Very rarely in life do we come across an idea that is so profound that it makes you feel infinitely empowered. Jean-Paul Sartre, the prominent French philosopher, championed an idea of such nature. Sartre, in short, advocated a radical notion that human beings are inherently free to shape their respective identities, and any excuse of being burdened by traditions, norms, or beliefs is nothing but an apprehension to explore the unbounded possibilities of human existence. In essence, his philosophy makes a revolutionary claim -- what we are is fundamentally a function of what we do.
Therefore, if we categorise ourselves as economically exploited, it is only because we have failed to find the inner strength to oppose the exploitation. If we label ourselves as politically oppressed, it is only because we have submitted to the evils of fear and failed to ignite our courage to oppose the oppression.
Sartre proposed that there is no pre-assigned meaning to our lives, apart from the ones that we choose to identify ourselves with. So, in the present day and age, when we often find ourselves in uncomfortable crossroads of our life, we must remember that we are solely responsible for the direction we take.
Thus, the French thinker gives us -- who often find ourselves lacking direction -- an honest realisation that, at the end, we all have a choice to say no. This, I believe, is the principal means through which we can fight any injustice. And no approach, other than the one mentioned, can be of greater relevance for today’s Bangladesh.
While we wake up every day to witness and experience the chronic chaos that has inherently gripped our society, economy, and political space, we rarely come across ideas that make us feel we have the capacity to change the status quo. In the current state of affairs, a grand blame game is being orchestrated -- where civil society leaders, politicians, businessmen, media, and jurists have engulfed themselves with such far-fetching rhetorics -- that each side has failed to develop any scope for genuine introspection concerning their respective role in determining where Bangladesh stands currently.
For good or bad, we the citizens know that these groups have mattered in shaping both our fortunes and misfortunes. But, when we aspire for a better Bangladesh, where social justice can prevail and economic prosperity can co-exist with democratic rights, we are all given grand-standing recipes -- from comprehensive constitutional changes, consensus-building, to greater accountability of politicians, media, jurists, etc.
This approach makes citizens, at an individual level, barely see their role in changing the status quo. I believe, this is a self-defeating philosophy, and it fails to appreciate the atomic power of ordinary individuals in being the catalyst of great social, political, and economic change.
To better illustrate what I mean, when Gandhi was thrown off the first class train compartment in South Africa for being an ordinary Indian, it triggered a process of change that shaped the future of the British Empire. When Rosa Parks refused to get up from her bus seat to abide by the racists laws of Montgomery in United States, she sparked the early fires that burned down the inbuilt racial prejudice of that era.
And yet, at that point in time, when Gandhi and Rosa Parks refused to submit to evils of their respective political order, they were mere individuals with simple aspirations. But, in spite of their ordinary identities, both Gandhi and Rosa Parks shared a very powerful virtue, that they had the courage to say no to a political system that demands their submission to injustice.
Hence, until this realisation explodes within our inner being that the failures we witness within our economic, social, or political arena are our individual failures -- nothing can change. Moreover, it is in this simple realisation that the ordinary people of our country can find great resolve, since it professes a world where great changes don’t come from the technically superior minds of politicians, professionals, or elites, but the unbound courage of human beings with ordinary aspirations.
Sartre painted a world where we all have the freedom to say no when our conscience fails to endorse the status quo. His ideas hold the living generation, at an individual level, responsible for the miseries, prosperity, or freedom they experience; and if such a philosophy embodies any truth, it is that ideas can change the world.
Most importantly, we have to acknowledge and find inspiration from the idea that ordinary individuals can offer great challenge to social, political, and economic injustice.
