A society, culture or nation where the voice of its citizens are silenced and their rights curtailed is bound to digress from its path of progress and regress into a repressive state where, eventually, the situation will become fertile grounds for growth of dissidence, chaos and disorder. Such a state of affairs would make that society, culture or nation dysfunctional and ultimately become obsolete, unlivable and anarchic at best or simply die a natural death at worst. Many societies, cultures and civilizations have over the millennia come and gone while many were subdued by others and were assimilated into the larger groups over time, traces of which are now preserved in museums and history textbooks. While there are multiple reasons or causes why they disappeared into oblivion or were reduced to insignificant remnants over time, one primary reason why that happened was because their citizens’ voices were silenced and rights curtailed. Only those who pleased their masters enjoyed some semblance of rights. There was no equity, justice and good governance which led to lack of cohesion, honor and dignity. Slowly, that society or culture became weak and was eventually wiped out by a stronger one or were subdued and assimilated.
There are telltale signs that our younger generations are now losing faith on our society and culture. They are living and growing in a fast evolving global community, interconnected like never before, where boundaries are becoming less physical and their lives becoming more virtual. They are a generation at the cusp of the age of Artificial Intelligence. Our society and culture, meanwhile, is becoming more like a burden for them than a matter of pride and honor. A young citizen realizing that there is a flaw in the system voices out against it, and he is gagged and silenced. A citizen from the economically weaker section is punished for a petty crime while someone from the more affluent section goes unpunished for the same crime and everybody turns blind to it. A citizen voices out his opinion and he is summoned, fined, reprimanded and even excommunicated. The corrupt are looting the public exchequer but there is nobody to speak out against the corruption. The corrupt with their ill-gotten wealth are more respected in society than the honest hardworking ordinary citizens. Hypocrisy is normalized in our society. Which young citizen with some common sense would want to be proud of such a society or culture? Many young people are disowning our culture and distancing themselves from society because they find it suffocating and rightly so. The fundamental tenets of our society and culture have been compromised and we are slowly becoming a parasitic and hypocritical society. We are becoming a weak society. No, it’s not like some other stronger people will come and exterminate us all – it’s just that we, as a community, will descend into oblivion because we failed to uphold truth, justice and equity. To restore pride, honor and dignity, we must uphold truth, justice and equity so that we may have a strong society, culture and peoplehood.