Liberalism is a western concept fabricated on hypocrisy. As we live negating the rules of nature and laws of the modern state, we face dire consequences. Yet, we preach liberalism with our misjudgement. Nevertheless, our consciousness will not accept the truth that some are still illiberal and less equal.
Isn’t the civilisation that we boast about negating liberalism? One can agree or disagree. Every human being is confined to something by the name of ethics or regulations set by modern states or due to a fear of living circumstances. Think about it for a moment. You are not free to do something that your mind keeps telling you. Sometimes, you may call it self-discipline. But some regimes fix us within a cage. In such a world, the term ‘liberal’ finds no space? All other living beings are free in their world, except those who live under the control of human beings.
I drive through villages and forest areas frequently. I am aware that countless butterflies, gadflies and bugs perish when I am on the wheel of my vehicle. I feel helplessly sorry for what happened. I also believe firmly that all living things have an equal right to live on earth. How many small and micro-living things perish every day due to the luxurious human ride through their territories. As we keep killing everything that we find as our pests, we should not hold a false conviction that we have the right to determine the fate of others. We are unaware of the perfect synergy that nature has created among every living organism. There is no existence in the absence of co-existence.
Let us keep aside our indelible conviction that all living beings are not equal. There is inequality among human beings also. History cannot bury the notorious slavery in America until the end of the 19th century, apartheid until most of the 20th century, and genocides in Europe almost throughout human history. All the unforgettable chapters of inequality have foreign origins – American and European origins. These legacies reflect in the business too. The world was divided between first, second and third world, besides developed and developing. White-person and coloured-person – the inequality has been significantly harsh.
Incidentally, we heard the voice of liberty and equality aloud from these continents. In a world where elitism and imperialism remained deep-rooted, liberalism was only a fashionable term. No wonder then that the father of liberalism, Dr John Locke, had patrons who were earls and lords. Europe had no reason for “isms”, most of which were conceived by philosophers and politicians close to lords of the time. If the human rights and child rights movement started in Europe, the women rights movement emerged from America. That is a contradiction. These movements expose something that challenged the rights of an individual despite the noisy preaching of liberalism and equality. Still, the westerners could change the world the way they desired. First, they did wrong things rudely and buried history to redo the mistake with the mask of angels sporting new ideologies. Perhaps, no other ideologies touched the human mind so profoundly as these.
A human being, born with many rights to kill other living beings with and without reason, cannot kill a human being. That is a punishable crime. While we create everything for ourselves, other creatures like butterflies, bacteria, fungi, flora and faunas support human beings in many ways. Humans kill those flies, which have a life of only days. The right to live is a privilege given by nature equally to everyone. Nature reserves no special right to anyone. We kill everything from cockroaches to viruses. We don’t mind whether any of them contribute to our micro-organic system that processes our food and medicine. We make use of even enemies as a bioweapon. A life without animals like cows and birds like chickens is unimaginable. If not for food, we use other animals for some special purposes. That may be for tourism or balancing of the ecology.
Nature created nothing uniformly and will never create. Nothing is equal. All attempts to create equality are bogus and statistically erratic. Change is inevitable. Birth and death are inevitable in the process of evolution. I have mentioned this in my numerous writings. Evolution is an inexplicable process that nature drives. But human beings challenge it by refusing to go by the liberal processes of nature. At the same time, we talk about non-existing equality and liberty. That is strange! Both are shallow terms though we have been celebrating them as precious ideologies.
The real world is different from the world of theories. Philosophies are good for sermons, not for practising.