Humanity is struggling today to emerge from the evolutionary dictum of the survival of the fittest. The struggle of thinking humanity to counter armament and ideological exclusiveness points in that direction.
The body is bound to struggle against all odds to survive and, in a world of limited means and unlimited ends, it seeks to do so by elimination of rival bodies to make space for its exclusive survival. Sectarianism which allows this exclusive principle to include large numbers of its kind within its fold --- which is also the reason why conversion is promoted by these exclusive cults --- aims thus at self-provision of cooperative living so very vital for survival in an inimical natural world that threatens to destroy life every moment. But such limited sympathies within the exclusive boundaries of a sect necessarily must result in frequent conflict, cultural and economic, leading to wars and its consequent loss of life and property and erosion of civilisation. Cultural co-existence then must be the way ahead but that goes against the basic evolutionary urge to attain peace by forcing uniformity of culture by the dominant group on all.
Historically speaking this has been the pitfall into which many a so-called enlightened leader of mankind has fallen into. They have, in their bid to ensure peace on earth for good on the basis of a uniform cultural design, resorted to violence and gone on to dictate future terms to humanity where only their settled order of cultural existence as sanctioned by so-called prophetic revelations from the Divine would be held valid and inviolable. But those were ancient and medieval times and modernity dictates that we examine these issues in the light of the new findings of science and reason without making the reverse mistake of throwing away the baby with the bathwater, that is, casting to the waste bin all of ancient and medieval knowledge of man as so much gibberish.
The human species is a queer collection of biological units of asymmetric evolution in psycho-physical terms. As such, it becomes almost impossible to impose strictures of ideas and practices that will hold good across the broad human spectrum. Geographical conditions and cultural developments thereof shape human habits, practices and social mores that are as diverse as they are mutually opposed for easy harmony to be sought in ignorance of the vaster symmetries of Nature and of the psychological pitfalls that humans are prone to falling into. Reason ought to be the guide in this enabling of the human mind to cast off archaic beliefs that are founded in irrational arbitrary absolutist prophetic injunctions and it is reason that is slowly extracting the mass of humanity from the clutches of these medieval superstitious faiths. But the natural propensity of the ignorant masses to accept irrational religious propositions and the complexities of geopolitics prevent the forward march of humanity through the labyrinth of past inheritances that retard progress.
Yet, the struggle is on. The battle of ideas is being fought every moment as the forces of superstition and blind acceptance are combated by reason and science that rely on evidence and experimentation before they arrive at inferences. But the battles are many and the war of attrition goes on and with every passing day more and more men are dragged out of blind belief even as more are drawn into it elsewhere through sustained corrosive campaigning in the name of heavenly reward and hellish retribution for earthly conduct this way or that.
End of Part 1
To be continued ...
Written by Sugata Bose
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