The American Divide

During my last 5 years of stay in America, the one thing that has always managed to perplex me about this country is how much of a dichotomous heart it manages to hide under its own twinkling skin. This dichotomy is in its simultaneous sanctuary to the conservative and the ultra liberal, the billionaire and the homeless, the free spirit and the suicidal. While in a country like India which is only now beginning to take its first steps towards what can be termed intellectual enlightenment, we can expect ignorance and poverty to linger on for a bit. Its irrationality is justifiable. Its stupidity can be explained away. But finding such elements on a large scale in America, a country which literally leapfrogged ahead of everyone else during the 20th century and basically rode the crest of the wave intellectualism for much of the last two centuries, can only be termed anomalous. Specifically, I am speaking about the latest rally that FOX channel's Glenn Beck spearheaded at the Lincoln memorial. Glenn Beck as a phenomenon is actually easy to explain. In a sufficiently large group of humans, there are bound to be lunatics who have convinced themselves of all sorts of theories. Their nature must necessarily imply a predilection for falsities, irrationality, ignorance, insecurity, and mental derangement. They must necessarily believe in a lost golden age when 'concepts were simple', when issues could be easily resolved into 'right and wrong', in other words, when heart spoke the truth and the brain was looked at with skepticism. They must also necessarily believe that an age which is defined by shades of gray isn't so because it has to be so but because there is something seriously wrong with it - something which needs forced correction. I believe that this is an essential stage of social development and is bred by a lack of exposure to new ideas. Knowledge with its sweeping broom is expected to clear away such simplistic notions. And America is no stranger to great ideas and all forms of knowledge. In such a situation what I find most amazing is the fact that Glenn Beck's rally was attended by 500,000 people. The truth is that there is a deep divide within America. It is a highly, almost dangerously heterogeneous society and this society is being stretched at its seams. Maybe it has to do with the huge size of the country coupled with its relatively recent history - this ensures that intermingling, which is so essential for the exchange of ideas, proceeds at a slow rate. Maybe it has to do with the initial crop of people who came and inhabited this land - those who by their very origin were deeply religious. When you couple these factors with an environment where parts of the society and the country believe in an almost radical version of free though (if there is such a thing) you begin to understand how the deep divide and the insecure skepticism may arise. The result is a country divided between those who still cling to their Bibles because they have been left behind in the mad rush of progress and those who have crossed the chasm and now cannot understand what they perceive as a lack of basic rationality in the former. They are separated not only by geography but by time and while geographical homogenization may occur quite quickly, the temporal one has a mind of its own.

I am not saying that the coastal regions of the progressive part of the society are more rational compared to the religious midwest. They have their own concrete beliefs and they also view scientific thought (which, differentiated from mystical thought, is the only form of rational thought) with a cross-eyed skepticism. Their new age delusions are as amusing as the idea of a God who keeps a constant eye on you. They might be having different assumptions but their failing is the same - that their assumptions are final. Anyway, in a country which is segregated in so many different groups of people who have their beliefs sacred, I am amused that the one thing that all of them are deeply skeptical towards is the thing that made the country great in the first place. It is not really science because it is too narrow a term but a disposition towards inquiry. For a country which is seen as the beacon modernity, which must necessarily be accompanied by a welcoming attitude towards change, so many of its people cling on to their provincial notions. Is it true of all societies? Am I being too harsh on America? I don't know...