urban living

Urban living

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Living in closed empty spaces

When humans first had to live in caves, it was not that they enjoyed the comfort of reeking, compact spaces. Rather it was the sense of protection that was contingent upon their living with their backs to each other that made them live in the peculiar manner.

Uncertainty was looming deep in the air, which meant that no one could truly say that he/she would survive the next day. But, more often than not the next day did come, as we can see their progenitors running all around. And they did in the glorious sunshine venture out to seek whatever means of nourishment that they could derive from their surroundings. Can i eat that, should i .... what the heck, let's just give it a try... they couldn't have cared less. life was so precious, the spirit of surviving stronger still, in spite of which they took risks that you and i in that situation would never take. don't beleive me?

well you might have in your minds the carefree risk junkies who jump from buildings, motorcycles and sometimes both... which is impressive but irrelevant to our arguement. but what about sneaking in front of the lion's den to get the fruit from the tree just beside it. And do remember that there are practically no ambulances to take you to the magic place where every wound can be undone. So, why did our great adventure junkie forefathers experiment? Or I mean how could they, knowing that the odds were so adversely against them...

given the limited amount of choices that they had, risks were inevitable part of life. and death was always looming there, so was life and a promise of having discovered something that worked, worked wonderfully well..... since no one can perform with pressure constantly hanging by the edge of your nuts, its always better to ignore certain uncertainities and live hopefully  and to your fullest. Life is short, life is beautiful.

Each one of us, apes, are born with our own special eccentricities. A chimpanzee realises pretty early in its life that every one of its mates is infact going to be irrefutably black and hairy. What sets apart one of the great evolutionary product from the other is their behaviour, attitudes and how that is reflected in their dealings with others. Early humans dressed up to show up those differences, as we do today in a less poignant manner with our subtle makeups, dresses that are inherently the very same....differences in the logo, the list goes on. Someone might disagree, but then I'd ask them to look at the subjects in any party, in any part of the world. Official parties all over contain as many suits as there are men and as many dresses as there are women. None of the subjects is too different from his neighbouring one. Not essentially, not in a big way.... why's that?

For the apes, for the our forefathers, these differences meant a lot more than what they do to us. Fashion sense is just a derivatory offset of what it meant to conciously choose and build up on your peculiar nature. Your attitude determined whether you survived or well got eaten by some tiger. It was something to be cultivated and something that was connected at the deepest level of what you really are, what the workings of your dna machinery wants you to be.

Lacking a well organised culutural delivery package meant that the field was wide open for you to choose any sort of culture that you could dream up of. Then you could hope that the one you chose helps you survive. Even as late as a couple of decades ago, people lived with their hearts out in the nature... which means they would in their daily life follow their instincts with no pre built roads and gps maps guiding them to the nearest burger outlet. They had a knack of realising that there was meat out there, the rest was matter of a good run and a throw that could peirce the very heart of the matter.

Inevitably though, not too many people made it through in the fish eat fish world. Only some very potent combination of genes could endow you with the potential to survive in tough world. A tough world, open end to end and yet conjined ( continents were joined sometime in our past). A world truly filled with the opportunities of discovering somethign really new... a new mate? a new enemy? and the uncertainity of all could drive anyone crazy in the first instance.

Today I might have all the facilities of any well endowed tribal cheif, yet I can never have the one thing that he had..... He was the absolute king of the world around him. His personality had the power over each and every thing in the environment. Quite ironically he was powerless in afflicting any large scale change. But there was no one to tell him what to do or what not to. It was he, his particularities and quirks... with every one of its fallacies that could guide him through life.

And since no particular model existed prior to him, it was wide open world for the taking.

Over the course of time, more specifically nearly 10 or more milleniums ago, some of our forefathers started farming. Rudimentary, as it was... it was well suited to the individuals whose propensity to risk taking was the least. They could stay at one place for as long as they liked. And since they had to ensure their own survival in the old age, they raised as many children as they could. All of them were disciplined to live under the constraints of agricultre and their behaviour modified by physical punishments and later as the growth of religions shows... through mental punishments...because remember, it wasn't the tribal society that wanted the homogneity... monodirectional slaves were the requirement of the agricultarists. Any deviation from the successful profile of the farmer wasn't taken kindly to, and curbed. Life had changed to closed spaces, in huts that pitted their idiosyncracies too harshly to escape unschathed.

The adventorous spirits never did remain in an agricultural setup for long. They took to the wild with all its glory.Which ultimately meant that there were well... only less of the brave spirits in the agricultural societies. The cowards did overtake the courageous finally and the spread of organised society spread far and wide. Every farmable peice of land was utilised to get the very last drops of nutrition. Hunting graduallly was reduced to a suppliment and in the past 10 centuries or so, it has dwindled to an irratic practise..... or a pastime. We prefer the herded flock far more for we get a far better chance of getting their meat, than say a strong beautiful animal in its environs.

Our mating rituals are a very good example of what happened to our societies. A premodern man could in the spirit of his youth go all around and win with his strenght the fairest maiden that he could. As many as he could, provided he could sustain them. Those men and women, pure and untouched with the needs of cramped living would live under the free sky which they could call their own and a world that was a constant source of wonder. Like a child they would explore the experiences and colors of the world, til their youth was burned with time and they would die fairly in a beautifully mean world.

With all due respect to the improvements of modern age, variety has dwindled today. As the stock of the farmers who captured the world, we are perhaps more predisposed to ape than the apes we derive from. The rules of society aren't the only things forcing us to behave in a more or less set of uniform behaviour. Petty differences of tastes not withstanding, the globalised culture has put a certain set of values enshrined in our global conscience. Today, more than any other time in our past, we live in a similiar fashion, have the same sets of thoughts and have the largest collection of common knowledge. Ubiquitous media devices, mobiles and whatnots seem to be like the fine edged scapel that is shaping us more and more towards that amalgated common identity.

urban living pitted the individual differences too severly to be allowed to survive together. Everyone had to agree on a common behavior to be followed for the peaceful, dense co existence. No longer were there wide open spaces to go to, unexplored worlds waiting to be explored where you could take your exquisitely crafted set of attitudes and hope to survive. Its a meaner world out there today than anytime in the past if you want to be your own king. Men have taken over any and all peices of earth that they were able to and filled them as far as possible with concrete structures of thoughts and behaviors.

Little by little, men had come out of the wild. And then suddenly in the last 10 decades, there was no in. Everyone was out in the common civilisation. Today we seek to iron out all the little differences that do exist in different parts of the world. From Chinese to Belgian to Peruvian, all the cultures are loosing their inherent pecularities. The rich and famous world over don the same attire, eat the same food and act in the same conceited manner. ( There are non essential differences, but nothing as powerful as that existed between an Inuit and Negro...)

Infact, aren't we trying to follow an ideal behaviour, goals, individual ? Christ, Mohammed, Rama, Lady Gaga, Beiber are people on which millions of others base theirs. The same sets of role models throughout the world preach the same values and inspire the same attitudes.

The first men setting out of their houses, in the glorious sun peiricing its way through the untamed jungles, went about in a world that was in its every part as much of a wonder to be discovered and in an equal part a wonder to be built. I download new apps to feel the same joy.

I feel a hollow, joyless hole in my being, that needs to feel the earth beneath its feet. Not the concrete that has for too long hidden the forests, the wilderness that shoud be here. Better off though I am in my warm blankets and a laptop to convey my thoughts world over, this hole shall remain.

A part of me is still roaming around with the first men, flushed with adrelaine at the discovery of a whole new world behind the mountains... animals that seem to be a part of a dream, fruits whose taste I would know only by getting past those animals.

My thoughtless existence, without the slightest concern for my next meal is far more comfortable, but I have with the most of others closed my heart with stopgaps. Movies, novels, trecks, religion.........and yet in the innermost recesses of my mind, behind the heavy locked doors lies a part of me, frozen in urban life.