Capitalism, a uniquely Western concept and practice, wedded to democracy, was supposed to be the panacea to the world’s ‘ills’. 

In combination, the ‘capitalist nirvana’ would usher in a world where the individual would reign supreme, his (her) needs supplanted by pleasures and desires, all determined by the market forces of supply and demand. 

The ‘equilibrium’ ensuing from this schema would lead to ‘a settled’ and a ‘global society’. All conflicts, cultural, identity, ideational, and so on, would dissipate and disappear into the vortex of market forces. The free movement of capital, people, and goods would complete the process and mark ‘history’s end’.

The attendant homogeneity of the world and ubiquity of consumption, and the sameness inhering in that, would entail a ‘world’ or ‘global culture’. Identity and belonging would no longer matter, both dissolved in the miasma of market forces. 

The sameness of airports across the world, and shopping malls that would sell similar goods and services, similar urban patterns, embeddedness of technology into the sinews of society, and so on, would lead to an economic paradigm where only experience and titillation mattered. 

In the entire framework, identity and belonging would be a matter of ‘choice’. 

While the ‘identity menu’ was almost endless, mostly and in the main, it was a Western one, with other identity and ethnic matrices tacked on to it. American-Indian, African-American, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, Lebanese-Australian, British African, and other hyphenated identities comprised this menu.

But while identity and belonging may or may not be layered concepts and even practices, primary, secondary, and tertiary, it appears humankind is wired for seeking certainty. 

This is evidenced by the remarkable and tenacious quest for the same in the United States, the ‘second home’ of capitalism and industrialism. 

Emblematized........

© Kashmir Observer