Reason is dying. The media tries to gloss over it with its controlled narratives, self-proclaimed messiahs. Activists and political analysts try to refute it with their mock rationality. But, despite the best efforts of a concerned and sensible minority, it has one foot firmly in the grave. Information is at the tips of one’s fingers in the 21st century, but the more one is able to know, the more one refuses to. There is so much to do, so much fun to be had, and life is so very short that wasting time on obtaining information or trying one’s hardest to be well-informed is sterile and futile.
This rejection of information and reason creates a self-contained bubble of confirmation bias and partisanship, of abusive and tyrannical opinions based proudly on knowing very little, if anything at all. Whether it is the Brazil-Argentina footballing divide, the India-Pakistan cricketing conundrum, or the AL-BNP autocratic dilemma, Bangladeshis have condemned themselves to be so beholden to partisanship that it is impossible to put forward valid critiques, identify deficiencies and problems, or have an honest dialogue geared towards solutions without being labelled a sympathiser, sycophant, or slave.
Diminishing and extinguishing reason is, disturbingly, becoming a worldwide trend. This novel 22nd century way of thinking has given birth to the idea of making protests illegal. The only real way of handling issues, after all, is to prevent them from being raised. If no problems can be heard of, then none exist. Simple and effective, British Prime Minister David Cameron has followed this logic to perfect politics. Responding to public sector strikes, he has promised restrictive legislation. Freedoms and rights are no longer to be guaranteed unless they are qualified. The hubristic future has arrived.
In Bangladesh, as a portion of the sensible minority wait for the BNP – absent in a parliament whose formation is still open to question – to become revolutionised, it continues to make archaic promises about protests. The hordes of their partisan supporters rejoice since they do not demand much-needed change, simply that they rule the roost. The remainder of that lamentably sensible minority continue to talk, to analyse, to attempt revolutionary thought, but do little else, thereby being complicit in the death of reason.
It has been six months since this government was elected, along with its charged and convicted card-carrying members who are either in office or involved in the running of the state. During that time of perceived stability, there has been no noteworthy improvement, but many a measure to exert and extend greater control, both overtly and covertly.
Additionally, the one major change has been that, with no opposition to fight, internal conflicts have broken out amongst leaders and soldiers of the party in power. The occasional abuse that is hurled at the party excluded from parliament, which is returned in kind, is not enough, such is the unquenchable need for partisanship in Bangladesh. That skill cannot be allowed to rust. These occurrences of infighting – at times humorous, at others a nuisance, always unlawful and condemnable but accepted as the rule – will only become more prevalent the longer the present status quo is forcibly maintained.
The country, meanwhile, continues to resemble Sisyphus. In the absence of thresholds similar to those championed by Cameron against protests being applied to elections, which would render coalitions, governments elected with less than half the electorates’ approval, and governments born from coup d’états and military interventions invalid, all that remains is for freedoms to be eroded at times of crisis, especially when these freedoms have already been encroached on.
The trouble with impersonating Sisyphus – paying the price for hating death, for having a passion for life, and for the passions of this Earth – is that, unlike him, people and countries are vulnerable to exhaustion. Furthermore, they are not captives of the Underworld, forced to endure any manner of punishment.
Knowing that they will achieve exactly nothing, they are wont to surrender or look for a different method or route. That represents a crisis for those in power, the resolution of which will maintain the established hierarchy in some form if it cannot be rescued in its entirety. This is the intelligent design.
Once reason has been vanquished by partisanship, and freedoms and rights felled by governance, there is nothing the citizens can do. There is time before that state is reached. The struggles of Sisyphus – devoid of hope, meaning, and purpose – can yet be ended. He is happy, for his fate belongs to him.
