One needn't be proud

Social Media is a petri dish, culturing cultured and uncultured humans in real time. Based on your followers and taste you develop your own bubble, reinforce the bubble’s collective thought and at some point of time you’ll start believing it.

One way to not get lost in the rabbit hole is to think the collective thought (trending topic) is wrong and trying to justify it. Then I came across this ‘-pride’ posts. We are blindly getting proud of nation, the mother tongue, the city we line; heck, the caste we born to.

• Proud to be an Indian
• Proud to be a Dravidian
• Proud Chennaite
• Proud ______ (fill in your caste)

But, what is pride?

Pride - Definition

Pride can be termed as a superiority feel due to once achievements. But, pride born out of nationalism, languagism, casteism are neither chosen by you nor your achievement. Instead it shows a herd-mentality among the like minded followers. This superiority feel leads to looking down at guy who is not part of your herd.

This is all good if you’re living in a place without much of diversity, say China, which has one language, one cultural majority and one party. But, this I believe is the problem with a multicultural society like India or any other democracies that shows diversity.

Better we don’t exhibit this unwanted entitlement over others.