Is World a Museum?

                                            Literature for Social-Transformation

Amanda in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (Tennessee Williams) is flabbergasted by her daughter Laura and retorts that there must be more to life than her glass menagerie.

We all can wonder if there is?   Every one of us has his own Glass Menagerie to watch. The name of the wild animal is Homo sapiens but the species are further classified in to extremist, terrorist, druggist, lunatics, capitalist, communist and idealist who are another type of fanatics or fundamentalist.

All onlookers  watch and decide their own role models or to go for a  prototype hitherto unknown to the curator (God?) of this World Museum. Never be afraid of being first of your own type. Though later or sooner you would know how many have already trodden the path chosen by you.

The materialism has so much stereotyped the society that one is easily tempted to be different. Psychological needs compel us to presume that I am different. That decides on which side of Menagerie we are. The uniqueness assigned to anyone by friends and peers is always tinted with some ulterior motives and as soon as it is served one is thrown back on the heap of materialistic mediocrity.

These materialistic mediocre are the only persons who are awed by everything. They always wait for a miraculous opportunity that never knocks on their door. They are gregarious in nature and are herded together in a larger cage in the glass Menagerie of the World. The political leaders see them as hungry Vote Bank who is fond of Day Dreaming. So they make promises that anyone can guess would never be delivered, but hungry always believe promise of bread.

If the Menagerie is divided in just two compartments, we find one is way to too very small in comparison to other. When we compare their wilderness we are astonished to notice that those in smaller cage which has every facility of the world are wilder than the big cage which does not even have bare minimum needs required to survive. They often see perishing weak and out of insecurity propagate rapidly. Oftentimes they are faster than rabbits when commanded in the name of religion.

Now travelling has become an industry and tourist select the country on the basis of Museum they are interested in. There are Cultural Museums, Monumental or Historical Museums, Modern Museums, Spiritualistic Museums and so on and so forth.

Tourist visiting India have following items on their itinerary:

1.Taj Mahal- History

2.Benaras- Spiritualism

3.One Metropolitan city-modern culture

4. Village Safari

5. Camel/Elephant Safari

6. One Indian marriage

7. One Yoga Camp

8. One Sadhu/ Guru

9. Pictures of slums and poverty

10. Pictures in Sari

Likewise the conducted tours of Europe  shows the glimpses of famous touristic places like Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Big Ben, Westminster, Pisa, Vatican and Venice. The tourist get a feel of the place but develop no insight into the culture of the country.

No one is bothered about a healthy debate on values of different countries and their prioritisation on international level to have uniformity in Value- System that is ideal for coming generations of Global Village.

In Worldis Conical the top-notch people are responsible for most of the ailments World is suffering today. They control the world, the best-off  1%  who already have 48% of the world wealth and would soon have 99% of world health(World Economic Forum 2015 at Davos) are the people who have made the world a museum.

The authors who create literature can be instrumental in preserving culture and spearhead the social transformation in proper direction, but alas they have become escapist and writing 'Boy meets Girl' type of stories.

© Vipin Behari Goyal

 Author, AmbassadorCouchsurfing