Why this group?

A week ago, I was up awake early and getting ready to go to work. In shower, I heard a car’s burglar alarm went off. I assumed it was someone else’s, and ignored it. A few minutes later – my apartment’s doorbell rang. The building’s security guard had come to inform me that the defaulting car was mine.

I came down and walked outside to have a look at the car. The neighbors in the house across the street were up in their balconies, as if awaiting me – I was greeted by an angry barrage about the trouble the sound had caused them. I was clearly at fault, so I apologized and promised to fix it, and tried to say something to the effect of how shouting never solves the problem but communication does. The neighbors went on about how this false alarm had happened earlier – I admitted my ignorance. They then ignored me and then went off talking about the issue with those in nearby houses who had gathered as onlookers.

There is almost a pattern about how we Indians generally deal with broader civic or social problems – instead of trying to understand the problem and talking to someone who had the power to solve the problem, we prefer spend a lot more energy trying to bear with it and ignore it, or talk to others about it. This incident is one such case. Maybe we grow up learning to lose faith in the civic system (helped perhaps by our movies portraying a corrupt and hopeless faith of the system).

As I read up and try to understand our systems, the more I feel how naïve this perspective is. For instance, most of the initiatives to improve primary education in India seem like good intentioned logical attempts run by genuinely concerned citizens. Clearly, a lot more goes into an effective change than a lot of what indulge in our armchair criticisms or slogan chanting. Factual understanding is the first step towards something meaningful.

This is the goal I have set at least for myself from the group – self-education that will help free myself from this pessimistic outlook and nihilist biases. Hopefully, this will help others in the group too.