Tuesday, June 8, 2010

And then there was light....

The economic crisis that has engulfed much of the developed world, has also removed the veneer of civilization, humanity off the face of this earth. It seems to me there is very little difference in the mentality of people on either side of the economic divide. Both sides have high dose of bigotry, stupidity, pride and unjustified faith in ones righteousness. Nothing can be more dangerous and harmful, than stupidity juxtaposed with belief in ones moral superiority. The conservatives blame all the world’s ills on the paucity of moral luminaries, while the liberals blame it on the excess presence of such gifted individuals. One would have assumed that in the 21st century human being would be more ‘prone’ to reason but it seems we are diseased with a sense of morality.

Immorality doesn’t always involve intercourse neither bribery nor other illegal ‘acts’. Considering oneself morally upright even when there is plethora of evidences to think otherwise, is the worse form of immorality. We might be more educated than ever before, but we are simply not enlightened enough to run this world. Our interconnectedness, globalization has made the world too small for our egoistic brain to handle. Just reading the news and looking at the comments made by ‘informed citizenries’ of this world should make anybody’s blood boil. Rejoicing at the news of death, innocent or otherwise, of people whom we don’t know cannot be considered as a testament to the fact that we are god’s greatest creation. I personally think atheists can simply argue on that point alone, that if indeed we are the greatest creation of god and this is what we offer, then one might have a legitimate point about God’s existence. I am a believer in God but it pains me to see so much hatred and anger in this world. I am no angel and neither can hope to be one, I feel hatred too and my criticisms are very much applicable to me as well. The greatest tragedy is having the knowledge and faculty to know that what one feels is wrong and yet not having the ability to fight the biological and cultural drives which makes one feel that way.

I lived in the illusion that it was an ‘our world’ phenomenon, that poor people were probably more bigoted and prejudiced, considering their illiteracy. That image has been pretty much shattered, the irony of it all Marx never needed to fight for equality; we are pretty much equal irrespective of our religion, country, and wealth. We must take pride in the fact that wherever we go we can always find large number of extremist, bigots; people who are extremely sure of themselves, who require no fact, who know through their heart and faith what is right and what is wrong. I think most people are closet xenophobes, all you need is a channel where you can anonymously make comments and you will see how enlightened we are. We are ready to kill for  trivial reasons, after all why not we have 6 billion of ourselves. To make things even better, we give it a moral aspect so that we don’t even feel the pang of sorrow when we kill somebody. Surely smart weapons kill without any pain; surely precision strikes are humane way of killing. We have sanitized killing and made it an acceptable way of life. The world is more worried about economic meltdown than the fact that for last 9 years there has been a continuous war. We forget that there are people who are willing to burn and kill girls just because they want to study and apparently what is more hilarious ( bad sense of humour) they are doing it for moral reasons. I think the most dangerous word in the human vocabulary is ‘morality’. All works of evil can be justified under the rubric of morality.

I think the world needs to get slightly more ‘amoral’ if it wants to survive. We have too many moral people and too few intelligent and enlightened people. Instead of spending ones time in trivial pursuits, we should devote sometime, at least for “moralities” sake, to reading. But oh surely we have more books than ever before, but unfortunately with equal conviction I can say we have more trash out there than ever before. We need to read books that broaden our minds, which allows us to see in to our past, gives us the ability to think critically, to think with our brains. I think it is far better to accept one’s ignorance than to be sure of one’s heart. We simply cannot trust our heart, a little dose of history will be able to convince of us at that. But unfortunately we live in a time where we take pride in the fact that we are stupid and yet can survive. We want to spend our life without thinking and that is considered to be a good life. To be educated and bookworm is considered to be elitist and an outcast. We are striving towards a dark age of ignorance with alarming alacrity. With all the technologies at our disposal and a general instinctive allergic response to anything cerebral, living in the future is indeed something not worth looking for.