The Fallacy of Inheritance

A year ago my father picked up a huge argument with my neighbour whose coconut tree was generously shedding massive branches on our rooftop. Silly argument, but that lead to a cold war of sorts between them. They own a really annoying dog and do not have a hot daughter, so obviously I sided with my father and contributed to the continued detachment that existed between us.

Now, my sister who came down a month ago, wasn't really aware of the situation and went straight to their house to give them chocolates. The neighbouring aunt, in return, was genuinely nice to her and spoke to her like a long lost niece. While analyzing the situation it struck to me that although I knew what had occurred between my father and them, my sister didn't, which was the primary reason why things got better between us.

Extending the analysis, what I'm trying to prove, is that we take a lot from our parents and elders while we are/were young. Not just their physical attributes but their ideas and ideologies too are defaulted to us. This is good to an extent as we do need morals, but along with that come their subtle hints of biases, contrived reasoning and faulty logic. Face it, nobody has the ideal ideals.

The current Indian generation for example, has been unfortunate in a sense to have had to rub shoulders with those who actually witnessed the Partition and hence have a deep rooted hatred for their neighbours which makes them blind to all possible reasoning behind the cause and insist that everything evil stems from the other side of the fences. Worse is the fact that a huge chunk of the younger generation inherits this hatred and laps it up without hesitation and questions. Education today involves solving math problems and not questioning the ideas of the teacher about the preferred form of governance. What people need is unlearning and rethinking of possibilities. Surely, some logic has survived in all of us. This, again unfortunately, seems to come to less than 10% of the populace and hence will really take hundreds of years before the bias is wiped clean from living memory.

The same reasoning holds when I say that as Indians, unlearning must be promoted when it comes to caste, corruption and the myriad ancient inherited concepts. Sadly, to unlearn, we need guides who will volunteer to admit that what they have been preaching all their life is sheer bullshit and must be forgotten. Which, in itself, is too far fetched to even hope for.