Are We Stuck?
Gigi Scaria
Gigi Scaria. Stuck. Bronze with a mechanical device. 75.5” x 15.5” x 13.5”. 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
How do we understand the time we live in?
We have different yardsticks to assess the contemporary moment. We analyze time through experiences of memory, history and changes in climate patterns. We use human behaviour and our tendency to act heroically in response to various calamities – we do this so that we may think highly of ourselves.
The word ‘humanity’ has been blindly used to differentiate our ‘unique way’ of sympathizing with other men and women. It is also extended to other species who have survived years of our evolution. But recent studies in psychology and other scientific disciplines have led to a path-breaking shift in the manner in which we understand time, reality, natural resources and world order. We no longer hold a lantern that directs us through the darkness of the past, the present and the future. A post-human understanding has evolved with uncertainties of various kinds – an understanding that no longer supports a single version or vision of the world with human beings at the centre.
The pandemic has reconfigured the reality we live in. An unsettling situation where our own existence is on shaky ground. There is a prolonged sense of being nowhere along with the hope that ‘things will be alright’ in a few weeks or months.
The sense of stagnation we experience has propelled the mind to wander; it has got lost in the mire of depression. With a disturbed mind we witness the changing ecosystem, the shocking political indifference and various mutations of the same virus.
Are we stuck because of the manner in which we have conceived the world? Or are we stuck because of the response of the ecosystem to our age-old attitudes towards all life forms around us?