In 1965, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya said, “The world is at a crossroads.” Six decades later, the world remains in the same helpless state. The last century was squeezed between the two contradictions of capitalism and communism, but now the problems are even more complex. The ghost of individualism is greedily devouring not just Europe but the entire world. The status quo, where power resided in an individual or a central point, has been changing over the past few centuries in accordance with the poetic justice of time. Even when power reached the people, it still took time to reach all people. Finally, the democracy we see today spread across most regions. Along with democracy, capitalism and liberalism gained significant support. The reduction of the entire world into a marketplace, where all humans, regardless of color, culture, language, or nationality, become mere sellers and consumers, is not a distant vision.
With increased commercial tendencies, the desire for profit also grew. The feeling of “my own profit first” is not alien to humans from an evolutionary perspective. To a certain extent, selfishness and competitiveness were necessary for human survival in the jungle. There, the strong asserted their dominance over the weak. Strength was essential for human survival. Numerous Indian legal scholars, from Vaivasvata Manu to Kautilya and others, called this law of the jungle “Matsyanyaya” – a primitive law, like big fish swallowing small fish, or Rahu gaining power during an eclipse and eclipsing the sun and moon.
The origin of cultures overturned these natural primitive instincts. The knowledge revolution of humanity, which attained the wisdom to distinguish right from wrong, recognized that the anarchy of the strong eliminating the weak was wrong. This wisdom led to the formation of societies and the birth of laws. Laws and penal justice were created to protect weak beings from death and suffering, and to eradicate the beastly instincts of humans. They evolved according to the logic of each era.
As humans surge far ahead into modernity, laws, justice, and policies are progressively advancing. This progress should naturally move away from the Matsyanyaya that our ancestors feared – it should become more just. However, the irony is that a careful observation reveals the opposite. As time progresses, and human logic and wisdom undergo further evolution, humanity also makes a return journey to the law of the jungle, to anarchy.
The new ‘freedom’ of individualism, which is gaining immense strength in the 21st century, is an example that fits the proverb “old wine in new bottles.” It is not surprising that the policy of “every man for himself” is becoming acceptable among young people. When we take what science says at face value, we have to admit that many human tendencies are still shaped by the laws of the jungle.
It’s not unbelievable that emotions and thoughts essential for human evolution over millennia still influence us. However, as modern humans living in a societal context move towards greater autonomy and individual freedom, empathy and coexistence are increasingly questioned and widely forgotten. It might seem that German philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche championed individualism even earlier. The arguments of new-age Charvakas, including Richard Dawkins, also fuel individualism, which is true. However, no philosopher can surpass the social media and activism of the 21st-century, in contributions made to individualism.
The new age activists who are widely disparaged as ‘WOKE’ are gradually becoming ambassadors of individualism. The initial phase of neoliberalism spreading globally involved just struggles for the rights of the third gender and against significant caste-based injustices. Subsequently, as neoliberalism began fighting all forms of inequality, individualism emerged as its newest, rapidly accepted, and charming concept.
Initially, this concept simply proclaimed a policy of not being subject to others’ dominance. But gradually, it narrowed into a sweet-coated thought of “I, mine, and only mine.” The law of the jungle – the cruel law of survival in the wild – is taking on a new form, brutally beheading coexistence, a sight not uncommon in many developed countries today. The time when laws will be rewritten for this purpose isn’t far off. If that happens, it remains to be seen how long society will attempt to swim together without devouring the smaller fish.
This new situation, where individualism is going to extremes, is in a sense the return of wise humanity to the jungle. This bestiality, which our ancestors from the Vedic period onwards feared, has now, in a new attractive guise, penetrated the brains of intellectuals. Humans must be repeatedly brought together onto the path of coexistence – not for the survival of an individual, but for the survival of humanity itself.
— Vishnu M, Research Assistant Centre for Human Sciences, Rishihood University.
