Osama Bin Laden is dead. What next?
CHANGE OF HEART! That is the theme of this article.
Let us halt witch hunting. Remove our shoes for a while and wear the other person"s shoes and think.
BECAUSE, for peaceful coexistence sweeping the issues under the carpet is not the solution. The critical need today is to keenly realise the fact that your upholding other person"s right to his opinions principles and faith is first and foremost step towards reconciliation.
What we are fighting for? What kind of a world we are going to leave for our posterity?
In the bathtub today I read Sujatha quoting Shakespeare:
"Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing"
In 1992 a centuries old place of worship was struck down by hooligans quoting mythology passed on for generations hundred thousand years back. Which faction here can be branded as fanatics or fundamentalists?
By quoting a connection three thousand years back or mystical evidences of hundred thousand years back and armed by a UN.Resolution Zionists invaded a territory and conquered it in total blindness to the fact that the Palestine Arabs who were made homeless were rightfully owning it for centuries! Who is fanatic or fundamentalist here.
Let us look at the reality for a while.When i escorted my wife very recently for a Good Friday Mass
I was stunned to see the church compound inundated by seamless crowd which is only a fraction of believers from that single church- that is., Tamil Catholics in the particular area of the city!
Religions will stay. They will continue to decide the life and destiny of the large number of the people of world.
What a modern mind fails to recognise is that along with the package of cults rituals prayers mystic practices liturgy and superstitions religion deep inside has message to mankind applicable to all ages.
On the other hand modernity has empowered human lives, opened up new worlds, broadened up our horizons and changed the way we think and act.
But then why it created wars and destruction? Why it stopped being humane mutually beneficial and empathetic?
Because it has its limitations. It has to depend upon the opposite camp for a healthy value system.
Human reasoning on which modernity is entirely based on is not designed to pursue the truth.This is what neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered recently.By evolution human nature is engineered to encourage and protect self interest and self interest only.Reasoning , therefore , need not necessarily lead to common good. The horrors perpetrated by modernity stands testimony to this. I find no need to elaborate.Kant had indicated this weakness of modernity long back,It is really impossible for human beings to escape from their own psychology. And hence modernity can never pursue absolute truth because it is not the agenda for modernity.Freud too showed that human beings are slaves to powerful uncontrollable irrational forces of the unconscious.
What is the point I am trying to make? Religion and its accomplices (shall we call them fundamentalists) and its peace loving followers and also terrorists live in one world.
Their involvement shall not confine to one area. It has its implications in politics, Governments(Arab Spring?) spiritual, social, personal,military, and economic spheres of human life.Osama"s world has not faded and gone. It is there to stay.
There is certainly another world where all modern minded are willing to live. A world with a natural tendency to see facts as facts and empirical. A scientific rational principled and honesty seeking world.
Though opposed to each other human history has showed us both has contributed and borrowed from each other.After all, fundamentalists and fanatics right from Ayatollahs are benefiting themselves from cutting edge technology. For universal message of Love ., compassion, empathy , brotherhood. repentance., and forgiveness modern world is always benefited from religions of the world.
The line is drawn. The options are not many. Either it is understanding magnanimity benevolence and tolerance for peaceful going or perpetual conflict. What sort of legacy we propose to hand over to the next generations is million dollar question!
CHANGE OF HEART! That is the theme of this article.
Let us halt witch hunting. Remove our shoes for a while and wear the other person"s shoes and think.
BECAUSE, for peaceful coexistence sweeping the issues under the carpet is not the solution. The critical need today is to keenly realise the fact that your upholding other person"s right to his opinions principles and faith is first and foremost step towards reconciliation.
What we are fighting for? What kind of a world we are going to leave for our posterity?
In the bathtub today I read Sujatha quoting Shakespeare:
"Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing"
In 1992 a centuries old place of worship was struck down by hooligans quoting mythology passed on for generations hundred thousand years back. Which faction here can be branded as fanatics or fundamentalists?
By quoting a connection three thousand years back or mystical evidences of hundred thousand years back and armed by a UN.Resolution Zionists invaded a territory and conquered it in total blindness to the fact that the Palestine Arabs who were made homeless were rightfully owning it for centuries! Who is fanatic or fundamentalist here.
Let us look at the reality for a while.When i escorted my wife very recently for a Good Friday Mass
I was stunned to see the church compound inundated by seamless crowd which is only a fraction of believers from that single church- that is., Tamil Catholics in the particular area of the city!
Religions will stay. They will continue to decide the life and destiny of the large number of the people of world.
What a modern mind fails to recognise is that along with the package of cults rituals prayers mystic practices liturgy and superstitions religion deep inside has message to mankind applicable to all ages.
On the other hand modernity has empowered human lives, opened up new worlds, broadened up our horizons and changed the way we think and act.
But then why it created wars and destruction? Why it stopped being humane mutually beneficial and empathetic?
Because it has its limitations. It has to depend upon the opposite camp for a healthy value system.
Human reasoning on which modernity is entirely based on is not designed to pursue the truth.This is what neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered recently.By evolution human nature is engineered to encourage and protect self interest and self interest only.Reasoning , therefore , need not necessarily lead to common good. The horrors perpetrated by modernity stands testimony to this. I find no need to elaborate.Kant had indicated this weakness of modernity long back,It is really impossible for human beings to escape from their own psychology. And hence modernity can never pursue absolute truth because it is not the agenda for modernity.Freud too showed that human beings are slaves to powerful uncontrollable irrational forces of the unconscious.
What is the point I am trying to make? Religion and its accomplices (shall we call them fundamentalists) and its peace loving followers and also terrorists live in one world.
Their involvement shall not confine to one area. It has its implications in politics, Governments(Arab Spring?) spiritual, social, personal,military, and economic spheres of human life.Osama"s world has not faded and gone. It is there to stay.
There is certainly another world where all modern minded are willing to live. A world with a natural tendency to see facts as facts and empirical. A scientific rational principled and honesty seeking world.
Though opposed to each other human history has showed us both has contributed and borrowed from each other.After all, fundamentalists and fanatics right from Ayatollahs are benefiting themselves from cutting edge technology. For universal message of Love ., compassion, empathy , brotherhood. repentance., and forgiveness modern world is always benefited from religions of the world.
The line is drawn. The options are not many. Either it is understanding magnanimity benevolence and tolerance for peaceful going or perpetual conflict. What sort of legacy we propose to hand over to the next generations is million dollar question!
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