God – with a small g, I guess – rewards and punishes. Society really is not that far different. Setting the spiritual aspects of religion aside, as we do when we study religion in Sociology, society is pretty much rudimentary religion. It is birthed from the collective of humans banding together but once born, it takes on a life of its own and becomes, in the words of Emilé Durkheim, greater than the sum of its parts.
You never feel the full force of society as when you go against it. I would not recommend. Especially in a society as rooted in the community as the Mizo society, you never want to stand out. You want to blend in, live in peace and do your bit.
Society does not seem to ask for very much. Say hello to your new neighbours with a gift if you can, or offer to help out. Drop your life and go to comfort grieving families. Throw a feast when you come into good fortune. Maybe, for example. In return it does a lot for you. It would lend unpaid helping hands when you need, celebrate with you when the going is good...
It also acts as a gatekeeper. This is probably the area where we have the most rules. It probably started out as a means of keeping the community safe but again, rules take on a life of their own. In time, societal rules become all about In-Group versus Out-Group. You have to be like the people in your group. You cannot stand out. You cannot.
What can society do to you? Realistically? You are not entirely sure but you never want to find out. Ostracism, I suppose. That is not a sanction you want imposed on you, believe you me.
Chhura in our folklore went to Mawngping Khua. I often use the phrase Khaw Mawngping because there are multiple villages in Champhai where the road ends (usually in the village fields). I never really gave it much thought but on my walk this morning I thought about how amusing the phrase was – Khaw Mawngping: Village With A Closed A**hole? Not the same as the one in Chhura’s travel diaries; Mawngping Khua: Village of Closed A**holes? I don’t know. Literal translations are hard for me. TikTok and internet memes say at one point, we were only a**holes and our whole bodies develop from there. They slyly suggest some people never grow out of this beginning phase. And they are the ones who gatekeep the most.
You can’t do this. You must do that. Why? It’s the way it’s always been done. Scary words. No reason. No logic. Just “the way it has always been done”. Surely that’s how fundamentalism is born.
Take language, for instance. Speak Mizo! You use too much English! Stop acting hoity-toity and speak proper Mizo, and speak it the way I know it. You’re not better than me just because you speak more languages than I do. Mizo must remain pure. Don’t pollute it with English/Hindi/Korean! I mean holy shit, not even Shakespeare’s English has survived unblemished! Language must grow. It must evolve if it is to survive. I’m sorry but unless it is organic, you can’t impose words on people and expect them to willy-nilly use it. And unless Mizo organically comes up with words for say Science or Technology, to name just two words, Mizo must adapt and adopt other languages and fit it in our mould. Damn, we don’t even have the group word for ‘colour’, do we? I’m pretty sure “rawng” is Mizo-ised Bengali for colour. This is the way Mizo will survive and thrive, not by gatekeeping it via fundamentalism. Change is the only constant.
True you can’t take a hot poking iron and start poking holes in people’s bodies hoping it will heal and become functioning a**holes. As Chhura did to the people with no a**holes. People will die. If change is not gradual, it leaves wide cultural gaps in its wake. Perhaps that’s how we have so many junkies and undesirable diseases everywhere civilisation reaches. Of course, the best laid plans of men and mice and all that so culture gaps are something of a given wherever societal change occurs.
Plus, if you do successfully operate a**holes into people, don’t be surprised if shit comes out it because that’s what a**holes are for. That’s how regular people say they hate feminism because simply put, feminism is just a belief that women are people too and they deserve to have rights as human beings, and not be limited simply because of their body parts. But feminism is a modern concept. When you posit it in a society that has operated in “the way it has always done”, of course this new thing is challenged and spat upon and people don’t want to be associated with it. Remember the man who was nailed to a cross because he challenged the status quo?
You can’t have the good without the bad. It is a world of the binary, no?
Society really is a fecked up god.
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