As the devil whispers…

“Men at some time are masters of their fate.

The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars

But in ourselves that we are underlings.”

If you haven’t read Julius Caesar, the above lines will sound like a very noble thought indeed. It reeks of ambition and taken on face value seems like a healthy mindset to have. It speaks of taking responsibility for your own shortcomings and pinning the blame on yourself for not being at the pinnacle of success that you envisaged for yourself. This hold true, until you read the rest of the dialogue between Brutus and Cassius….

Cassius to Brutus (maliciously talking about Caesar):-

“Brutus and Caesar : What should be in that Caesar?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together and yours is as fair a name

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well.

Weigh them, it is as heavy, conjure with them.

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar

Now in the name of all the Gods at once

Upon what meat doth our Caesar feed?

That he is grown so great. Age, thou art shamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods

When went there by an eye since the greatest flood,

But, it was formed with more than with one man?

So on…..Cassius continues to stir up Brutus’s already poisoned emotional self. Cassius, Brutus and their aides then go ahead and slay Julius Caesar (call it a coup if one may), only to be soon avenged by Mark Anthony, Caesar’s loyal aide.

That is not however the interesting bit. It is how Brutus and his aides take to the town center to convince the common masses that the coup was necessary. That, Julius Caesar though a fine statesman was too ambitious for the good of Rome and had to removed from the path. They convince them that the death of Caesar was essential.

The masses as gullible as they are, cheer for their new master.

Soon, following on their heels appears Mark Anthony with Caesar’s body and convinces the same crowd about the sinister plot behind Caesar’s assassination and reminds them of how Caesar had refused to wear the crown, thus questioning the narrative about Caesar’s supposed selfish ambitions. The very crowd now hails Mark Anthony and calls for the assassination of Brutus, Cassius and their aides.

Thinking of it, it is mighty easy to brainwash the gullible. All someone needs is a fancy story laced with enough emotion to convince one sect to dislike the other and we can keep the wheels of hatred churning for centuries to come. It is on the other hand extremely difficult for us to make fairness and kindness our default setting. Everyday our emotions get smacked back and forth like a tennis ball, one day convinced that someone has to be disliked and the next day upon hearing the other side, having to change our minds.

I read this beautiful quote somewhere…

When you whisper gleefully into someone’s ears how someone you dislike should be harmed and start recruiting support for the same, I would say that your suffering should have an expiry date too. It is pointless wallowing in self pity for decades and perpetuating your hatred for the descendants of your perceived enemies. The wheels need to stop churning at some point. Beyond that you have no good reason, only excuses for bad behavior. Because, all of us have enough hatred in us for us to continue the ripple effect for eons to come.

As someone else too aptly quoted,

‘People who are committed to correcting historical injustices are the ones committing the most injustice today’.

If you hear Mr Thomas Sowell, he always says, “We were all oppressed at one point in time. It is untrue that only blacks were enslaved by whites. More than half the globe was enslaved by someone or other. To hold someone accountable when they weren’t even born for something that was done to your ancestors when you weren’t born is stupidity.”….(paraphrased)

In fact, if you check, the term ‘slave’ has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD.

The very ideology on which the pseudoliberals thrive is this. They whisper to the masses how everybody in recent history perceived superior is their oppressor and needs to be silenced. They need not go back too far into history lest they open a new can of worms. How they are committed to correcting historical injustices of the ancestors of their perceived oppressors. How they need a Brutus and a Cassius and no Caesar because Caesars are too ambitious.

…..And how they are masters of their own fate.

“Because the fault dear oppressed people, is not in our stars.

But in ourselves that we are underlings.”