...to pull the plug?

Thalaikkoothal (Mercy Killing, Tamil, 2023)
Director: Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan

I grew up frequently hearing that Mr So-and-so died a 'good death'. I was often curious about what was defined as a 'good death'. In my naive eyes, all deaths were terrible, a tragedy. Everyone cried at a funeral.

In time, I realised that a good death is one in which one dies in his sleep peacefully after leading a long, satisfying life fulfilling the purposes of his existence. The problem is that no one is given the choice of death he eventually gets. We still do not know what is in store for us anyway.

This movie tells us the story of a filial son who would go to all lengths to care for his father, who is basically in a vegetative state. The doctors have told him point blank that there is nothing more the hospital can do. The father has to be given hospice care. Because the father needs so much attention, he does a less-paying job, provoking the ire of his young wife, who has to work as a miserable factory worker in a match factory. Because of that, she has to tolerate unwanted advancements by her blue-bearded supervisor. She has to stinge on niceties that she used to pamper herself. The wife is high-strung, scolding the preteen daughter and hate the sight of her husband and father-in-law. Gone were the times when husband and wife shared intimate times. The husband, who planned to seek better employment in the town, can also not do so. The thought of leaving his father, who cared for him through thick and thin, was too much for him to stomach.

Looking at how the ailing old man affected the whole family, his relatives and village elders frequently advise the son to consider performing a form of assisted suicide practice called Thalaikkotal to end their misery.

Of course, the husband vehemently opposes the suggestion. He performs a sacrificial prayer at the local temple, hoping for the Divine powers to change the course of his ailment. The father's condition hardly changed. Creditors close in to demand his house. His wife left him to return to her father's house with their child. The husband thought he could stand alone against the world. He soon came to the realisation of reality and agreed with the villagers to perform thallaikooliyal.

The ritual, a senicide, involves liberal early morning oiling of the head and body with sesame oil,  followed by forced feeding of tender coconut water infused with a cocktail of herbs that damage the kidneys.

Life improves after the father's demise, and everyone is happy. 

That is the problem with longevity. Sometimes the body stays in a much better shape than that of the mind. The body continues its bodily function, but the mind is not cognizant of what it can do or is doing. This describes someone in a coma. Just how long can or should be kept in a non-responsive comatose state? As long as finances allow or the relatives are willing to sponsor? Is it worth the effort to wait for the possible miraculous recovery to happen? The living needs to continue living, while the ones who have lived a full life need to go.

 

Sometimes the body fails terribly, but the mind faculty stays intact. This can also be a devastating experience for the sufferers as well as their caregivers as the victim projects his frustrations on people around him, fate and God. 

Should euthanasia be legalised? Are humans qualified enough to decide who should live or die? Should assisted suicide be legalised? Who decides who deserves to live or be resuscitated by all means? On what basis is this decided, productivity, past laurels, societal status, or a level playing field for all?

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Only when you are gone.

Pyaasa (Hindi, Thirst; 1957)

Director, Actor: Guru Dutt

Legend tells of a certain wanderer who kept looking for the meaning of life in all the places. He meditated for hours, walked into the wilderness, exposing himself to the element of Nature and trying to seek answers in cemeteries and crematoriums. He would rub ash from funeral pyres to humiliate himself and consume the human flesh of the dead to crush his ego.

We can just imagine the treatment he would have received as a living being. Shunned by the public for his shabby appearance and bizarre behaviour, the general public would be mocking him and shrugging their heads in disproval.

This guy, Siva, must have found wisdom in his endeavour and started voicing his finds far and wide everywhere he went. Only after his death, people began appreciating his prophetic pearls of wisdom bit by bit. Before we knew it, the whole narrative started to make sense, and the rest, they say, is history.

Fast forward to the present, he is positioned amongst the highest of the pantheon of our existence. He is revered as God for his keen interest in seeking the truth. That is the problem with people. We never appreciate people in their lifetime. In fact, we vilify them and accuse them of many things because they dare to question the status quo. They dare to rock the boat.

In a sense, this 1957 movie takes a swap at society at large. It is post-Independent India. Times were hard, and the profit-hungry world had no time for writers and poets. Doing a 'proper' paying job is what everyone is seeking. In their books, writing poems is not a real job. Against this background, the hero, a natural poet, is admonished for being jobless. He is homeless and finds solace in the company of a prostitute. He meets his ex-college sweetheart, who is now married to a publisher. They had departed ways earlier in not the most pleasant circumstances.

Guru Dutt and Mala Sinha

The publisher husband befriends the poet and employs him as his assistant. He promises to publish his work. Even though the publisher enjoys the poems in the company of a writer's group, it never gets published. The prostitute, in the meanwhile, falls for the poet. And his ex-girlfriend, too, tries to rekindle their old flame.


In a bizarre twist of events and mistaken identity, the poet is mistakenly thought dead. The forlorn prostitute gets the poems published to rave reviews. The poet, who re-appear after a stint in a mental hospital, comes to claim authorship of the poems. The general public refuses to believe that a madman could have penned all that poetic lines. The poet and the prostitute leave to start a new life.

Only when the ex-flame leaves for a more affluent man and after spending time in a loveless marriage does she realise the poet's worth. Similarly, the general public vehemently refuses the poet's ability when he appears in flesh and blood.

Labelled as one of the 100s best Hindi films of all time, this movie is rife with many symbolism or 'easter eggs' as they call it. In one epic scene, the protagonist appears at an auditorium door with outstretched hands against a light beam. Ultimately, it seems like a silhouette of Jesus Christ on a crucifix. In his subtle way, the filmmaker hints that the poet had 'resurrected' from his death.

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Laundromats, Laundering and World Cup!

I used to be fascinated with the term 'money laundering'. At face value, it looked simple enough - to cleanse money obtained via unsavoury means and to put them in circulation whilst giving them a legitimate source of origin. Was it a coincidence that Al Capone used a laundromat to store and 'cleanse' his ill-gotten gains during Prohibition? 

As the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup is in progress, another word frequently mentioned is 'sports washing'. Traditionally sports have been utilised to cement friendships between nations. It has also been used to spur nationalism among its own citizens. For years despotic regimes whitewash their sins with the glamour of sports. During the 1936 Olympics, Hitler tried to paint a new image of a rejuvenated Germany after the humiliating defeat in the trench War and to prove his supremacist Aryan race theory. Sadly, Jesse Owen's achievement simply threw dirt on Hitler's face. Then it was the Argentinan junta who tried to whitewash their political witch hunts and extra judicial killings by organising the 1978 FIFA World Cup. For a moment, the world thought the world of Argentina had risen from ashes. 

Is Qatar following in the footsteps of the above?

From the word get-go, Qatar has been hogging the headlines for all the wrong reasons. True, the media giant was established with free-flowing Arab petrodollars to paint a more accurate picture of the Arabic and Islamic world; no paint brushing can hide the ugly truth. How it won the bid to host the pinnacle of the world's favourite sport is suspect. How the hell did the FIFA Executive representatives feel that Qatar, with its desert heat and a summer temperature of 50 degrees C was a better choice than Australia and the United States? 

Even before the coin toss or kick-off, the death toll and abuse of its migrant workers had hit the ceiling. The narration of non-payment of wages and non-compensation for injuries sustained during its many infrastructure constructions is common knowledge.

Now that the game has commenced, more and more of their shenanigans have come to light. The Wahhabi-infused Qatari royalty has decided to showcase how a halal football tournament should be carried out. Revellers who flew in to join the merriment of their winning teams in style had to contend with non-alcoholic beverages. They are also strictly told not to display their sexual preferences on their sleeves.

Migrant worker death toll at 1,400

So when someone told me that he was excited that the first two preliminary matches revealed unexpected results. Saudi Arabia, which had a 251 to 1 odds of beating Argentina, did precisely that. And who is the right kind would have thought the minion Japanese who have ousted the four-time world Cup winners Germany? The bookies would have thought so, too, since they would ensure the best returns. Nothing is surprising anymore in this money-raged world of moolah and how businesses control every aspect of our lives. 

In the organisers' zeal to showcase how an Islamic country has a 'secular' event, they decided to use the occasion to proselyte fans. Who can be the best evangelist with an incredible track record to prove this than the fugitive Dr Zakir Naik? He had been specially flown in for the occasion from Malaysia.

Interestingly, Qatar insists that Dr Naik is not on the invitees' list.

Is the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar's way of sport washing its world image as the premier sponsor of terror? Do they expect the world to forget all about the state-sponsored madrasahs and ulamas after organising a memorable display of world-class football? Villains become valiant defenders of truth?

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The Queen is dead, long live the King!

©Elanour Tomlinson

We are often advised to say only the nice things about the recently departed. Somehow, all the ill feelings and the wrong paths crossed are temporarily swept under the proverbial carpet. Everyone, including the ones who tend to benefit from the deceased's passing, is expected to carry a sombre outward appearance - wear a sad face, dress down and avoid merriment. 

After the so-called mourning period, it will be pretty much no-holds-barred, I guess. 

But now, even before the dead are laid to rest, the wokies are already at it. I am referring to the recent demise of one of the longest reigning monarchs of the once most enormous Empire of the world, where the sun never set. True, she inherited a bounty of loot from the world over. At one time, pirates scaling the Atlantic high seas were free to pilfer gold from Spanish vessels legitimately under the auspices of the British Crown as long as they paid their dues to the monarch.

True, they went out with their imperial stance with a chip on their shoulders and a stiff upper lip to match. And plunder wealth from civilisations that had found peace with their place in the sun, create mayhem to liberate the oppressed and destroy other cultures with their new economic model.

This turn of events is inevitable. Every nation wants to improve life for itself. The designated / king does that for his subject at the expense of a gamut of benefits for himself and those under his umbrage who held his torch. This way of conquest was thought to trickle down the food chain and continues to date.

There were plundering imperialists, and there were cruel plundering imperialists. Some maimed their subjects without caring about their future. In a way, the British made some humane decisions to ease their administration but ended up causing their Empire's own destruction along with other compelling factors. They laid down plans for proper administrative machinery, invested in education for natives to help (and look down on their own cultures) and created an extensive web of transportation networks. 

If not for the English, this blog would not be in English or an incomprehensible language that could hardly pass for English. We were lucky that English became the lingua franca of the world, the modern language of communication. Left to our politicians to steer us to the future, we would still be a fumbling fishing village ruled by despots, not that they are not preventing this from happening. An unthinking obedient herd of the population led by their leash to the slaughter is their idea of utopia. If we had been savaged by colonists, we would have been brutalised by our own kind. As the Tamil saying goes, "Whether Rama or Raavan rule, it doesn't matter to me, I don't give a damn!"

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The illusion of being in-charge!

Vinodhaya Sitham (Strange Decision, Tamil; 2021)
Director, Screenplay: Samuthirakani

They say Time heals skirmishers, and loggerheads get forgotten over time. At the same time, they condemn Time as a cruel curse. Time dries, shrivels, slows, ages and eventually kills for the next generation to take charge.

We like to think that we are all indispensable. We assume our dependents are waiting for us to care for them. We feel that we are far from completing our pre-set ambitions. We are convinced the world, like a grandfather's clock, will stop short never to work again the moment we drop dead.

There is news for us. Nope, the Universe does not revolve around us. We are a mere speckle of a minuscule of stardust in the grander scheme of things. We do not matter. Things just go on beyond, despite our absence or presence. It is what it is. Que sera sera, what will be will be. We are just passing through. The rest will live, with or without us. 

It is only our ego that feeds us this sense of grandiosity. The filial piety that is expected of us and is given to us that sensation of pomposity, that we are essential to do what is needed. Without it, we think everything would come tumbling down like a domino. Wrong again. We sadly think we are in control. In reality, nothing is within our control.

This 2021 light comedy brings forth something quite profound to general viewing. Parasuraman, a soon-to-be general manager, is a man on the go. A 50 something diligent worker who had dedicated most of his adult life to his company. His 25 years of marriage has produced three lovely children. Thanks to his control and advice, he (thinks he has) managed to pave a bright future for his kids and company all these years. He got no time for the little men and their ambitionless life path. For Parasuraman, it is just work, ambition, family and progress.

All that came to an abrupt end when he was involved in a fatal accident. Devasted, he managed to cut a deal with Time to complete his work on Earth. Time gave Parasuraman 90 days for that. Reality hits him. All the things he thought he was in control of were actually happening above him. Many things were going on behind his back, and their outcomes were not what he intended to be.

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Dead Man walking?

Kaagaz (Paper, Hindi, 2021)
Directed by Satish Kaushik

We all have the frustrating experience of dealing with the 'system'. How can we forget how simple technicalities cannot be just changed because red tape prevents them? Everybody in the system can 'see' the problem, but nobody can do anything about it.

With the widespread use of AI and chatbots in daily dealing, the situation is becoming more chaotic. We, the end-users, are made to deal with idiots. No amount of 'I want to talk to your manager' will move the system. 

Lal Bihari of Uttar Pradesh had first-hand experience dealing with this madness. He had to prove to the Indian bureaucracy that he is alive. It all happened when Lal Bihari, a farmer in real life, was declared deceased by his relatives who swindled his share of the family inheritance. He spent a good portion of his life between 1975 and 1994 going up and down courts to prove his existence.

Lal Bihari Mrithak (deceased)

In the movie version, Lal Bihari becomes Bharatlal Bihari, a bandmaster, was coaxed by his wife and friend to expand his music business. For that, Bihari approached a bank for a loan that needed collateral. He remembered an old inheritance, a small piece of village land that he could use for that purpose. Unfortunately, when he enquires about getting the deed, he finds out that his relatives had declared him dead and had usurped the land.

In a comical way, the film portrays how Bihari becomes a pauper with mounting legal fees. His existence is questioned, his marriage is in shambles. His wife is supposed to be a widow, but how can she be dressed as a widow when her husband is beside her. Bihari tries to kidnap a kid to be arrested. He thought that by being arrested, the legal system would charge him. If he is charged, then he exists! That also does not work. Finally, he started an Association of Dead People, participated by hundreds of people around India who were in the same boat. 

Bihari finally proved his existence in 1994. He even tried to stand, unsuccessfully, against Rajeev Gandhi in 1985 to prove that he is alive. The height of his 'career' is when he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in 2003. The Ig Nobel Prize is a parody of its namesake for unusual achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think". His association has about 20,000 members now.

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Of family politics...

Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (Ramprasad's Final Rites, Hindi; 2019)
Written and Directed by Seema Pahwa

All families will have their own internal politics. Over property, money or ego, family members may squabble and refuse to descend from their high horses. They refuse to see common ground. Nature sometimes play games to remind everybody of how fragile each of us is and tries to put us in our respective place. The easiest way Nature does this is to invoke death within the family. 

The scurrying of family members gives an opportune time to meant fences. The warring factions may rescind, albeit for a short time, only to return to their old ways once the mourning period is over. 

Human relationships are so fragile. More often than not, we do not say what we mean and mean what we say. Everything is sugarcoated to maintain harmony on the surface, but beneath it all, resentment brews. Everyone is concerned with their own survival. Family dynamics have evolved over the generations, and the extended family concept is so yesterday. Migration to towns and immersion in post-Industrial revolution age type of pigeon-holed urban housing makes nuclear families the norm. Filial piety takes a backseat after marriage, and afterwards, honouring the elders is only confined to weddings and funerals.

The film tells about the death of an elderly music teacher, Ramprasad. His children and close relatives congregate in his house to pacify and fulfil the final rites (Tehrvi). Soon, the family politics come out one by one. The sisters-in-law bitch about the youngest of them, who is an actor. The sons complain about their father. Old wounds start festering. It reached a crescendo when it is discovered that the deceased has a big unpaid mortgage on their family property. Nobody is in a position to chip in to save it. In fact, the father had taken loans to finance each and one of the offspring.

The grieving mother sees the family members like they are there for an extended vacation, catching up on all stories, snapping photographs and the sons having drinking sessions most nights. Nobody seems to be grieving. She thinks that maybe she and her husband had failed in their duties to instil hardship on their children. By just shielding them from life challenges and pad them at every fall, maybe they had made them weak. She also realises that all her kids had their own challenges to meet within their family.

The mandatory thirteen days of mourning ends. The children return to their own lives, letting the mother alone to fend for herself. Life moves on. She continues the music school for children.  

A slow-moving movie that peels the layers of unsaid and unspoken politics in every typical Indian family.

(P.S. The story and settings of this film almost parallel that of another of Netflix's offerings, Pagglait. It is also about family politics and funeral, but from the POV of a grieving widow.)

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People kill people, not guns?

If anything happens I love you! (2020)
Animated Short Film

This 11-minutes short film won itself an Academy Award in the Best Short Animated film category. In a concise graphic representation, the storytellers managed to capture the essence of emotions surrounding the loss of a young child. This emotional turmoil can make or break a family unit. The gamut of blaming, what-ifs, guilt and fault finding missions would eventually lead to a brick wall among the living but definitely not bring back the dead.

The death of a member of a family who has not lived his full potential, however, may invoke a myriad of responses. They say an addition to the family, especially the first-born, unites families. The sight of a newborn will make everyone all jello but strong enough to cement whatever minor frictions that may have been present in day-to-day dealings. It may make or break the bonds between the close relatives, especially parents, in the case of a young child.

This short film with no dialogue but a single song, 1950 by King Princess, tells the pain that a couple of parents endure when their pre-teen is killed in a random school shooting. The couple gradually grows apart with overpowering grief. All the while, their genuine emotions, feeling for each other and worries about each other are depicted by their shadows. When the door of their daughter's room, which they refuse to open all this while, suddenly opens, both parents enter the room to the sound of their daughter's favourite song. They reminisce about all the joyful times that they had together through a series of flashbacks. Finally, they shed their tears and reached a resolution.

The film highlights the problem of random shootings in the American public space, especially schools. Over the years, the interval between these types of shooting is getting shorter, and the types of weapons used are getting complex. It is no more pistols or hunting rifles. Instead, we are talking about assault rifles and semi-automatics. Pretty soon, the general public may be walking around with bazookas as it is their right to bear arms to protect themselves as permitted by the second amendment of the American Constitution. 

So many Presidents have come and gone promising to put a stop to all this gun violence. Even though many countries, the UK and Australia included, are testimony that this is indeed possible with very tight regulation of weapons ownership, such a situation will never happen in the US. The gun lobbying groups hold the purse string to the political parties. Being the central capital of weapon provider for the whole world to fight each other to maintain American interest and sustain despotic regimes worldwide, it will bad for business to put an all right ban on guns. 

Anti guns will continue doing their thing.  Aggrieved parties will pour their heartfelt disappointments, and the world will light an occasional candle at shooting sights, but the stock owners of Smith & Wesson and Colt's Defence will continue run laughing all the way to the bank. And they justify their rights by saying, "People kill people, not guns!" But, what they do not understand is that people just get a bruised face, dented ego or at most a broken rib with physical might. A gun has only one mission, to cause severe damage to the victim with minimal effort of its user.

All the loving feelings wither over the years. A child may make or break, not only by what turns out of them but in wanting to give the best for them. Differing parenting approaches and domineering-type of parenting accentuates drift. You ask yourself, "Is this the same woman that I married? "You coax yourself telling, "No, these are just battle wounds traversing the journey of life!"

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It is the journey.

Harold and Maude (1971)

Some look at life as full of doom and gloom, as a purposeless one. Whichever path one takes, we know what the final destination is, and the path leading to it can be paved with shrapnel and pain. Nietzschean and many existentialist philosophers perpetuate this idea. On the other end of the spectrum, others whose sole purpose of life is to savour the joy of being born as a human being push it to the tilt. They view the boon of birth as a gift on a platter to enjoy with no boundaries.

The truth must be lying somewhere in between - between nihilism and hedonism. There must be a purpose in our existence, perhaps to somehow leave a tiny mark of legacy, no matter how small, in a small way to propel our loved ones, family or community forward. A community, hence a country, is, after all, is made of subunits of families. So, improvements in families will sequentially propel the human race forward. 

We should probably get our cues about life from the words of the Stoics and Epicureans. In their minds, we have only this one life to do what we can whilst finding pleasure within all of the aches and pains it has to offer.

This 1971 film, made at the end of the time of flower power, must have been an assessment of the liberal care-free perception of society versus the traditional convention-abiding outlook of the community. It was a satire of society we live in, which involves 'groupthink' as determined by authoritative figures - religion, psychology, family, military.

This cult-following offering recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. It is a dark comedy about a death-obsessed 19-year-old young man who falls in love with a happy-go-lucky 80-year old lady. Yes, 80 years old.  Harold, brought up in a privileged background by a narcissistic single mother, grows bored with life. He is preoccupied with death and religiously attends funerals, even of unknown people, just to be closer to death. He has a warped sense of humour, sometimes faking himself hanging or cutting off his own limb. His mother's attempts at keeping him entertained with gifts and new girlfriends proved futile.

So Harold found himself quite at home with a chance meeting with Maude at a random funeral. Her care-less attitude and total disregard for the rule of law excited him. Their little escapade turned out to be a sort of coming-of-age phase for Harold as Maude shows him all the small things that make one appreciate the reason for living. Harold looks at funerals as the final destination we are all edging to as Maude looked at them as a moment to reflect the time of their existence. I guess the film's message is to accept death as an essential and inevitable recurring process that regenerates life.

The memorable scene in this movie is the one in a field of daisies. Maude said she would like to change to a sunflower most of all as they are so tall and simple. Harold replied that he would like to be one of the daises because "they are all alike". Maude turned to Harold and explained that they are not.  

"Some are smaller, some are fatter. Some grow to the left, some to the right. Some even have lost some petals. All kinds of observable differences". Harold could suddenly see the truth in her observation. The camera pans way back to show that Harold and Maude were standing in a graveyard. The gravestones were identical to the daises in one perspective. Even though the stones were all carved to look similar, they signify different lives lived - happy, sad, abrupt, or long. But the ending, the final destination, nevertheless, is the same.

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The need to fit in

The Stranger (Novella by Albert Camus, 1942)
Feature Film (Italian; 1967)

Director: Marcello Mastroianni

The last few years of his existence were not particularly pleasant. It started with diabetes which progressively affected his night vision. His occasional falls off his motorcycle, and a fracture shook his confidence. Progressively, the Penang roads appeared too hostile to his liking. He lost his independence when his children did not allow him to renew his driving and bike licences.

From then on, things only went south. Two episodes of strokes later and a urinary bladder's tumour afterwards with the ensuing therapy made life more miserable. If that was not enough, the accidental falls, lacerations and worsening eyesight added to his misery and the people living around him. Many unsavoury words were hurled out of frustrations. 

So, when the day of reckoning finally came, it was a relief of sorts. At least, that is how I looked at it. Released from the distresses of the mortal life, he could be free in the netherworld, free of aches and pangs.

Albert Camus
1957 Nobel Prize in Literature

But, came the funeral; the very people who were frustrated with his demands were the first to have no qualms in displaying their emotive expressions of sorrow. They were shameless with their verbose exhibition of grief. Weepers behaved as if they were young orphans who were left in a quandary of losing a sole remaining parent. And I had the queasy feeling that they expected the same of me.

I wondered what they thought of me as I went on to do the final rites. I, too, was asking myself whether I had psychopathic tendencies for not sharing their same sentiments. I was relieved that he was free of his miseries and could take a long sleep, knowing very well that he did not have to wake up to another day, endure its uncertainties and drag through another 24 hours of pain. He was free from any encumbrances. 

I did not think mourners shared my viewpoints. In their minds, certain conduct is expected of a member in a particular community, barring which he is scorned upon. He would be labelled as deviant, not right in his head, not fit to be one of them.

The same sentiments must have been felt by the protagonist of Camus' 1942 novella 'The Stranger'. Arthur Mersault, a free thinker, is informed of his mother's death in a retirement home. Mersault never had a cordial relationship with his mother but, looking at it as his filial duty, he attends to the final rites. He merely whisks through the rituals without much attachment to his loss. He even declines the offer to see his mother's body for the last time before the coffin is nailed. 

The weekend following the funeral saw Mersault go for a swim, a movie with his girlfriend and an outing by a beach. He also helps his acquaintance, an unsavoury character, who is rumoured to be a pimp, to pen a threatening letter to his two-timing girlfriend. 

When Mersault is finally charged in the second half of the story for the murder of the brother of the pimp's girlfriend, his character is implied from his earlier behaviours. The clearly conservative legal system finds Mersault guilty as he is deemed a person of low morals and without a guiding stand in life because of his irreligiosity. In the 'righteous' jury mind, a person who is so nonchalant about the demise of the person who gave him life would not provide an iota of hesitation and remorse to gun down a defenceless Arab boy.

That is how it is. We are left to stay afloat on this journey of life without its purpose and try to find answers as we go on. We are doubtful about our perception, but we still convince ourselves that we have all answers. We try to reassure ourselves by spreading and forcing our beliefs on others. The more a lie is repeated, it eventually becomes the truth. We become more cocksure by the numbers. Any revolt against this status quo creates cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort and frustrations about all the time and effort wasted upon a dogma. And we would fight it with tooth and nail.

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