Still swinging!

 

From individuals to groups to tribes to societies to regions to countries, progress has always been need based and transactional. Do good to other and they do good to you.

When religions were invented, it swung the pendulum towards 'my religion, my food, my terrain...' thereby dissecting humanity into silos.

These silos grew, outgrew and started expanding in all directions by choice as well as force - the pendulum swung again.

In a quest to reinvent themselves, religions donned the garb of business.

Business has its own pendulum swings - from expansions, takeovers, amalgamations, diversification and back to core business.

Now business has outgrown its religious roots and religions allover the world are bent on swinging the pendulum back in their favour.

Reductionist world - One world One God One Drink One Food One...are their war cries.

Somewhere all through these swings, human mind, aided by the power of modern science and money, keeps pushing its boundaries silently.

All things taboo once are mainstream-normal today, like absinthe.

All things normal once are taboo today, like an undivided family.

With all those wild pendulum swings all around, many going minds have lost their center if balance / about to lose them.

Emergency wards in mental health clinics of USA have long waiting lists of teenagers who intent to kill themselves any moment if not intervened.

American schools (not colleges) are pitching for adding a mental health counselling desk in each school. American parents have started rallying against it with a cry, "Parents Matter!".

On the one hand modern polity and governance keep breaking the walls of domestic institutions and social structures by new laws and rewards. 

On the other hand modern technology connectivity driven virtual worlds keep our younger generations hooked to 'active virtual life and passive physical life'.

Soon mental health issues will have the company of physical health issues (obesity, diabetics to name some).

Whoever have drugs to cure / alleviate / make people forget their miseries, will own the Pendulum.

They will decide which drugs are just drugs and which ones are medicines.

In a Cannabis Cocaine Synthetic drugs fuelled world of our children, not taking any drug will be rewarded with social isolation, personal attacks and even prosecution.

The oldest pendulum that started its swing in the Gihon Springs through The Fertile Crescent some six thousand years back and that spread through Africa Europe and The Americas, had cast its shadows over south east Asia for a while. It is just a matter of time...

(Meanwhile, The Fertile Crescent has become a fertile drug producing region)

What are we as societies gonna do?