Manoj Nayak
1️⃣

No Whataboutery

Sep 7, 2024
Also, known as tutu-mein mein(you you -me me argument).The little known fact if you have been living under a rock is that the real material world operates under a principle called “Jiski lathi, uski bais” which translates to “the the person holding has the stick(baton), inadvertently owns the buffalo(cow if you prefer), so who holds the baton, calls the shots (quite literally too). So you are advised that you should please stop wasting your energy in having it your way unless you hold the power in your hands.
In my early days, I was entitled, I felt I that I was equal to everyone. When you have a sense of entitlement it means you still think of yourself as the baby of the family, you feel you are entitled to your parents wealth or your siblings food.
With this sense of entitlement I argued and argued, while others who knew I was wrong kept quiet, they didn’t need to argue, they had the power. A silent effective power, which doesn’t need any arguments. I on the other hand made a fool of myself and kept arguing my POV and kept wondering, why didn’t the other side bend down and tell me “oh, manoj! You are so intelligent, you are always right and you present arguments in such a way that we have to concede defeat.”
But I had missed the memo of “Jiski lathi uski bais”. I never felt acknowledged for my better thinking. I came out feeling like a pedantic fool at the other end, who read a few extra books and could argue eloquently and articulately. However in the pragmatic world we live in, the one who wields the power always wins. Remember ultimately the person or the side which wins (re)writes history, so I lost all my arguments, cause I didn’t have power to back it up or dominate the narrative. We lose our confidence when our narratives cannot win.The winning narrative is the environment where our babies (ideas) are nurtured. They will kill the narrative and our ideas before they are born.
Now that I’m much older and wiser, I don’t get into arguments with people who have power. My strategy is to wait and watch, give a lot of time to see if my ideas are practical and predictions if true will prove them in coming days, weeks, months or years if not decades.
 
This piece is still work in progress and was last updated on 8th Sep 2024.
 
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