The Season of Apocalypse
We live in times of cognitive dissonance.
Growing up in India, vinaashe kale vipareeta buddhi – roughly translated as “cognitive dissonance is a sign of impending calamity” – was an aphorism constantly hurled at Radha by family and society. Cognitive dissonance refers to the mental discomfort and/or confusion that arises from our inability to make sense of the world that we must navigate as humans. In the South Asian intellectual traditions (long lost to colonial modernity), the unity of thought (knowledge), values (ethics) and actions (behaviour) is key to a coherent ‘buddhi’ or an enlightened way of being in the world. The warning sounded by this aphorism – that cognitive dissonance is a symptom rather than a curse, and that it arises from fragmented human cognition rather than any transcendental power – suggests that death, devastation, and destruction are not inevitable. They can be averted by restoring cognitive coherence. Such coherence can be restored by realigning the triad of knowledge, values, and action; in other words, by transforming the buddhi.
This conception of death, devastation and destruction in the South Asian intellectual tradition differs markedly from conceptions of the apocalypse – and the eschatology that accompanies it – within Greco-Roman-Christian structures of thought and belief. The Western intellectual tradition emphasises obedience, fidelity to norms and commandments, and focuses punishment and retribution. The conception of linear time in the Greco-Roman-Christian traditions and cyclical time in the South Asian tradition may have something to do with these very different conceptions of apocalyptic predictions and eschatology where the world ends because of disobedience in one case, and because of absence of an enlightened buddhi in the other.
This project sets foot, rather tentatively, on an untrodden path to explore these ideas. It is at a very early stage in its journey, and already, it stands at a crossroad. The path ahead is rough and hazy; the path, the destination and the possibility of the journey itself remain uncertain.
Radha D’Souza is made from Kaveri’s clay gathered from her splaying delta. She is a seeker who has wandered through several professions and places – as a student activist, trade unionist, journalist, writer, lawyer, professor - over many places – India, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom. Everywhere she has searched for the meaning of justice, truth, solidarity, the meaning of life, and continues to look, hoping to find answers in unexpected, neglected nooks or crannies anywhere and everywhere. The aroma of Kaveri's clay follows her wherever she goes. She has come to the view that the joy is in the journey and not the destination.
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