Why Deviant Behaviour Is Rising

There can be little doubt that deviant social behaviour is rising in India. Pick up any newspaper or view any news channel and you will get the proof.  This, perhaps, is the reason why researchers of behavioural science are advocating these days that people should avoid reading news papers or watching news channels on television at night. It should not sound surprising given the state of affairs in the society today, though it is widely believed that newspapers as well as television news channels disseminating the news are informing, and educating the society by increasing the general awareness level of the common people. However, a careful analysis of the kind of news stories that are being disseminated would reveal that the contents are depressing, creating a feeling of fear and disgust in the readers and viewers. Nothing better can be expected when crime and criminality hog the major part of the content. Psychologists opine that watching or reading such stories in the night raises the anxiety level of the individuals resulting in disturbed sleep. Not that reading newspapers or watching news on television in the morning will make the content less depressing. Quite the contrary, it is as depressing or sometimes even more because the more heinous crimes committed in the previous night get added to them. Nevertheless, the hurly burly  of everyday life, the struggle to cope up with the daily grind makes them forget the untoward. Rather suppress those things as there are better things to do. This makes the crucial difference between the day and the night. But that apart, there is another and more important side of the storm, and a sordid one. Why are the contents becoming more depressing? Well , this needs to be examined but as a hypothesis this merits considerable attention. While there can be several explanations, one important aspect  is that neuroticism is on the rise. Neurosis according to many schools of psychology is a learned set of responses. The notion of abnormal behaviour is misleading to many people. Contrary to the popular belief, it is not study of persons totally different from the rest of mankind. Rather the very same variables that operate in extreme degrees in mentally ill people are there in normal people too. The difference may be of degree not of content. Thus important variables which are difficult to find in mild degree become very discernible when present is extreme. It is against this back drop that the rise in deviant behaviour in the society has to be understood. The changing societal pattern where nuclear families with single child is the norm, gregariousness  as a conditioned drive cannot be learnt because there is hardly any interaction with other individuals except for the father and the mother.  A very interesting experiment carried out on sheep by a psychologist named Scot in 1947 can offer some insights. Scot found that bottle fed sheep did not exhibit the kind of gregariousness which naturally reared ones do. Usually sheep are extremely gregarious, but the bottle fed ones grazed apart from the rest of the herd and showed a tendency to follow the people who had fed them. This suggests that gregariousness is a learnt drive. Drawing a cue, it can be hypothesized that human motives of sociability, dependence, need to show and receive affection and desire for approval are learnt. In absence of these the tendency to care two hoots for others increases. And this results in errant and deviant behaviour. It is time to ponder why anomie is growing in society leading to rise in deviant behaviour. 

Understanding Love and Anger

All of us lose our temper at times and get angry, often flying off the handle. What do we do then? Howling, shouting, even attacking the other person at times. It is a human phenomenon which reminds us of our bestiality. Perhaps,  it is our connecting link to the animal world. In psychological parlance anger is a raw emotion which we homosapiens have not been able to tame. Why do we get angry? A difficult question to answer but one thing can be said with a fair degree of certitude is that it is our reaction to something that our ego does not like. The problem is ego, the human ego which gets hurt, bruised or traumatised, and in order to settle scores,  retaliates. But there are people who are able to control their ego and thereby undo or check the chain reaction that is triggered when the ego overpowers reason. Anger thus is the voice of  unreason. Buddha says “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned”. Like it or not, anger, literally burns you by bringing about chemical changes in your body which may culminate into pathological changes, too, if the anger persists for a continually long period.

Anger is one of the negative emotions which is a manifestation of the basic emotion rage. We are all born with these basic emotions, that is, love, hate and rage. While love is a positive emotion, hate and rage are the negative emotions. Thus, we are bestowed with one positive and two negative emotions and naturally, more vulnerable to the influence of the latter.

How love and anger differ in their reactions can be understood from the following parable. A sanyasi, while having a bath in the holy river Ganges along with a few of his disciples found some people shouting loudly at each other. He looked at his disciples and smilingly asked why people shout at one another when they are angry. After thinking for a while one of the disciples replied that it was because people lose their calm and are not able to control their reactions. The sanyasi had another query and perfectly reasonable one. What is the need for people to shout at the person who is just next to him. The disciples came out with many explanations but none of those could satisfy sanyasi. Even the disciples  themselves were not satisfied. Then they asked the sanyasi to explain. The sanyasi coolly explained that when two people are angry at one another their hearts are distanced to a huge extent. Naturally, to make their voices reach that distance they need to shout to make themselves heard. The angrier they are the louder they will shout to make one another hear. It is the perceived distance that matters and not the real one.

On the contrary, what happens when two people fall in love. They do not shout at one another but rather talk very softly. The reason being that their hearts are very close to one another. The perceived distance, thus, between them is almost non existent.   As the love becomes even more intense, voices become whispers because there is virtually no distance between them. Finally, as the love further intensifies, they do not even have to whisper. Merely looking at one another is enough. To communicate their feelings it is  just the look that suffices. That is how close people are when they love each other.

The saint then advised his disciples that when they have to argue they should not allow their hearts to get distanced. Words that distance one another should not be uttered. They must learn to let reason prevail over ego and raise the level of their argument, not the pitch of their voice.

 

Mother Nature’s Revenge

 

Monsoon, which has been the life line of India for ages, suddenly turned hostile wreaking havoc in many places in the northern part of India. Such was the magnitude of nature’s fury that Uttarakhand which received the butt of the ire was completely devastated. Even god’s own abode, the famous shrine of Lord Shiva and one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of the Lord was not spared. Although the Lingum remained intact. What do we call this?It is time to be honest and admit that this catastrophe was mother nature’s revenge for our acts of omission and commission of tampering with nature, our indiscriminate ravaging of the nature’s treasure, our rapacious tendencies to take mother nature too casually. Interestingly, this calamity struck barely a few days after we had gone through the annual ritual of celebrating World Environment Day.

The message has been loud and clear – do not try to fool mother nature. Paying lip service will not do any good and it is time mother nature is taken seriously. In fact, the recent spate of cataclysmic events which devastated large stretches of Uttarakhand usually strike once in a hundred years. But if a study of the World Bank is to be believed, the inconvenient truth about the climate change can no longer be dismissed as scare mongering. The report which has taken into account the climate change and its region wise impact, sends gloomy forebodings suggesting that India might have to pay a heavy price for callous disregard of nature and face such disasters every ten years. Our grain production which largely depends on the monsoon rains may witness a heavy decline, and if the mean temperature increases by even two percent the water level of rivers like Bhramaputra and Ganga may fall drastically, affecting food security of a large section of our population. What is needed is serious concern and not popular rhetoric while celebrating events like World Environment Day or World Greenery Day.

Environment activism here is more of a fashion. It needs to become a passion. And the solution lies in strict laws, serious activism and popular participation. One of the villains of the piece has been the unplanned urbanization replacing natural forests by Jungles of concrete. Unscrupulous realtors have contributed significantly to the rise in mean temperature, not only by the high rise buildings that drain ground water forcing water table to fall, but also by absorbing heat of the sun and raising the atmospheric temperature. Further, the emissions of CFCs through air conditioners and refrigerators have also added to carbon emissions. The reality sector has to be regulated with a heavy hand, particularly in smaller cities where the mushroom growth of apartments without even caring for minimum regulations has resulted in chaotic urbanization. The carbon emissions must be cut if the mean temperature is to be brought down. It is to be understood that mother nature’s carrying capacity is being challenged to unbearable limits. The problem is not with human needs. The problem lies with human greed which has brought us to such a pass. The answer then can be found in Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote- Earth can provide enough to satisfy everybody’s need, but not enough for even one person’s greed. The situation has become alarming because human beings are looking for commerce everywhere. But remember mother nature has already started sending warning signals. Humanity beware because if the mother turns hostile who will save you. And one final thing – nature and God are one. The unscathed Shivlingum that remains at Kedarnath bears testimony to this. So respect mother nature, or else pay the price.