How Rohans and Guevaras shape Humanity
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”-Ernesto Che Guevara
Rohan was cooking his breakfast in the kitchen and the living room television was on. The silent hiss of the omelet on the pan was being interrupted by the aggressive speech (shouting) of the prime minister of the nation. Boasting about what the government, under his jurisdiction, had achieved in just two years which the previous one hadn’t in decades.
As Rohan put out the stove, tossed his omelet in a plate which already had two bread slices in it, and walked in the living room, Modiji had moved on to another part of his speech. He was now explaining Rohan how they were going to change the world and create a far better life for him than he had ever dreamed of. While Modiji finished his speech Rohan finished his omelet. Then Rohan went to bed with somewhat of a filled stomach and Modiji went off the air with millions of votes in his pocket, including Rohan's. The style, the attitude, the oratory impressed Rohan, but what captivated him was the dream that Modiji sold which he was so eager to buy. Little did Rohan know that this is a rather old trick used by almost every great political leader that ever walked on the face of the earth. First, express your views on the status quo in general, then criticize opponents, boast about your previous work, and then sell a new dream through an ambitious idea.
The world is nothing but a mixture of two kinds of people, those who play the smaller game and those who play the bigger one. The people who play the small game spend their lives creating and an ‘ideal’ life on a personal level.
The people who belong to the big game category have to act as if they care about the smaller one. That’s the first rule of the big game. What these people do is that they try to shove an idea down the throat of the major population. An idea which promises them an ‘ideal’ life. Most of the people buy this because they are too tired playing their own game and think of this as a helping hand. Plus everyone needs entertainment. Everyone wants to progress but what we unknowingly crave is entertainment. We check the news every day under the name of ‘current affairs’ but what we are more inclined towards is finding out who made an idiot of themselves on a national level.
All the Rohans live their lives chasing the vision of a ‘perfect life’ that the society has already set up for them. A good education, a good job to help pay off the education loan, a good home, a good life partner to help pay off the home loan, and then obviously, children. These Rohans will tell you that they had children to move their generation forward, but surely that isn’t the truth. The true reason is again, entertainment. Children are an excellent way of having an excuse to stay stuck in this rather Kafkaesque system and also a small break (entertainment) from it now and then. But no Rohan ever achieves this ‘perfect life’. They keep on loosing something in the pursuit of another gain.
So every once in a while when all the Rohans are busy (and bored) chasing this (false) vision of perfection, another guy from the bigger game category comes and stands on a stage selling his freshly cooked idea of achieving an ideal world.
We can find this spread throughout history. Che Guevara persuaded the working-class population to create and an entire Cuban revolution for the sake of achieving his idealistic dream, communism. Adolf Hitler established the Nazi party and made millions of Germans believe that the mass genocide of Jews is completely justified. Donald Trump became the most powerful man on earth by convincing Americans that a wall is a solution to their problems.
These Guevaras are blessed with a gift. The gift of unignorable charisma. The ability to make millions of Rohans go blind. The Guevaras do not care what blinds the Rohans. It could be love, hate, respect, or fear. The Guevaras just don’t care. All they care about is the outcome: the achievement of their dream. A dream that was born in their brain once, but somehow it was too dumb to die there. There was no other solution but to bring it into reality.
This has been the course of human history. Generations changed, revolutions failed and one after other leaders came. Each one of them proposing their brilliant idea of achieving an idealistic society. And each time the world bought into it only to see that brilliant idea fail in a rather extravagantly brilliant way. Maybe that’s what we are as a race. Maybe what defines humanity better than ‘averagely intelligent biological creatures’, is an ‘abstract yet beautifully failed attempt at creating an ideal world’.
-Atharva Sangle
