Irregular Prose 9.. Nirmal bhattacharya
Since Francis Bacon has made me aware of greatness being a three dimensional stuff, I have been wondering whether all the three dimensions may be found in the world of our times.
Some are born great, he said. Yet, I have rubbed my eyes as hard as I could to find at least one examplary case of being born ' great ' but only to end up as a failure. My frantic idiotic search for ' born greats ' ultimately got brought to the conclusion that the idea of ' born great ' is just zippo. Greatness itself is a cultural product ( and concept ) so one cannot come to have it direct from one's mother's womb.
Of the remaining two, achieving greatness sounds commonsensical enough to claim acceptance. However I may feel the mystic pull in me toward trusting greatness to be born rather than being achieved, if greatness is a cultural product it is a case of pure achievement. Start from looking back in history to as recent a past as the WW II and you would understand the point I have been trying to make. Would anybody dare to write a book aiming to convince us that Christ had not achieved greatness but that he was born great? We all know that Einstein was not born great nor, as recent researches claim, was Shakespeare nor were Karl Marx and Goethe in Germany nor were Lenin and Stalin in Russia. All of them and many others including Leonardo Da Vinci and Beethoven have achieved greatness. It is not clear as yet how nature works to create greatness in human beings. But it is clear that the persons named above had to achieve it, they had to work like crazy to attain it . Surely, history is not innocent of examples of people who with similar or nearly similar potentials could not reach equal status with people like them. But that's a different issue. The point is that those called great achieved it, they were not born with it.
Bacon's third dimension of greatness belongs to those on whom greatness is thrust. People of this category are neither born with greatness nor do they come into this world programmed to achieve greatness. Greatness is just ' thrust ' on them. Now greatness being a cultural construct, whatever way it is constructed it is constructed in a particular society. Greatness ' thrust on ' is no exception to this. For greatness thrust on to be a rampant cultural phenomenon not any kind of society will do. It requires a peculiar form of society which cannot exist without an incessant and a very high-speed movement of commodities. If you cannot produce ' greats ' overnight, and if possible every month, nearly the whole of economy will crash leading to a civil war, and who knows, from there to another world war.
Bacon's perceptiveness could be a subject for our real wonderment. Hundreds of years ago, and what an insight! Perhaps, it is arguable that the idea of ' greatness thrust on ' has been with us all along from the start of civilization. Yes, that's true. But it had yet to be flowered the way it has now. And it has been possible because the society is now fully prepared for this flowering. Greatness, like every single thing else, is now a marketable product. Its sale chiefly rides on as wide a hype as possible. As far as pure cultural commodities are concerned, the adjective ' great ' has played a very crucial role in the sense that tagging this adjective to the name of a poet, a novelist, an actor, a singer/musician and even a philosopher irrespective of worth goes farther than anything else in the marketability of cultural products. And it has become both a vibrant business and a thriving culture to find people with prospective market worth and ' thrust ' greatness on them.
I can sense that I have made myself vulnerable to easy misunderstandings and facile misinterpretations. I may be accused of denying that there are still many great people in our present-day world. Some may take it upon themselves to teach me that not everyone is ready to be sold with a ' greatness ' price tag. I have just one answer for them. As long as there are human beings, even if market aggreses to guttle the whole society, there will always be left some to counter-attack the market of ' greatness thrust on ' , there will always be left some who will be ready to sacrifice their all to achieve greatness rather than have greatness thrust on them. This is no hollow hope. If this were not the case, human beings as a species would not have survived. The point is that we are increasingly coming , or may already have come to be exposed to the danger of choosing the false ' greats ' either as worthy receptacles of our trust or as idols to walk in their footsteps in every field of our social life. I don't know whether there is an immediate way out of this poisonous exposure. One sure way out of this is leaving market behind towards a life-caring alternative. But that is surely something to need us to take ourselves far beyond this rampant culture of gloating and self-gloating.
©️ 2021
Some are born great, he said. Yet, I have rubbed my eyes as hard as I could to find at least one examplary case of being born ' great ' but only to end up as a failure. My frantic idiotic search for ' born greats ' ultimately got brought to the conclusion that the idea of ' born great ' is just zippo. Greatness itself is a cultural product ( and concept ) so one cannot come to have it direct from one's mother's womb.
Of the remaining two, achieving greatness sounds commonsensical enough to claim acceptance. However I may feel the mystic pull in me toward trusting greatness to be born rather than being achieved, if greatness is a cultural product it is a case of pure achievement. Start from looking back in history to as recent a past as the WW II and you would understand the point I have been trying to make. Would anybody dare to write a book aiming to convince us that Christ had not achieved greatness but that he was born great? We all know that Einstein was not born great nor, as recent researches claim, was Shakespeare nor were Karl Marx and Goethe in Germany nor were Lenin and Stalin in Russia. All of them and many others including Leonardo Da Vinci and Beethoven have achieved greatness. It is not clear as yet how nature works to create greatness in human beings. But it is clear that the persons named above had to achieve it, they had to work like crazy to attain it . Surely, history is not innocent of examples of people who with similar or nearly similar potentials could not reach equal status with people like them. But that's a different issue. The point is that those called great achieved it, they were not born with it.
Bacon's third dimension of greatness belongs to those on whom greatness is thrust. People of this category are neither born with greatness nor do they come into this world programmed to achieve greatness. Greatness is just ' thrust ' on them. Now greatness being a cultural construct, whatever way it is constructed it is constructed in a particular society. Greatness ' thrust on ' is no exception to this. For greatness thrust on to be a rampant cultural phenomenon not any kind of society will do. It requires a peculiar form of society which cannot exist without an incessant and a very high-speed movement of commodities. If you cannot produce ' greats ' overnight, and if possible every month, nearly the whole of economy will crash leading to a civil war, and who knows, from there to another world war.
Bacon's perceptiveness could be a subject for our real wonderment. Hundreds of years ago, and what an insight! Perhaps, it is arguable that the idea of ' greatness thrust on ' has been with us all along from the start of civilization. Yes, that's true. But it had yet to be flowered the way it has now. And it has been possible because the society is now fully prepared for this flowering. Greatness, like every single thing else, is now a marketable product. Its sale chiefly rides on as wide a hype as possible. As far as pure cultural commodities are concerned, the adjective ' great ' has played a very crucial role in the sense that tagging this adjective to the name of a poet, a novelist, an actor, a singer/musician and even a philosopher irrespective of worth goes farther than anything else in the marketability of cultural products. And it has become both a vibrant business and a thriving culture to find people with prospective market worth and ' thrust ' greatness on them.
I can sense that I have made myself vulnerable to easy misunderstandings and facile misinterpretations. I may be accused of denying that there are still many great people in our present-day world. Some may take it upon themselves to teach me that not everyone is ready to be sold with a ' greatness ' price tag. I have just one answer for them. As long as there are human beings, even if market aggreses to guttle the whole society, there will always be left some to counter-attack the market of ' greatness thrust on ' , there will always be left some who will be ready to sacrifice their all to achieve greatness rather than have greatness thrust on them. This is no hollow hope. If this were not the case, human beings as a species would not have survived. The point is that we are increasingly coming , or may already have come to be exposed to the danger of choosing the false ' greats ' either as worthy receptacles of our trust or as idols to walk in their footsteps in every field of our social life. I don't know whether there is an immediate way out of this poisonous exposure. One sure way out of this is leaving market behind towards a life-caring alternative. But that is surely something to need us to take ourselves far beyond this rampant culture of gloating and self-gloating.
©️ 2021
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