The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The past few weeks has witnessed some of the most disgusting and distressing behavior on the social media, where all boundaries of decency and good sense have been crossed.
Bhutanese have been hacking and chopping away at each other using their phones and keyboards, and in the process even harming national unity and stability.
There seems to an almost revolutionary fever among a comparative few in Bhutan, who seem to have nothing else to do but troll all day and night on Facebook tearing down every institution.
Talking of Facebook and revolutions, the Egyptian man who effectively started the Egyptian part of the Arab Spring revolution from his Facebook account, was utterly disappointed and disillusioned with the results.
From college students and youth, the revolution was hijacked by Islamic Fundamentalists keen on suppressing the very rights the students were fighting for, after which everything went back to square one.
Similarly, elsewhere in the middle-east, apart from Islamic terrorist groups all manners of ethnic, sect based and other divisions took over. As a result these Facebook inspired revolutions led to multiple and continuing civil wars, and the world’s largest refugee problem since the Second World War.
In our larger region we have Cambodia, which in a frenzy of imported revolutionary Communism, inspired by some young ideologues, wiped out upto 3 million of their own people from 1975 to 79 or around 25 percent of its population consisting of innocent men, women and children.
There are plenty more examples from across the world and even in our region of what the lack of unity and stability can do.
Ironically, Bhutan is at the top of most international rankings of happiness, peace, security, progress, environment and more. Even economically, at an individual and per capita level, we are far better off than our neighbors.
In terms of corruption rankings we are again way above the entire region, at par with developed countries. An example here is that in neighboring countries even basic public services are available only after a bribe.
We, no doubt, have our issues and challenges, but it is not of a magnitude and scale at which it cannot be handled. It also does not mean that some aberrations should be used to paint everyone with the same brush.
In many ways we have a population unexposed to the realities of war, hunger and political instability that our neighbors and even developed countries have gone through. We also have an under exposed, spoon fed and entitled young generation, comparable to a frog in a well who thinks his or her pin prick is the worst thing that could happen in the world, unaware of the real horrors outside.
In some ways this is almost comical as the vast majority of the country remains unaffected and untouched with all this drama. However, it is sad to also see many educated and mainly young people going hysterical on the social media over some hollow drama, and in the process affecting the national fabric.
Democracy was given to us by our Golden Monarchs not only as a gift, but it also came with some important national responsibilities entrusted to every citizen. Currently, a few seem to be focusing only on the gift leaving behind the responsibility part.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken