March 27, 2020

A fake post to break my blog's pause

This post really irritated me last night, so I started to write something about it. This morning, I saw that it's no longer available at the link I've shared because it was fake. It had Bill Gates spewing gyaan, his thoughts during the time of Corona.

Fair warning, this is a response to a fake post. But my post is all real :-)

It is reminding us that the power of freewill is in our hands. We can choose to cooperate and help each other, to share, to give, to help and to support each other or we can choose to be selfish, to hoard, to look after only our self. 

For Bill Gates to say this, after having created the Microsoft platform which is as uncooperative as systems go, and which has hoarded in its lifetime by obstructing others, is ludicrous. It shows a lack of questioning of his own actions, and how they may have contributed to the world turning out this way. He may donate tonnes now, but charity doesn't absolve. It only mitigates and placates the self.

But is it better late than never? No, better late than never has brought us to today. Look at Bezos and Amazon. What a joke. The company doesn't pay taxes, it's giving employees unpaid time off during this crisis. We have to curtail our greed, at least now.

What about family, commitments and responsibilities -- and work, making your company great, making your life greater? How do you choose? Is it even possible to be in a somewhat equal life relationship that isn't dominated by questions of money, and who's bringing in what to the table? For that, we need to think differently. However, to be able to do that, we need to be raised to think differently. How many of us will question the biggies like Gates, Bezos, Ambanis, etc. who have contributed greatly to making our current world? We may all have our parts to play, but as far as this is concerned, you and I barely even feature.

We need to be able to think differently about invention, society and money. Copyright and closed source codes have brought this upon us. And it's further fuelled by greed for power and money -- in that order. The world sees Gates as a benefactor, which he may be for the amount he has donated, and the causes to which he's donated. But we also need to see people like him as the ones who have contributed heavily into creating this disproportionate world.

Existing inequalities and inequities must be questioned at times like this. Sadly, the middle class and lower middle class are aspirational in nature, and this is what makes that questioning difficult. We are not conditioned to question as that has meant punishment of some kind -- hauled up at school, not promoted at work, being labeled something or the other by your family and friends, etc. So you play to the system and you're rewarded, even if it's scraps. That's all of us, middle and upper middle class who control a minute portion of the wealth. The upper and elite classes have no reason to question because life works for them. Status quo absolutely works for them.

While this is a moment to pause, I don't think we will. Because the feds will bail out businesses and banks. But not the poor. That's always been the case, and it continues to this day -- in the US and India, look at the financial relief packages being thrown at those who already have SO much, while those who are in need get a pittance. Those deeply impacted make poor wages, have no security nets, and we are unwilling -- as a society -- to address this or even see it.

Losing jobs is a problem, for sure. But our worry is our possible inability at making our EMIs for the 3 different houses we own, the 2 cars, a piece of land somewhere. It is not for our day to day survival needs, which is the case for the majority who are in real trouble at this point without jobs, wages, food. But we're apathetic because someone will do something. We just have to transfer money into bank accounts, to donate to organisations we think will do the job, or worse, to the PM's relief fund -- because we think charity is the answer. And it's in those time that the spotlight shines brightly on people like Bill Gates and others.

Charity helps, sure, but charity works on the premise that we can give once we have enough. Being unquestioning of that 'enough' is why we are where we are today. That vicious cycle has to break, but for that, it has to be questioned.

With this forced pause upon us, will we do it at least now? 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Nice true post, rekha, though I don't know much about bill gates policy etc, hope this long pause bring a good change globally.