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About Us
Hi, my name is Ashok Panikkar! And, after decades of dealing with very smart and successful people, I have concluded that, despite being the stereotype of the global citizen, I’m a village idiot. Indeed, I’ve acquired this distinction in the most convoluted way.
My work is designed to help intelligent and conscientious citizens look beyond commonplace understandings of democracy, human rights, diversity, and party politics. They are intended to be a reality check for citizens who tend to take vital institutions, the larger society, and the democratic nation itself for granted. The Village Idiot, through all its projects, hopes to engage with the genuinely curious on the vital issues of our age.
Here are a few random questions to start our journey:
- How have globalization, social media, and the rise of the right-wing affected our assumptions of how the world works?
- Is there a problem if our views have remained the same, despite the immense upheaval in the world?
- Do we still believe we have all the answers? Are we even sure we know what the questions are anymore?
- Are we quite certain who the ‘bad’ guys are? Are we really sure that our people/ group/ tribe/ allies are as ‘good’ as we imagine?
- Do we tend to embrace stories and voices that we trust? Do we shy away from those that offend us?
- Are we capable of questioning the truth of stories and voices that are dear to us?
- Are we clear-headed and objective enough to not be swayed by powerful, stirring, or entertaining stories that might be manipulating us?
- Most of all, are we ready to listen to voices that don’t give a damn about our feelings, likes, clicks, money, or votes?
If you are ready, the Village Idiot is here for you with some unadorned reality and loads of irreverence!
WHY VILLAGE IDIOT? Because our saviors have bought mansions in Martha’s Vineyard. Our heroes all take their cues from opinion polls. Our thought leaders will joyfully sell out to the highest bidder.
To add to this unholy mess, the mainstream media dances to the tune of the lowest common denominator, while the voices of the inter-sectional oppressed have turned society into an ungovernable mob.
I am a village idiot. I do not say this lightly; I have incontrovertible evidence. I have a glorious track record of rejection by all those who matter: the respectable, the urbane, the intelligent, the privileged, and the powerful.
Here are some things that seem to trigger the privileged:
- My oft-stated view that liberal democracies cannot exist without robust freedom of expression and the right to offend has alienated my liberal and progressive peers.
- My insistence that professionals should be willing to put their careers on hold to help their democracy has angered just about everyone- since nobody seems to take to the idea of sacrifice anymore.
- My attempts at engaging passionate activists in dialogue has gotten me blocked and canceled from platforms.
- My persistent warning that identity politics encourages authoritarianism has cost me friends, allies, professional colleagues, peers, and students.
- My visceral anger when encountering digital interfaces where once we dealt with people has rendered me a difficult person for those who profit from automation.
- My jettisoning of financial security to pursue a quixotic mission, has made it impossible for the powerful to fob me off with jobs, grants, awards, or sexy projects.
Thus, it is that having been shut out from every respectable, profitable, and nurturing company, I am left with little choice but to embrace my (solitary) inner village idiot. I am not complaining, tribes usually have good reasons for isolating, banishing, and destroying those whose views are embarrassing, or dangerous. I’m sure I have given the urbane, the respectable, and the intelligent enough reasons to do so.
IN PRAISE OF GLORIOUS LOSERS If you haven’t already figured it out, this is not a site for the credentialed, the respectable, or the successful. In some ways, it is a place to explore the dangers of 21st-century thinking and worldly success. As I see the world collapse around me, it has become abundantly clear to me that those who have successfully put their stamp on the world, have a lot to answer for. I wish to make the case that the drive for success is not just a sign of intellectual impoverishment and creative barrenness. It has had devastating consequences for society and culture. Success is attractive only to those who don’t have anything genuine or original to say.
Generally speaking, success in the world requires pleasing, amusing, catering to, or scaring the largest group (and lowest common denominator). To put it another way, society usually rewards those who can amuse the powerful or scratch the mass itch. I have watched for years as highly educated professionals itched, scratched, and clawed their way up their chosen (business, academic, entertainment, civil society) food chain.
People in academia and the NGO sector will tell you that these can be even more vicious than the world of business. Entry and acceptance in both business and civil society groups are restricted by powerful gatekeepers. As in any trade or guild (KKK, Free Masons?), members are required to pay homage to the edicts, play by strict rules, follow norms, and succeed according to the parameters that are set out by the leaders. My banishment from the worlds of conflict/diversity management and democracy-building came about from my insistence on asking, broadly speaking, four categories of questions:
- Questioning tools: Shouldn’t our favorite methodologies and processes change when circumstances change?
- Questioning ideas: Shouldn’t we stop advocating ideas that increase polarization and weaken society?
- Questioning our mission: Shouldn’t we stop peddling our skills when the world cries for something entirely different?
- Questioning our duty: Shouldn’t we use our skills to strengthen our democracy even if there is no money from it?
I have asked my politically conscious peers (in education, design, counseling, mediation, peacebuilding, and democracy building) if the idea of continuous and unremitting change and progress is healthy for human relationships and humanity. And whether our vulnerable societies can survive the radical changes (they love the word ‘transformation’) that they seem to wish upon them.
Despite my many invitations to members of these tribes and their gatekeepers, they have successfully avoided engagement. Like all powerful tribes, they first patronize, then they ignore, and finally, they silence you. No matter how dangerous the world becomes (climate change, Syrian crisis, Brexit, Trump, Hong Kong, Ukraine), they skirt the hard questions- even as they ‘pivot’ (another fashionable word) to where the funding is. They keep doing what they are good at doing- milking the system for the last job, honors, or grant that they can squeeze out of it before everything collapses.
THE MISSION After running MetaCulture for twelve years as a consulting practice, in 2016 I saw no reason to do the narrow and self-serving bidding of clients when the authoritarians were taking over the liberal state. Now, after six years of trying to engage with civil society and the supposedly ‘concerned’ citizens, I see even less reason to appeal to the gurus, gatekeepers, or their lackeys for a hearing.
This, then, is the Village Idiot’s mission. To step up and do what is needed after the most respectable, credentialed, and successful, have failed us. I propose that if we can’t join them, we should find a way to beat them with reason, evidence, humor, and mockery. As of the launch of the Village Idiot, I am jettisoning all attempts at kowtowing for professional access or ‘respectability’. The stakes are too high to listen to those who are, despite their pious pronouncements, driven mostly by careers, funding, partisan political agendas, identity politics, and base feelings.
I invite you to support my work because:
- You’ve realized that the techies, the ivy-leaguers, the think-tankers, and the movers and shakers who got us into the multi-level mess have no clue how to get us out of here.
- You are fed up with the divos and divas who continue to call the shots, even as they allowed societal collapse on their watch.
- You appreciate that I’m (really) too pig-headed, and financially irresponsible, to be bought by your support.
- You trust (subject to verification) that my courses, videos, talks, and posters will be honest enough to (periodically) offend you. Anything else would be tantamount to selling out and not worth your time.
If you wish to support our work and celebrate the irrepressible spirit of Homo sapiens, regardless of class, color, or creed, please contribute here!
