Man is a Mistake
- Madhukar Dama
- Apr 16
- 3 min read
A dialogue between Basu, the Seeker, and Madhukar, the Hermit — on the delusion of progress, the tyranny of thought, and the failure of man.
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SCENE
A barren rock under an uncaring sky.
No birds. No gods. No phone signal.
Two men. One knows. The other thinks he does.
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BASU:
Madhukar, you once said man is a mistake.
I thought you were being poetic.
But now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Why?
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MADHUKAR:
Because man is the only creature whose greatest strength is also his disease — thought.
And not the innocent kind.
Abstract, manipulative, recursive, controlling thought.
The kind that builds rockets and then uses them to drop bombs.
The kind that invents morality and uses it to punish difference.
Thought is fascist, Basu.
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BASU:
Fascist?
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MADHUKAR:
Yes.
Thought wants to control.
It invades everything — nature, body, silence, others.
It tells you what’s acceptable. What’s valuable. What’s sacred.
Then it declares war on everything else.
No other species does this.
Only man.
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BASU:
But isn't that what makes us human?
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MADHUKAR:
No.
That’s what makes us inhuman.
Man mistook the ability to think as a sign of superiority.
But thought didn’t make him better — it made him anxious, violent, and unsustainable.
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BASU:
How unsustainable?
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MADHUKAR:
He poisons the soil to feed himself.
He drinks plastic and calls it progress.
He builds cities and forgets how to walk.
He fights wars over ideas that don’t even exist in nature.
He is the only species devolving.
Becoming more fragile with every invention.
Needs more medication, more validation, more rules — just to survive what he created.
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BASU:
But we’ve made incredible progress…
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MADHUKAR:
Progress is the name man gives to his suicide.
Every "advance" is a step away from harmony.
From hunting to hoarding.
From living to streaming.
From forests to air-conditioned coffins.
The chimp sleeps under the stars.
You pay EMIs for walls you suffocate in.
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BASU:
So thought is the curse?
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MADHUKAR:
Yes.
But man thinks it’s a crown.
Thought doesn’t liberate — it enslaves.
It loops endlessly:
"What’s next?"
"What if?"
"Why me?"
"What will they think?"
This is not intelligence.
This is self-torture.
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BASU:
Then why do we keep doing it?
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MADHUKAR:
Because man is addicted to solving problems he created.
Thought creates the fire.
Then thinks it’s heroic to invent a bucket.
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BASU:
So what about education, science, democracy?
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MADHUKAR:
All thoughts stacked on thoughts.
Education teaches conformity, not wisdom.
Science arms the greedy.
Democracy gives the illusion of choice between identical cages.
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BASU:
Then what is the alternative?
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MADHUKAR:
Silence.
Not the absence of sound.
The absence of the thinking tyrant inside.
Animals live that way. Trees. Rivers. Stars.
But man — he argues with the universe.
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BASU:
So man is not the crown of evolution?
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MADHUKAR:
Man is its rejection slip.
The only species that needs therapy to breathe.
That needs GPS to find a street in his own city.
That needs pills to sleep after staring into lightboxes all day.
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BASU:
Is there no hope?
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MADHUKAR:
Hope is another thought.
Man needs it because reality feels unbearable to a mind that can't stop interpreting.
But if he stops thinking —
if even for a second he just is —
he’ll see: there’s nothing to fix.
Only to unlearn.
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BASU:
And what will remain after unlearning?
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MADHUKAR:
Not a better man.
Just less man.
Which is better for everyone.
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BASU:
How do I begin?
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MADHUKAR:
Notice your thought before it becomes law.
Reject your own cleverness.
Stop solving imaginary problems.
Walk. Breathe. Sit. Die.
Like all other creatures.
With dignity — not delusion.
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BASU:
What if the world mocks me?
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MADHUKAR:
Then you are finally free.
Because the world is the loudest thought of all.
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[End of Dialogue]
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you don’t fix a plague by dressing it in a tie
man woke up
built a house
then forgot how to sleep.
he named the stars
then set fire to the forest
to watch TV.
he invented thought
then chained his own ankles with it.
he calls it “progress.”
I call it
slow suicide
with marketing.
he teaches kindness
in schools built by war profits.
he writes love songs
while holding a gun behind his back.
he prays
because it’s easier than
shutting the hell up.
he wants peace
but won’t log off.
he wants nature
but won’t stop spraying death on his salad.
he wants children
but raises mirrors.
he wants to live forever
but can’t sit still for five minutes
without scrolling.
man is a poem
written in blood,
signed with plastic,
and published
in the obituary section of the planet.
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