Indulgences

Hundreds of years ago, the Catholic Church had a system called buying ‘Indulgences’ - by which people who were planning on breaking a moral code or committing a sin could pay a member of the clergy to forgive them. This system was convenient for those with more money than others. It was also corrupt, on many levels. I suspect, for example, that the most highly organized could pay to be forgiven in advance, much as we today pre-pay the data plans on our mobile phones.

In recent weeks, as powercuts across the country increase, and food and fuel prices sharply rise, I have been thinking of other kinds of indulgences. How long can we continue to access the things we like, which are not at all necessary to life, but which add so much pleasure to it?

Online luxury delicatessens abound in Colombo - you can order manna from Heaven, in the form of French cheeses, Norwegian smoked salmon, Australian breakfast cereals, Italian cooked ham, and Swiss and Belgian chocolate, direct delivered to your home. If you can afford them, now the local currency has depreciated so much.

But items such as these are called ‘perishables’ for a reason. And many of them need to be refrigerated after they are opened and consumed within a certain period after opening. With the powercuts in areas of Colombo now being extended to 10 hours a day, stocking up on these items could mean a great deal of unfortunate wastage.

If your residence is fortunately located in an area which has enjoyed generally uninterrupted electrical supply, you are truly blessed. If not, you could consider investing in ‘3 in 1’ cooking equipment which enables you to cook multiple items simultaneously, so you can prepare your household’s meals rapidly in the increasingly short period of time between power cuts. And of course, food cooked fresh every day needs to be consumed the same day, to prevent it getting spoiled in the fridge or freezer. Also do consider using vacuum flasks to store boiled water so you can make tea and coffee between power cut periods.

We are learning spiritual lessons from this situation. We are learning that inequity is being encouraged, justified and - possibly - utilized and weaponised. People are being taught to be grateful for their most basic needs being met, and gradually in the months ahead we will forget about the life we previously enjoyed. Our expectations are being modified.

A full gas cylinder is a cause for celebration. Diesel fuel or enough petrol to run a generator is a matter for rejoicing. This is survival mode, and the idea of thriving is increasingly becoming a diminishing dream, and a fading memory.

While some people are standing for hours in queues for fuel and kerosene and litro gas, fainting from heat exhaustion, others are paying 15,000 LKR per head to attend splashy launches and glittering social events, in air conditioned venues bedazzled with fairy lights, telling themselves (and each other) that they are promoting local industry, stimulating enterprise and encouraging investment.

It’s high time we rename the resplendent land: it no longer even resembles a socialist democratic republic. It is a feudal society, and people are becoming normalized to that, and the hierarchies implicit in such a construct. Common ground is being eroded. We have returned to the time of indulgences.

Colombo is becoming a city like The Capitol in The Hunger Games. This has been a lengthy dimming of human capacity. For a long time, it seems that the country has been going in a direction of discouraging education, particularly critical thinking, so that a few members of the ruling elite can manipulate the citizenry the way they want. No accountability. No capacity to question. No respect. This benefits a visible few, but it is a terrible short selling of overall human potential.

What kind of brazen insouciance - what F. Scott Fitzgerald called ‘vast carelessness’ - enables people to ride past the fuel queues to their glittering venues of choice, order Creme de Brie with Italian crackers, and stack their walls with iconic paintings from the ‘43 Group while the country as a whole suffers?

Obviously all that is needed is a lack of empathy, and no sense of common humanity. Vanity, self aggrandizement and entitlement vie with each other for prominence in the character of such people. Even virtue signalling is not bothered with, anymore, or performative philanthropy. The optics don’t matter, because supremely entitled people really don’t care who is looking. Incurring public criticism on social media is the only tax they pay for the level of privilege they enjoy on the daily.

Is it a vicious game, like that played in domestic residences where narcissists drain their victimized spouses, daring them to stand up one day to the prolonged abuse to which they are daily subjected? How can people stand up for themselves, and their rights, when their spines are broken?

Divide and conquer is a basic and successful strategy, which has been implemented by generations of leaders in countries all over the world. Divide and estrange the people from each other, and they will be easy to stir up into predictable factions. Conquer them by exhausting them: depleting their resources, restricting their access to daily necessities, devaluing their economic resources - and eventually their will to fight for their eroding rights will also weaken.

We are being trained to live from day to day. Forgetting the past, and not being able to envision the future. Short term thinking is characteristic of cave men and criminals. Strangely, the Californian gurus who encourage us to ‘live in the moment’ may be our true guiding light in these darkened days.

The plus side is of course that if we adjust to a simpler existence, sans Brie, sans pannacotta, sans Parma ham, we will become healthier. We will start to appreciate the simpler things in life, purely because all the complex and sophisticated things have been removed from our ability to access them. Like the most primitive ancestors of the human race, we will just be glad to be alive.