Stereotypes.......

Stereotyped....how I love that word, still hate it...As a extreme right winger, I have always practised the policy of stereotyping and at the same time broken many stereotypes. What are stereotypes ? How good are they ? In the many facets of life, one comes across many stereotypes..In life, career, family, choosing a life partner, work places, church places....anywhere. We are governed by stereotypes...silly set of rules. In all the different facets of life we are governed by many set of rules...Nowadays I wonder even the word different is actually stereotyped. The Malayalam film director Vinayan always advertises his movie as different, blatantly flicking the premise from a Hollywood movie in the process. So much for being different...bloody man like his other lot in the same industry has stereotyped the word 'different'! Well its no easy breaking stereotypes in real life, one somehow has to pay a heavy price in breaking stereotypes. Yours truly had a bitter experience an year and a half ago as I came here right after my exams looking for a job! the price I had to pay was a dozen months waiting...! so much for even trying to break stereotypes.
It's been quite a while now...but we as a society has been so governed by stereoyped versions of life that we fail to look into different possibilities. Well trying something different needn't be always good and many a time its a tricky word to even contemplate.
Well getting on with the banter, what hurts me most is the fact that, when stereotyping of individuals on the basis of color, race, creed, nationality and the dangerous of them all...religion, that's when the problem begins. The world today is filled with stereotypes that we see it in all spheres of life. Yours truly at work is an enginner, later while going out and Indian, still at some places coloured and many a times known as a Christian. Bloody stereotyping..What can you do ? Nothing...What can I do...Bore you with this stupid banter...hahaha. Anyways stereotyping actually endorses God's plan which was enacted eons back as the tower of Babel was built and the people who were speaking together in the same language, got scattered as each started speaking in strange tongues....It has been like that to this day...Hallelujiah!

The Wall

Ever since I came across the article that said that the American administration in Iraq is building a wall to seperate the various factions in the Anbar province, the various 'walls' that have sprung up before came into my notice..Well before this banter gets off...Wikipedia tells that a wall is a
'.........is a usually solid structure that defines and sometimes protects an area. Most commonly, a wall delineates a building and supports its superstructure, separates space in buildings into rooms, or protects or delineates a space in the open air. There are three principal types of structural walls: building walls, exterior boundary walls, and retaining walls....'
World over we have seen different walls springing up in different parts of the world..some for protection purposes, some purely divisive and some general purpose...Nothing has fascinated me like the Great Wall of China too....but the walls that divide people are the ones that intrigue me and the basis for this article.!
The Berlin wall was conceived by the East German administration of Walter and approved by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev it was built during the post-World war 2 period of divided Germany, in an effort to stop the drain of labour and economic output associated with the daily migration of huge numbers of professionals and skilled workers from East to West Berlin, and the attendant defections, which hurt the Communist bloc economically and politically. Well effectively it did was divide the people of Germany for one full generation till its fall in 1989. Germany has grown stupendously ever since.
Does walls work? The walls built by Israel separating the Palestinians from the Israelites long time back..Oops! it wasn't a wall, fence..whatever....Well the purpose the fence was built was to make sure that the attacks on the Jewish settlers reduce...did it ? it hasn't...! Americans building another wall in Anbar province...to protect whom ?
So far I have discussed about the physical walls that separate people..For a moment let's go to the basics. Human beings anatomically are the same with each species both male and female with identical features neverthless to say...and human beings are born for inter-dependance. Has it been the case in today's world? The mental walls between the people are too great..We live in a world of stereotypes...Either you are black/white, christian/muslim, sunni/shia, roman catholic/protestant, indian/arab/english....whatever..at what cost...Look at Africa...We have been too busy stereotyping ourselves that, a continent of lost people inflicted with diseases and poverty...who is responsible ? A choking mother nature, broken families....humor seems to have lost its worth! We see people everywhere struggling to make a mark in life...Work and work..all the money we earn is just not enough to satisfy our needs...spiritually we are drained..going from one god to another..what's the use...still we are inside newer walls?
It took East Germans a generation to understand their folly...Today the progress of Germany is astounding...Bring down the walls that bind us..We need a society of people minus stereotypes...Where man thinks alike, where each man learns to respect each other for what we are and not what we can become..
The Israelites went around the wall of Jericho for seven days, shouting praises to God...the seventh day, the wall fell...When will we go around our walls of despair ?