Social Consciousness
By Karmayogi
Society is a collective unit, as
man is a gregarious animal. Men live in groups and move in groups. So, the
group has a physical authority over the individual. Either the individual obeys the collective or he will be liquidated.
Before the physical man moves to the mind, there is an intermediate level. It
is of the nerves. It is called vital level. With the first progress in
civilisation, the collective gives up the threat of murder, but continues to
compel the individual to conform. Otherwise he is browbeaten by all others
— ostracized. This is the phenomenon of the collective imposing its will
on the individual.
There is another phenomenon of man being eager to adopt the social opinion. At
one level it is man's love of the group. At another level it is out of
fear. Man feels safe when he is with the group, inside it physically under its
protection. Out of such an attitude man loses his self-respect and becomes squeamish.
The snob is born there. He is detestable, even disgusting. He looks up to the
rich man, the man in power. In the company of an important politician, his body
involuntarily shrinks in size, hands fold on the breast, a smile lights his
face announcing his adoration of the great man. When he talks of rich people,
his voice drops, his movements become as if he is in the presence of those men.
His adoration is complete. It is really submissiveness. He announces his total
absence of personality.
In an office one such man had a rich colleague. When the snob made an
uncultured remark, the rich man mistook it and offence rose in him. He shouted,
‘‘I shall crush you under my boot heels''. The snob
dissolved in the atmosphere, frightened by the turn of events. A little later
the rich colleague resigned his job and started a tiny industrial unit. This
snob was anxious to pay his obeisance to his object of veneration. Together
with a friend of his he entered the premises of the newly started unit, grinned
from ear to ear, and expressed his total admiration for the rich man.
Self-respect was lost in the Indians when the Britisher arrived. Even before
that, in autocratic regimes self-respect was not safe. A foreigner who had
spent a few years in India returned. While stopping in London, he admired the
native self-respect of the porters there at the terminals of travel.