The Dance of Democracy : 15 Classic Symptoms of Distorted Thinking.
Every time India goes to the polls it becomes the biggest democratic process in the history of mankind. As the world sits back to watch in awe this unique Dance of Democracy whose sheer scale is mind boggling, there emerges interests that want to attack the very spirit of this universal suffrage and seek to make democracy dance to their tunes.
I have been closely following the “antics” of a section of our leaders on the campaign trail. Going by the kind of press they have been able to cobble together to highlight their self proclaimed achievements, I am sure you too have noticed the vainglorious sermons from the Mount of Shenanigan and elsewhere (and this I say, without, in any way, belittling the huge accomplishment of their PR guys, the spin doctors successfully taking lies, damn lies and subterfuge mainline). I am also sure many of you have been wide eyed in wonder, even amazement, at the obvious absurdities (regarding past “achievements” and future “agenda”) that they have thrown to the public at large – to the collective applause of an audience of imbeciles who think the gas balloon is God’s answer to all their prayers, blinded by the glare of hijacked publicity and outright false proclamations of greatness. But have you noticed how this Thalaiva is actually a walking, talking, living example of every single symptom of distorted thinking? You don’t need to be a student of psychology to zero in on the traits:
- Filtering: The act of taking the negative details and magnifying them, often beyond every semblance of normalcy all the while filtering out all the positive aspects of a situation. Needless to say, aimed at suiting narrow, selfish ends.
- Polarized Thinking: Everything is black or white, good or bad. You are perfect and everybody else is an abject failure, even evil. There is no middle ground. The high ground of consensus? What the hell is that? That too, accompanied by mock, theatrical bravado and chest thumping borrowed from the primates.
- Overgeneralization: The ability to jump to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence, often which itself is a figment of your own imagination. It’s a bad, bad, bad world and will continue to remain so, unless off-course, you intervene, straight out of the Marvel Comic book of demented, childhood fantasies.
- Mind Reading: Your intrinsic ability to know what people “feel” and why they “act” the way they do. It’s divine and has nothing to do, for example, with your friend, the Yoga teacher’s sinister abilities of knotting himself up to tie up the truth to suit your collective vested ends.
- Castastrophizing: You expect disaster to strike. You know disaster will strike. And you are able to make the gentry run scared – “What if it happens to you” you thunder theatrically, scaring the s***t out of the audience, even as you, yourself are amazed at your ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the blind!
- Personalization: The vainglorious ability to believe that everything people do or say is some kind of “reaction” to you and your actions. You also compare yourself to others, smiling at your smartness, intellectual superiority, better looks, acceptability and the like. Needless to say, there is but, one answer: always. This also leads you to belittle your opposition, often to the extent of you being utterly obnoxious.
- Control Fallacies: The ability to see and project yourself as helpless: a victim of fate, or the mechanization of your enemies. You take on yourself the onerous task of setting up a foolproof system of internal control making yourself responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Whether they like it? They don’t have a choice.
- Fallacy of Fairness: The ability to be resentful to the extent of lunacy – you “think” you “know” what’s “fair” but your opponents have the temerity of not agreeing with you. Your benign smile is the biggest giveaway, as you think that even God thinks you are God!
- Blaming: You know in the heart of your hearts who-all have to be blamed for everything that is wrong – especially the things that you have screwed up majorly.
- Ruler, rules: You, the stickler for discipline, have a list of ironclad rules about how other people (read children to your Head Master Act) should act. People who break the rules anger you and you feel guilty if you violate the rules – kittens coming under cars and other such irrelevant things, which you know, only go to prove your greatness.
- Emotional Reasoning: You have the rare ability to believe that what you feel must be true-automatically, by some decree of God Almighty. If you feel you can hijack history, then you must go and have the text books rewritten. It’s your, the Chosen One’s destiny.
- Fallacy of Change: It’s your way or the Highway. You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them, which according to you, is your birth right. You need to change people because you need them to “people” the Utopia you believe you are on your way of creating.
- Global Labeling: You generalize one or two traits / events into a negative global judgment – it also helps assuage your delusions of grandeur, as, by blaming the big and the mighty you believe that you too are in their league: that your stature is equal if not bigger.
- Being Right on extreme right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness (or is it pious righteousness). Even if that means tampering with the evidence or bending (even breaking) the rules to suit your ends.
- God’s Reward Fallacy: You know all your sacrifice (self imagined, self-inflicted pain) and self-denial will ultimately pay off, by the one keeping score “up there”. You feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come, which adds to your manic tendencies.
Every sinister character in History has suffered from one or more of these symptoms, (so does every leader, though in different measures) but seldom has any”one” been so obviously, terribly ill. Keep your guesses to yourselves for like the say “any resemblance to any leader is purely coincidental” and because I believe everyone deserves the Hitler of his own creation .
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