"YEAR ZERO"

In this year 2014, many started the year with their New Year resolution and mine was to start writing in this blog again. For some it might be to restart their life, redeem themselves from past mistakes, some other wants to achieve their lifelong dream. While mine was easy in comparison (just have to type away some of my thoughts) for the rest a lot of planning are required and all hurdles needs to be passed before you can reach your destination.

‘Pol Pot’ leader of ‘Khmer Rouge’ wanted to create an agrarian socialist society that is fully self-sufficient for Cambodian people. Fashioned by the sentiment and mood of the time, Marxist ideology further enhanced in France with Parti Communiste Francais (PCF), made him to believe that the only way to build his  ‘Khmer Rouge’ party is with the strong support of peasants.

Instead of embracing intellectuals and professional in his effort in rebuilding the nation after taking over, he sees them as a threat and as a great obstacle in achieving his main agenda of a self-sufficient agrarian economy. He declared “Year Zero” as his own revolutionary calendar (following the French) to mark the first year in purging old ways and restarting the country in reaching his objective. The movie, ‘The Killing Fields” shown us on what happened next, and how these people were ‘sacrificed’ in reaching one man’s ideal.

There is no such thing as “Year Zero.”  You can’t just reset everything and start with a clean slate. The universe started long before any of us were around and no one can just come and erase the past history just because we don’t like it. We just have to learn from the past, question it, accept it and change for the future but history remains. 

“Year Zero” of ‘Pol Pot’, was simply an idealistic view of how you can change a society. For every change, respecting the past is a must, even if we don’t agree with it. This is a vision without thinking of consequences and trying to achieve it even at the expense of millions of lives.  

Maybe this was a ‘noble’ cause in Pol Pot’s mind same like many other leaders or politicians around the world that thinks they know the best. Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between a fool and a genius. Same like how it is difficult to know when we fix ourselves into achieving unrealistic dreams.

We need to let others to question us, to reason with our thoughts and this will be a natural process in establishing our facts and reasons to do something. Existence of other Universe apart from our ‘Milky Way’ is real, but reaching it, though sounds impossible, is not unrealistic. Same like how going to the Moon was a science-fiction story once upon a time.  

There are dreams we can try to achieve and those that we should not try to achieve and this is what every one of us needs to understand.

I sincerely hope, “Year Zero” is not in any one’s New Year resolution list in any form or meaning.

Have a great Year 2014!