is made into a player by the social structure. And the same society produces Hari—the fool of a spectator. If Hari had been raised amidst the privileges of the elite, would he still have been Hari? A big question. Yet, truth be told, many who are born among the elite still end up no different from Hari. If every child were locked away in a room like young Rabindranath, they would not all become Rabindranath. Each person carries within him a unique genetic inheritance. Human beings cannot be manufactured by formula. Thus, alongside Rousseau, Nietzsche too must be acknowledged.
Every human being is born into a distinct environment and receives from his parents certain virtues and vices. This does not mean that the son of a politician must be a politician, or the son of a tea-seller a tea-seller. Rare indeed is the lineage where both father and son are world-renowned scientists or sportsmen. In monarchy, the king’s son becomes king; in politics, the leader’s son a leader; and where there is wealth, the businessman’s son a businessman. Wealth and power sustain this dynastic cycle, which is not natural. For this reason, though history is full of kings’ sons becoming kings and businessmen’s sons becoming businessmen, it is far rarer for a great artist’s son to be an artist, or a writer’s son a writer. Thus, in essence, players and spectators are divided by these very formulas, generating the diversity of society. But alongside this, history reveals another formula: through education and knowledge, many have transcended environment and adversity to become giants. Lenin, son of a bourgeois family, became a communist. Van Gogh, son of a priest, became an immortal painter. Charles Dickens, son of a poor clerk, became a towering novelist.
Through education and earned knowledge, the spectators have always, in every age, produced a few who enter the realm of players. But their path is never smooth; they must struggle more fiercely. A democratic society, at best, can create conditions where every man may attempt fair competition. Yet here too opinions diverge. Rousseau would argue that class-made institutions and laws are contrived precisely to prevent spectators from becoming players. Since such institutions and laws are created by the big players themselves, they bind the spectators in rules to keep them out. Nietzsche, however, would say otherwise: since the transformation of an ordinary man into an extraordinary one is such a complex, tortuous process, the would-be player constructs instead the opposite ideals—justice, morality, conscience, honesty, tolerance, and so forth.
And humanity’s greatest deception is this: the spectators who do finally rise to the rank of players often discard these very ideals—compromising morality, conscience, honesty—accepting instead the recognition of the powerful and wealthy. In their own fields, they become tyrannical—ambitious, arrogant. The grand tragedy of the universe is that intellect and wealth can never mingle with the masses, the mob, or the foolish. These rise above, preferring solitude. They become a handful, a breed apart, another species from the crowd. In the multitude there is no wisdom. Not the proletariat but the politburo becomes the face—yet a face far removed from the masses.
Thus, a handful of players forever keep the vast spectatorship engaged in play. Sometimes in democracy, sometimes in autocracy. If a spectator leaps the railing into the field, he is an intruder. Those who enter by the light of knowledge or by arduous practice must forget their past identity. Ideals, knowledge, discipline, principles may raise them, but once within the field, morality vanishes. What remains is aloofness, and the rhetoric of norms. Hence, man by heart may be Rousseauan, yet by nature, from birth, he is Nietzschean.
This inequality can never be eradicated by any ideology. For the masses, there will always remain the gallery of spectators. They will shout, grow excited, divide into factions, quarrel, riot, struggle. But the strings will always be held in the hands of the players. As in puppet shows. The players remain unseen. What is visible are the puppets—the people—dancing.
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