Fools, knaves and narratives

"People don't want to hear the truth, because they don't want their illusions destroyed" - Friedrich Nietzsche

- By Ravi Perera

NEPAL is in flames; murder, arson, rape, looting; the once idyllic Himalayan country is now the picture of every human atrocity. Nature has blessed that land, man had failed it: corruption and incompetence doomed the realm.

A story with an eerily familiar ring to us Sri Lankans, simmering frustrations of a people with nowhere to turn but violence.

Men cannot live forever at fever heat. With our experiences with the way of the world we can safely assume that sooner or later the situation in Nepal will settle down, searching for some sort of normalcy. This will happen not because our former President Ranil Wickremesinghe will fly to Kathmandu on a bring back normalcy mission, but because it is human nature to have a livelihood, protect their property, educate their children, and to aspire for more. Revolutions and riots are disruptive, and therefore cannot be permanent state-of-affairs in a country. Normalcy will come to Nepal not because one man waves a magic wand, but because the entire economic/social structure, thousands of public servants, the security forces, the judiciary and ultimately the people themselves, desire normalcy in their lives.

Hundreds of hands will work on mission normalcy; international agencies, experienced public servants, captains of industry, no one man can claim credit.

However, in the general Sri Lankan narration one man is credited with bringing normalcy to the country post-"Aragalaya". There is no reference to a particular thought, decision or act of his that brought normalcy, but he is presented as Mr. Normalcy!

Norm in our culture

Regrettably, such sweeping narratives are the norm in our culture.