The “Kindest” Chains

The real nuisance (yes, nuisance) of helicopter parenting lies in the gaslighting they often deploy on their children.

I take no pleasure in criticizing parents or respected elders. Yet, there are countless moments in the lives of their children, and even of adults, where they have confided in their parents and expected them to respond in a certain way. These children are often well aware of the risks and fully prepared to face them.

The gaslighting begins when these helicopter parents override the reasonable requests or choices of their adult children. The world rarely sees, or even believes, the trust, confidence, sensitivity, and consideration that some children extend toward their parents.

What society has unfortunately normalized, with only a few exceptions facing token reprimands, is the parents’ intrusive behavior masked as care. I am not talking about insecurity. I am referring to that attitude of “If I am doing something for you, it is for your own good.” This becomes an exhausting struggle for those children who have already proven their capability in the very fields where they now wish to pursue their own ventures.

Yes, the world is becoming more difficult and unpredictable. But if one still feels the need to helicopter-parent such children, then what was the point of dedicating one’s entire life to raising them? What good has come from all the priceless education if the end result is to treat your children as naïve for life? What good has come from the emotional support offered, if when the child wishes to be strong, you question the soundness of that strength? What good have all the prayers done if, after seeking your blessings and your faith, your child faces resistance to their own choices? What good can come from a child’s conscious effort to be wise and good when that goodness is always overshadowed by parental anxiety and irritation?

This is a serious problem, one that will grow even more vicious as the world continues to descend into chaos. The worst affected will be those children who truly possess the ability to discern between the real good and the real bad, not through hearsay but through reflective and contemplative minds.

I call them the Ekalavya children. Like Ekalavya, they have given their proverbial thumbs to the very people they respected the most. And they will suffer the most. Their genuine outbursts will be dismissed and lumped together with the noise created by those who have proved nothing, yet pose as “revolutionaries” among equally deluded peers.

I do not know the way out for these Ekalavya children, who will live in an eternal dilemma and drift into a paralysis of action, while their parents mistake that paralysis for obedience.

The Tyranny of Ambiguity

I recently came across some social media posts by bankers who were super frustrated with the workload and abuse they were dealing with. Within the comment section, most of the responses were deriding the banker on how useless most bankers are and why he should quit his job instead of whining like a baby.

With more than a handful of people I know being bankers, the banker’s side of the story was repeated by them as well. At the same time, many banks are operating at an equally awful level, where the customer is rendered helpless and is constantly under severe confusion and stress.

Social media, while allowing both sides of the debate, also made me consider something: we have entered a phase where a Rashomon-like world indeed exists, where the crime, the criminal, and the perpetrators are never fully established. Why? Because the circumstances never allow either side of the tortures to fully have a conversation.

Ask again, why does this happen? Does this have a common thread? Quite frankly, I think it does. The over-enthusiastic implementation of half-assed regulations with zero foresight and dictatorial compliance is at fault. This is the outcome of a centralized decision-making system imposed on an extremely complex and fragile structure. Each day it gets bazooka-ed with another set of regulations and compliance mandates. The result is zero clarity and even more ambiguity.

A very interesting video by Sucheta Dalal on KYC’s disaster is a must-watch for everyone. The nuts and bolts of that video: turning an entire population of over 1.4 billion into headless runners chasing compliance with something that even the authorities are not clear about. That is not even catastrophe; it is straight-up criminality. The difference is that a catastrophe might be an outcome of unintentional actions, but criminality is not. This is a way of creating an environment where everyone is forcefully made accountable by manufacturing ambiguity, with no one having the power to even ask for clarification. Chaos is the new order.

The same sentiment is echoed by other sections of society that simply want to conduct day-to-day operations without getting a “nudge” from the authorities. Chaos prevails there as well. Why? Because the more you remain confused, frustrated, afraid, and without access to clarity, the more vulnerable you are to making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more vulnerable you become. Virtue for thee, none for me.

This is the danger that a society aspiring to be antifragile should really be concerned about: self-inflicted wounds with zero benefits, long-term shocks, and very little incentives or progress. Unlike the aspired idea of a system where shocks build strength as they keep coming, this behavior of invisible hands creating chaos and commotion with zero accountability is dangerous. Another unfortunate angle is that this is spreading across various sectors of business as well. It further extends to facets like education, skill development, personal growth, lifestyle, love, marriage, care, and compassion. Someone is dictating these terms and creating a whirlpool of ambiguity, while some people, standing at the shore minding their own business, are forced to jump into it. The “why” for this behavior has its roots in societal chaos, which again is an extension of this invisible hand.

I keep asking people to read much more nuanced literature than the one that is fashionably shoved into their throats and up their asses, because the nuanced and the old ones tell the story of the age before, and presumably the age that at least gives us the semblance of what “order,” “harmony,” “progress,” and “accountability” look like. All together, applying to the same set of people, leaving out no one.

Another unfortunate extension, as well as a peek into an abysmal future, is that soon the world will have its first set of grandparents who have minimal idea of what the above-mentioned words mean, and how they once worked together in a functional society. The dilution will keep happening until these words, their effect, and their sentiments evaporate.

Preservation of knowledge is not just about books. It builds heads and hands that rise, not only for revolution but also for self-regulation, when the invisible hand wants to rule over the chaos it creates.

Points to ponder: if chaos is the new order, do you still believe you are a free citizen, or just a confused subject in someone else’s experiment? Are you brainwashed into believing that chaos manufactured by the apathetic and the braindead, bring order; an order that even they themselves cannot envisage or define?