Brexit Essay: 3rd Place

A few weeks ago, we announced an essay competition – The Vice President, Education's Award. The task was to submit a short eassy (1,500 words), on a topic. We chose Brexit. Not an easy task to complete in such a small allotment of words. 

Today we present our winning essays. In third place, Sumit Aggarwal. To see our other winners, check out the second place submission and winning essay. 

 

Death in the Time of Brexit – Sumit Aggarwal

This is a story of death and leadership with the following preamble:

With this essay, do we seek a set of conjectures speculating on what Britain might look like? Or what Britain should look like? Do we base this conjecture on some kind of analysis of some data using some model that is already crippled by it’s underlying questionable assumptions? Or do we want to See the present reality of Brexit that itself has clues to the future, and leave predicting the future to astrologers, political pundits and punters? Predictions are easy and don’t demand any personal transformation, whereas Brexit demands a personal revolution and is serious as death. So let’s begin there.

Death and Leadership 

Death is commonly understood as a time-based thing, an event/occurrence on the plane of time. Death is known as the last stage of the triumvirate of Birth, Life and Death. Death, which is a conspicuous cessation of body-brain function and therefore more easily imagined as discontinuity of thought, is one moment in which what is turns to what isn’t.

“Only after having understood death can we bring in Brexit”

The mind perceives only this as an end to what was otherwise a continuity of perception which it believes was thus far uninterrupted and spanned years (in time). But this is erroneous because the mind has never had access to that continuity. Except for the Now, the present (without adding the word ‘moment’ to it) the mind has had nothing to work with. Why, there is memory, the reader might argue. But does having memory mean that you are able to access or dive into the past as an activity mutually exclusive from the present? No, right? You access memory in the present (and science gives evidence of this by proving that when you recall a memory you are actually recalling the memory of the last time you thought about the memory). Therefore, is it not right to say that in this present when you are alive, the past, however recent it may be, is Dead? Therefore, can we say that any unresolved memory or any incomplete analysis is simply a carry forward that is eating into the Present, into the Now? Also, we cannot change the very thing we analyse or carry forward because it is already frozen in time. Therefore, may it not be further concluded that in fact there is no actual continuity but only that which the mind is hell bent on establishing through the vessel of thought?

Mind’s conditioned attachment to Continuity is thus laid bare

This Continuity of the past is what wants to stay alive by eating into the present. It wants to stay alive for the foreseeable future which is on the mind-invented plane of time and therefore, not infinite, whereas death is infinite (because it is happening right on the periphery of the present, happening forever and always). To solve this conflict and to preserve its construct of continuity the mind created the idea of death as something that happens right at the end of time (Isn’t this a very convenient shifting of goal post?). Whereas in reality death is always in the Now. The mind says, let me think and let me analyse and ruminate because there is so much time at hand because death is so far away and therefore don’t force me to act Now. Death is misunderstood then and subverted when we do not act now because this requires change and we do not want to change. We have to wait for the last moment, when death (in its misunderstood form) seems inevitable, like a man turning to yoga and quitting smoking on a cancer scare!

Only after having understood death can we bring in Brexit

Brexit is a death of the old; the terms of engagement. But will new ones make any difference? Will not the minds of the people who craved Brexit be found grappling with a strange Continuity? Today, supporters of Brexit stand vindicated because what they thought was right has been given a nod by a majority! Whether the travel and trade treaties with each individual European nation is in favour of Britain or not, the collective consciousness is sure to carry the following “successful” notions onward:

1. That the immigrants from the middle-east threatened Britain’s safety.
2. That immigrants from continental Europe stole all the jobs on which Britains should have the right of first refusal.
3. That refugees from the middle east and other parts of the world were a Huge (echoing Trump’s Huge) cost to public fund.
4. In summary, a disgruntled Britain figured out that the perceived threats to it’s two bottommost needs on Maslow’s hierarchy existed only because of Europe.

 

But truth be told, even after the Brexit dust settles, the analysing mind will find a reason to blame the same ‘others’ for its own failure to act — to find a job, to earn a living, to stop feeling paranoid for safety and so on — blaming the politician who was a bad negotiator, blaming the politician who advocated letting in the at-risk unaccompanied minors living in squalid Jungles across the moat in Calais, France.

On a different but related note; it is worth to examine why both well-intentioned systems of Communism and Capitalism have lead to concentration of wealth? Why the former puts wealth in the hands of the bureaucracy and the latter puts it in the hands of the corporation? Like water, Continuity ensures that problems that necessitated existing systems to be “revolutionised” — namely selfishness, greed and hunger — continued afterwards. Why? Because the persistent fear of death, of losing wealth, things, prestige and people, etc. Our ancient pre-occupation with immortality (after-life included) has had us torture the few around us to the millions we governed (think pharaohs and pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Hitler, think those artists whose tortured existence tortured their families while they sought immortality through books, sculptures, buildings, etc.) And for what? To appease the unresolved conflicts? The dead? Must our present lives be ongoing sessions of seance?

Who did this, the mind asks, lacking anima, selfishly hiding behind an external locus of control still; do we blame the people or the leader? But do we understand what is leadership? Do the leaders themselves understand?

Good leaders empty the mind of the people but fill their tummies; the leader takes away the poison of burning/vengeful/vindictive ambition from their throats and replaces it with safety, shelter and food; the leader snatches the notions of Continuity from the people who otherwise are embroiled in and fooled by the promise of a Great (evoking Trump’s echo for effect) Future so that they make/accept their Now as a living hell! Do you see how this plague of Continuity keeps cropping up?

Leaders help people in making the Here and Now good. There is no need to go anywhere else, to go find the truth about the grass that appears to be green on that other side! And so, do we now see the way in which in absence of such a leader, mass movement of people is inevitable! They are hungry and their minds are burning with ambition. Aren’t they? Isn’t yours? For example, take Britain’s leadership, not a particular leader but the dysfunctional leadership it continues to have. An absence of the leader is felt in the hunger^[1] of the disgruntled voters who favoured Brexit(which isn’t a physical movement but surely a palpable one), their minds churning ambitions of a Greater Britain that will come alive in some future. Moreover, a referendum signals problems with leadership like no other event. How? Well, isn’t a referendum an act of a leader who is far removed from

            a. the pulse of the people being lead,

            b. the knowledge and skill needed to do his duty,

            d. the ideal of patiently and empathetically talking to the people? (Referendums are mighty transactional).

 

What kind of leader turns back to the people asking them to lead themselves? By being so ominously present the leader has failed. Good leaders are invisible, they make people Feel that they did everything by themselves but not actually have them feel the strain of doing. While on the other end of the spectrum are the leaders that scare, kill and torture people fearing loss of autocracy, wealth, power (in short, Continuity) uprooting them.

This by no means absolves the people. Leaders are born from the people. It is recursive, a vicious cycle. Therefore, blame both? How about neither? Because it is at the level of individual that the revolution has not taken place. And it is the most difficult.

So what does a post-Brexit Britain look like? The same as it does today, chaotic and plagued with atrophy if this business of Continuity continues. Unless the individual embraces responsibility, action and the present, there will continue to be inflation, hunger, unemployment and unrest. But we will not feel this slow boil because the most affected poorest of poor will remain voiceless and invisible.

 

References:

1. "Your Memory Is Like The Telephone Game - Northwestern Now". News.northwestern.edu. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
2. Lao-tse, and Jonathan Star. Tao Te Ching. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003. Print.
3. Jones, Rupert. "Pension Age May Be About To Rise Again, Says Former Minister". the Guardian. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
4. Campbell, Denis, Steven Morris, and Sarah Marsh. "NHS Faces 'Humanitarian Crisis' As Demand Rises, British Red Cross Warns". the Guardian. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
5. JKOnline. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017. [Fourteenth Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson in San Diego, February 1974], Link: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-video/death-life-and-love-are-indivisible.php
6. "5 Reasons Why The Brits Have Turned In Favor Of Brexit". Fortune.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
7. Petrusich, Amanda et al. "Europe’s Child-Refugee Crisis". The New Yorker. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.