Twinn Swan

In the Hindu tradition, Shiva as Pashupati—the Lord of the Living Beings—is the witness to the noose Pasha. The title is perhaps a recognition that the human collective is essentially a multi-headed animal and the community is the leash it uses to choke out any individual who threatens the safety of the herd’s mediocrity. When you are met with harshness at the peak of an achievement, you are not experiencing a misunderstanding; you are experiencing a predatory response from an organism that perceives your elevation as its own extinction.

The Biological Mandate of the “Same-Same”

A community is a survival machine built on the crushing weight of the median. Evolution did not design the tribe to celebrate your genius. It designed the tribe to ensure that no one wanders far enough from the centre to attract a predator or disrupt the group’s camouflage. This is the biological mandate of the “Same-Same.”

When you achieve something significant or if you simply are different, you create a vibrational spike—a change in the fabric of the collective’s shared ideal. The ostracisation directed at such an individual is a mechanical correction. It uses sarcasm, passive-aggression and overt cruelty as a hammer to flatten the nail that has dared to stick out. This is the immune system of the mediocre attacking ‘a foreign body’ that has become too obvious to be ignored.

The Architecture of the Noose

We are told that community is a safety net, but it is more accurately described as a boundary system designed to enforce the noose. To live in a pack is to accept a constant, low-level strangulation in exchange for the safety of the herd. This is the pasha bondage.

True joy can only occur at the juncture when the individual stops looking at the pack for validation and starts looking at the pyre. Lord Shiva, the Smashana Vasin dweller of the cremation grounds, sits outside the city walls for a reason. He is the Lord of the Living Beings precisely because he has mastered the animal instincts of social belonging and discarded them.

There is no reconciliation with the pack once you have outgrown it. You cannot bring your joy back into the “Same-Same” without it being poisoned. This is the crossroads: you can either dull your achievement to make it digestible for the mediocre or you can accept the relinquishment of the cremation ground.

Shiva’s icon is covered in ash—the remains of everything that the world considers important. The community shapes us by threatening us with exile, but the Pashupati perspective realises that exile is actually the true opportunity to see beyond. When you no longer care whether the beasts are snarling or cheering, the Pasha falls away. You aren’t part of something bigger; you are finally, dangerously, alone.

Om Namah Shivaya.