[India / Road Rage] - The Status Self Turns a Car Into a Weapon to Defend a Phantom of Superiority

Event Baseline: Across India, road disputes are turning violent, with drivers of expensive cars using their vehicles as weapons. Reports indicate the incidents have raised questions about status and impunity behind the wheel.

A car is a machine for moving a body. But the self has made it a throne. When another driver cuts the lane, the brain does not see a traffic error; it sees an attack on the identity. The car becomes a weapon to punish the insult to the phantom of status. This is not road rage; it is the fragmentation of the self in traffic. The driver of an expensive vehicle believes the road belongs to him. He has stored an image of himself as superior, and any challenge to that image triggers violence. The poor driver in the small car is not a person; he is an obstacle to the self's expansion. The result is death on asphalt, a psychopathology mistaken for a traffic problem. This violence will not be fixed by laws or speed bumps. It is the same virus that causes caste murder, religious riots, and border wars. The illusion of a separate, superior self must be seen and ended. Until then, every road is a battlefield.