It is a funny thing that I feel the urge to write something when there is no way I can jot down my thoughts. Most inopportune moments like while I am in the toilet, while driving, sometimes even in office. Of course, I can always write down my thoughts once I am near my writing tools, a rare occurrence these days. But often, that mighty bane of mine called procrastination comes in the way. Repeated procrastination leads to oblivion and that is what usually happens to what I feel like writing. This time however, I write it down. The thoughts occurred to me to me at different times; and disconnected at first, but later seemed forever entwined. It all seemed to converge to one point; one word; one feeling. Belief.
The trigger, or rather triggers, for the chain of thoughts are a dialogue from a movie, a chat with my friend James and one of those random moments when we all don those thinking hats. The movie in question is the Tamil movie "Anbe Sivam" (Translated to "Love is God"; not the other way round. Kamal is an "atheist"). The movie revolves around two characters played by Madhavan and Kamal. It is a movie I love, for the message it conveys and for the sense of humour with which it conveys the message.
The other day as I was watching this movie, for the nth time, one of the dialogues struck me. The "apple on my head" scene is the diatribe between Madhavan and Kamal at a railway station when Madhavan tells Kamal that "Love is a feeling" and when Kamal replies "Communismum athu thaan, a feeling" (Communism is also like that, a feeling). The scene wasn't a debate about love and communism, of course and anyway that hardly is of any significance. I must admit that till the nth time it was just another dialogue, but somehow it was different this time. The other main trigger was a conversation with my friend James, seen as a communist by many. Dilaogues with him are always thought provoking. We do not necessarily see eye to eye, but our little chats are usually fun.
Now while I have socialist leanings, I am not a fan of communists either in India or elsewhere thanks to either the idea of "state control" or/and their rigid and what I consider as "out of sync with time" stance on a variety of issues. But this dialogue in the movie set me thinking and then a little conversation with James inspired me to write. I thought about communism and religion. I thought, with a sense of irony, that both are essentially built on belief. Any ideology for that matter is built on belief. The founding fathers of communism probably were convinced that their beliefs would lead to betterment. In the case of religions, those revered saints preached their belief in a god who governs all. I guess that anything and everything is propelled by belief.
I then thought about the origin of beliefs. I guess all beliefs can be traced down to a single person or a small group of people with similar ideologies. Even casual conversation can influence thoughts. So, if a person is firm in his or her belief, the person can influence others deeply. There you see the rise of a system, a system based on belief. With good communication, the belief system could make a whole society of "believers".
The issue of a belief being out of tune with reality arises when a belief becomes a dogma. The surroundings keep changing, but often the system does not. Thus some time down the line, maybe a generation or two, we have a belief system that is incompatible with the surroundings, the ground realities. Here we have an unbalanced equation; an unstable system. The system has two options; it can either evolve to stablise itself or die, just like any other system in the universe. I guess there is only one thing that remains constant. Change.
Perhaps that is the reason why communism is shrinking. Perhaps that is the reason why religions rise, thrive, go on a decline and die. And like all things of conviction, they die with a flash and never with a whimper.
