I applaud you, whoever you are.
It takes gumption to survive a global pandemic this far into its campaign. If in the last two years you’ve ever felt even the slightest bit of insecurity regarding employment, finance, or indeed your life, know that you are not alone.
Covid-19 dealt an unimaginable amount of damage to us all, there is no denying that; there is no denying that it has also pried open our eyes to the innumerable imbalances and injustices that exist within the very idea of industry as it currently stands.
And nowhere has that been more evident than in knowing that “the commute” -- for most of us fortunate enough to still be employed -- has always been nothing more than an exercise in Kafkaesque absurdity that we never sought to question.
As someone who had all but internalized the idea that wasting close to three hours of my life wallowing in the mess of vehicular entanglement that is Dhaka’s roads was somehow integral to my work, to now be doing that same job from the relative comfort of an environment that I have some degree of control over was like witnessing the real-time disintegration of a long-held belief.
But that is almost beside the point.
One can argue that the “system” has been broken for a long time now, and that there is very little scope for it to fix itself; however, its biggest transgression has to be its unabashed attempt to completely wipe away one of the most fundamental rights that each and every living being is imbued with well before birth: The right to fail.
“Success is a one-way street” is a common narrative that is echoed in some of the biggest industries around the world, as if it’s all a zero-sum game that can make or break you. And while it's far easier to adopt and sustain this mentality for those at the very top, as there is always a way out for them even in the face of abject failure, it’s in the way this ultimately affects those at the lower rungs that never seems to matter.
Wealth never trickles down, but poverty and misery sure do it seems.
But what is utterly absurd about this vilification of failure is the underlying hypocrisy that runs throughout. Regardless of its accuracy, it is a commonly-held belief that “80% of all businesses fail.” Where businesses and industries are expected to fail scot-free, the fate of the individual doing the actual job is all but sealed.
How exactly did we get here?
Perhaps this is simply how late-stage capitalism is supposed to play out, its sense of self-importance dooming itself as it drags down real people into the bottomless pit of fear, uncertainty, and death along with it.
But what exactly does that say about us?
As South Asians, fearing failure is innate within us. We’ve been taught to do so by our parents as our parents were taught by theirs. But as misguided and damaging as that notion always has been, it still came from a place of care and caution.
The person you currently report to at your job does not care, his supervisor does not care, and you can be damn well sure that the ones at the very top don’t care about anyone even an inch below them within the hierarchy.
Failure is an inalienable right that we simply cannot relinquish, but our global economic systems, in their current forms, will never relent in trying to pry it away from us. If life is nothing more than a joke, then we should at least be given the chance to make it funny, and no one has ever gotten a joke right on the first try.
Rubaiyat Kabir is Joint Editor, Editorial & Op-Ed, Dhaka Tribune.