(Published in Mtimes,13-20 September 2018)
In our dear little "C'est un plaisir" country, when some societal issues appear occasionally, as they do in most societies, we tend to sweep them under the carpet. After the Grand Bassin gandia issue, the LGBT march , the child marriage issue, religious conversions and now the Census issue: “L’hypocrisie politicienne”, there is a common pattern.
The elite, the thinkers, leaders of communities, social activists, NGOs,..who are always on the forefront on non-controversial issues look the other way , burying their heads in the sands allowing the radicals, the delinquents, the hooligans ,the conservatives, the religious bigots, the fanatics to take over the main stage. When some avant-gardistesdelve deeper, they are castigated, threatened, boycotted ...and the views of the conformist majority prevail and we go back to our comfort zone, doing business as usual. They get away with it and slowly and gradually but surely we are allowing the parasites to gnaw at our foundation. We are not building out houses on granites as Wilhelm Reich used to say ---"If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.”
Are we not civilised enough to even talk to each other on these ...“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”
Or is it easier to ignore it, avoid the tensions these create in our minds and in society and across communities?
Or is it much larger than that ? There is the fear of reprobation from our community, the social pressure to conform ...they have imposed their will, their linear thinking, and imprison us in their archaic conformism and attitudes. Are we afraid of being free, of being left alone on the side lines, being marginalised ....?
Hypocrisy is not our nature. Like Francis Fukuyma ( Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment), Kwame Anthony Appiah (The lies that bind: Rethinking Identity ) and Michael Ignatieff (The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World), we should be prepared to engage a debate and a dialogue that looks beyond group identity and failed institutions and meritocracy and we believe that “identity politics is a symptom of democratic decay and a diversion from the real task. That is to create coalitions that can move past our differences, strengthen our shared public goods, rebuild the ladder of economic opportunity, and recognise once again the human identity we have in common.”
