The Erosion of Civilization: How Uneducated Culture is Taking Over India
It begins on the streets, in the deafening cacophony of mindless honking, the screech of tires, the rabid impatience of men who believe movement is a birthright and order is a weakness. It festers in public spaces where snarls replace courtesy, where the very act of standing in a queue is viewed as servility, where brute force dictates whose turn it is. It manifests in the crude applause of online mobs that sneer at intellect, that drown out reasoned argument with sheer volume, that tear down knowledge because it exposes their own inadequacy. This is not a passing phase of disorder; this is the rise of an uneducated culture—one that is supplanting reason, individual dignity, and civility in India.
The Tyranny of Rage on Roads
Observe the streets of any Indian metropolis, and you will see it—a theater of primal rage. Lane discipline is treated with derision, traffic lights as mere suggestions, and pedestrian rights as trivial obstructions to vehicular dominance. Road rage is not an anomaly; it is an epidemic. Every minor inconvenience becomes a battle, not of reason, but of aggression, where brawn eclipses brain. The educated individual, the one who follows the law, is mocked as a weakling. Might—measured in decibels and testosterone—prevails.
But what is this, if not the triumph of the unthinking over the thinking? What is this, if not the rejection of the very principle that built civilizations—the ability to reason, to cooperate, to recognize that mutual respect is the foundation of a functioning society? The roads have become a microcosm of a larger disease: the systematic dismantling of civility by those who equate aggression with power.
The Cult of the Belligerent Public
Venture into a railway station, a government office, an airport security line—observe the behavior. Elbows sharpen into weapons, voices rise to threats, personal space dissolves into irrelevance. This is not the chaos of necessity but the anarchy of entitlement. The notion of patience is dismissed as weak, while aggressive, non-cooperative behavior is rewarded. “Push or be pushed” has become the motto of public life.
There is no acknowledgment of the other. There is no concept of ‘a society’—only an uncoordinated melee of individuals, each believing that the rules exist to be broken, that waiting one’s turn is a sign of inferiority, that the educated, the civil, and the rational are merely fodder for exploitation.
The Glorification of Anger as Power
Anger has always been an instrument of social movements. But when a culture begins to worship rage for its own sake—without direction, without principle—it ceases to be a force for change and becomes a blunt tool of destruction. We now live in an era where fury has become currency, where the loudest, most aggressive, most ruthless individual is hailed as the strongest. It is no longer ideas that determine authority, but sheer volume.
The brute force of rage is now wielded in debates—both digital and physical—where the mere act of reasoning is seen as a liability. Anger, devoid of knowledge, has become the new merit. It is this glorification of fury, this exaltation of reactionary violence, that signals the decay of a society once known for its intellectual legacy.
The Suppression of the Educated Voice
Perhaps the most insidious manifestation of this cultural decline is the treatment of the educated voice. On social media, the individual who presents facts, who articulates arguments, who champions nuance, is drowned out by an army of digital hecklers. Misinformation is not merely tolerated—it is celebrated, retweeted, weaponized. The scholar, the expert, the rational thinker—these are the new enemies of the people, dismissed as ‘elitist,’ ‘out of touch,’ ‘bookish fools’ who dare to challenge the uninformed mob.
It is no different in the real world. The intellectual, the professor, the scientist is no longer revered. The comedian, the rabble-rouser, the charlatan who shouts the loudest now holds the public’s attention. The educated voice is not simply ignored—it is ridiculed, attacked, silenced. And in this reversal of values, knowledge is made subordinate to ignorance.
The Need for an Intellectual Renaissance
This is not a war between classes or political ideologies. This is a battle between reason and unreason. Between civilization and barbarism. Between those who understand that a society functions on the basis of laws, respect, and knowledge—and those who believe that chaos, aggression, and anti-intellectualism are virtues.
The solution is not mere reform. It is a revolution—of intellect, of self-respect, of discipline. We must begin by reinstating the dignity of the educated mind. Schools must no longer churn out graduates who are merely literate; they must cultivate individuals who respect discourse, who understand that anger is not wisdom, that volume is not authority, that to be educated is not to be weak, but to be powerful in the truest sense of the word.
Public life must be reclaimed. Laws must be enforced—not by those who wield the biggest fists, but by institutions that uphold discipline as a non-negotiable standard. Politeness must not be viewed as subservience, but as strength; civic sense must not be an afterthought, but the very foundation of identity.
It is not too late. The death of reason is not inevitable. But it will take those who still believe in knowledge, in civilization, in the supremacy of the rational mind to rise—not in anger, not in brute force, but in the quiet, unstoppable power of intellect.
Let those who sneer at education understand this: history has never been kind to the ignorant. And it never will be.
