Urban Syndromes - 1: "We are the world"

This series of posts is more of an anecdotal account. So, don't sue me. I won't be stating if these syndromes are harmful or how "good" or "bad" they are. At least not right now. Although the tone is light and there is enough sarcasm, the observations do hold generally. Though I will be talking about different syndromes, the sets of symptoms across these are not disjoint.

"We are the world" syndrome

We all are members of one or more "small worlds". Example small worlds are those of IT professionals, of urban dwellers, of beer lovers and so on. We absolutely love and hate our small worlds. We are so involved in them that we tend to forget the existence of a much bigger world. Even if are aware of the big world we often start believing that whatever is good for us is good for the big world as well. Similarly, whatever affects "them" won't affect "us". Not that we don't have our insecurities. So we say, technically what affects them should not affect us! We tend to get into a state of almost total oblivion caused by ignorance. That's what I call as the "we are the world" syndrome. There are many sub-syndromes of this. An important one can be termed as "Tax Payer's Money!!" syndrome.

Some examples would make it clearer. Although I am giving only a few examples, the syndrome is not restricted to these specific cases.

You would have heard a lot of people complaining about how subsidies to agriculture are ruining the industries in urban centres. And how farmers are absolutely "looting" all electricity. How tax payer's money is being misused and so on. A lot of the people who crib in this manner are belong to the second generation of families that have come out of villages. Typically they are government employees. Many times their fathers and grandfathers would have lost most of their lands due to the Land Reforms. However, this is not restricted to them. An extremely popular blogger had reportedly said something like this - "Let agriculture vanish; we can replace it with other industries."!

Another sub-syndrome manifests as "we are all too knowing". Some important symptoms of this syndrome are words like - "utility", "popularity", "logic", "rationality", "global reach", "libertaranianism" and so on. You would have also heard or used this line - "Everyone is comfortable with English; regional languages are dead". And how the "whole world" is connected through computers. Or how reservations are ruining the lives of the people with real merit. Or how easily "free markets" can solve all the problems.

"We are not morally responsible" or "the government is corrupt" is also a prevalent sub-syndrome. Urban centres are creating so many jobs. That 1 job supports 3-4 people in India, and that is why urban centres have to struggle due to a lot of overheads, is an incidental fact. Learn to look (only) at the positives! Even though we are not morally responsible we are "helping" the "society" by providing some basic amenities. Thus proceeds the argument. Ask them why a place like Electronic City with tens of thousands of employees hardly has any medical facilities, they will promptly explain how corrupt the governments are.

So, that is a very general description of the "we are the world" syndrome. I can give more explanations, symptoms, sub-syndromes, case histories and theoretical proofs. But I will avoid all that for brevity's sake. This itself should give you a general idea.

More syndromes, eventually.