The Goan Susegado Culture is an art of happiness. It is attitude to life that marks the uniqueness of Goans. This peaceful, content calm confident and laidback attitude came under tremendous attack of the Chief Minister of Goa. It in an assault on Goa, Goans and Goan-ness. Unfortunately, our CM has misconstrued susegado as laziness and, thus, degoanised Goan-ness. Goans are not lazy. They are industrious but know how to live happy life. The honourable chief minister seems to want to make Sisyphus out every Goan. The Greek myth of Sisyphus narrates a story where a man was condemned to carry a stone to the hill every day to the top of the hill. Unfortunately, someone brought the stone down the hill in the dark of the night. Hence , the man had to again take the stone to it destiny, the top of the hill next morning. This happened every day and thus Sisyphus was condemned to live absurd life that made him carry the same stone every day on the top of the hill. Albert Camus enabled us to look at the absurdity of modern life with help of the myth of Sisyphus. We do live absurd life of Sisyphus. We are condemned to carry the same stone every day. Our work is monotonous. We have become cogs-in the-wheels of the capitalist system. The demands of efficiency and high productivity have brought us under the regime of division of labour that has given us the stone of Sisyphus. Goans are also pushed by the absurdity of modern life . Although, they had been compelled to take the avataara of a Sisyphus , Goans have found a way to cope with the demands of that meaningless life. The unique Goan attitude of susegado culture is a Goan way to contest the demands of being Sisyphus pushed on them by the modernity. This is why it seems unfair to Goans when someone in such a high position sees them as lazy.
Michel Foucault thought us to think power differently. He thinks power as mainly operating on our bodies. He speaks of disciplinary societies where power becomes disciplinary practices that produce docile bodies. In fact, modernity produced disciplinary societies. It employed disciplinary regimes to produce docile bodies. Foucault teaches that disciplinary societies use enclosed spaces like factories, schools, religious spaces , prisons etc to discipline bodies. With the coming of digitization and surveillance , we have enter societies of control indicated by Gilles Deleuze. Today we do not need disciplinary practices. In fact we seem to live by the command to feely enjoy. But we are still under a watch. There is no hiding place under the sky. With growth of digitization and AI, societies of control have come to stay. Societies of control also employ biopower. Biopower is a bodily regime. Goan susegado culture is bodily as well as psychopolitical. It being primarily an attitude to life, it is definitely a great psychopolitical power. It has the power to resist the societies of control that are growing around Goans. Goa is not free from society of control. The growing digital world and the coming of the smart phone as well as the promised smart city that is failing to arrive, puts Goa on a fast track of becoming a society of control. Hence, the mental as well as physical attitude of susegado culture is a great antidote to the coming assaults of society of control. In fact it appears to be a foolish advice Goans to give up our age old wisdom of susegado culture.
Societies of control still operate with biopower. Given the fast pace of modern societies , people are pushed to become ultra-Sisyphus. Pace of carrying the same stone on top of the hill is accelerated. Each of us is living an accelerated life . This life of an accelerated Sisyphus is viewed as a achievement society. Such societies are breaking down. Byung Chul Hans, teaches that our accelerated societies are fast becoming burnout societies. He teaches us that power in burnout societies becomes psychopolitcal and mainly operates on the mind. The coming of social media as well growing infocracy, big data analytics, predictive analytics along with the developments in AI are set to increase the gradients of the psychopolitical power. The growth of Psyhopolitcal power has made us hackable. The data that we leave on social media platforms like the Facebook, Instagram etc has taken away our privacy and we have becomes objects of data analytics which then is used to manipulate us to take decisions that we may not take if we considered things carefully and critically. Goan susegando culture has a transgressive and rebellious ways of addressing this psycho-politics. It is a great resource that cannot be given up as suggested by our honourable CM. It has to be embraced and sharpened in order to be mindful of the consequences of the psychopolitics that is brewing around us. The resistance to mind control and manipulation of psychopolitcs requires us to become Schizos who do not walk the roads of infocracy. We cannot submit or Oedipalize to the demands of achievement society. Goan susegado culture does have what it takes to become anti-Oedipus who will refuse toe the lines of achievement society. The achievement societies breaks down into burnout society. In fact, the Goan susegado culture is a double edged sword. It being a bodily practice it re-energizes the body and it being a mental attitude , it has the power to rebel against reigning psychopolitics. The psychopolitics works on our mind by converting us into Oculus. It increases our desire to see. The achievement societies wants us to see how it feels to achieve what it deems as good life. Hence, the challenge is to resist this eye of power that desires to see . We , therefore, have the challenge to become anti-Oculus . Goan Susegado will go a long way to live with dignity and freedom alongside of the changing contours of our society.
