Perspective
Need for the Nurture and Use
of International Role Models!
The world is presently a global village. But old affiliations to religion, caste, region and community are ruling us destructively most of the times. The life of the human-being has become much cheaper and worthless commodity now. All types of persons - the Heads of Governments, fanatic religious leaders, caste leaders, separatist movement, communal and regional leaders and professional criminals and murderers are creating situations to kill innocent fellow human-beings with impunity. They try to defend the genocide they are causing hiding behind various unconvincing, selfish and self-serving explanations. Killing fellow human-being is not a civilized and cultured act and no cause can sanction such inhuman behavior to fellow human-beings.
Imaginary superiority felt by some individuals for their complexion, economic status, political ideology, continental living are also responsible for creating mental blocks which serve to discriminate against other fellow human-beings. Religion is just one of them. Thus narrow-mindedness in human-beings is varied and diverse.
We all know there is an immediate need for transcendence by us of these loves and hatreds. Concerted efforts are needed to curb the growing violence in the human heart and promote the resolution of conflicts through dedication and devotion by expert guidance through conversation and consensus.
Human-beings are social animals. They are emotional and intellectual beings. Humans have to fulfill both intellectual and emotional cravings and needs. Philosophies, natural sciences, technology etc., take care of their intellectual needs. Languages, literature, music, dance, painting, other fine-arts, love, affection and religion take care of their emotional needs. Human-beings are different from animals by their language acquisition and communication capabilities and ability of human mind to do intellectual operations and also to record, memorize, expect, fear, imagine, intuit, apprehend, love, hate various events and human beings during the passage of time with an egoistic mind. In other words, possession of ego as I, me, mine and time sense as past, present and future make human-beings to behave in a different manner compared to other animals.
Human-beings started various social institutions like marriage, educational and research institutions, financial institutions, governance, and the like to lead a social life. Systems of medicine, astronomy, philosophy and other scientific disciplines and humanities are developed for healing and intellectual necessities.
Religion is founded to take care of the spiritual and moral cravings and human emotions like love, fear, devotion, etc Religion is an institution that is also aimed at refining human-beings, to enable them to control and or conquer animal passions that are natural, instinctive and inherent. The cultivation of humane values is the aim of education. Education is not merely learning alphabet and arithmetic. Literacy helps to get a livelihood and worldly knowledge. But education helps to get cultured human-beings. Culture of the society is created, enriched and sustained by philosophers, poets, musicians, dancers, sculptors, artists of all varieties Religion is an important social ideal and cause of both friendly and hostile relationships among persons.
Hegemony of one religion on another for various reasons is the order of history. Globalization of economies of countries of the world serves chiefly the economic, commercial and business purposes. They are only a part of human activity. The reality is human-beings live in, live through and live for emotions and emotional fulfillment. That is why religion, region, nation, language and caste affiliations which serve this purpose exist and prosper in men and women.
Loving and being loved is a beautiful human trait. This trait exists in all and has to be nurtured by parents, teachers and the society as a whole. If that is not done, this love becomes hatred and leads to destructive talks and actions against people with different affiliations, likes and dislikes. Also it is a reality that a good percentage of men and women in any society are destructive by nature. Such people hijack social institutions like religion, nation, language, region, caste etc., and interpret these institutions in their own selfish and narrow way. If sanity is not injected into the society, this type of people cause chaos and peacelessness as is presently done. Because of these persons of destructive mentality, the institutions they hijacked will be blamed erroneously for the havoc caused by these undesirable individuals.
Knowingly or unknowingly every religion, nation, citizens, society and people sanction negative actions of such mentality and support them. All this is because of absence of a trans-national and trans-religious and humane culture separate from individual’s culture inherited from family, religion, nation and the like. We have to develop an international culture that respects respective regional and national cultures and also removes narrow-mindedness, if any, associated with persons who practice such cultures, religions, communal divisions etc., Such a thing is a must and just not a mere necessity of our times. And then conventional religions must not be allowed to be hijacked and play havoc with our lives.
As pointed out above, people of narrowness have hijacked religions and are fanatic and are killing many innocent people in their ill-directed jest for the protection or spread of their faith. All of us are wondering how compassion, the ingredient of any religion is blatantly ignored and all civilized nations are not able to control such violation of human dignity.
Religion cannot be wished away. It is only to be reformed and refined. Religion can never be made extinct. With this truth in mind, we should be able to separate institution from destructive persons. All religions stand for human welfare and well-being. The positive qualities in every religion are for peaceful and happy living of humans. These qualities are to be practiced, cultivated by some human-beings from each society and nation to become societal, national and international role models. In the absence of presence of such role models any amount of discussion, preaching, writing, broadcasting, telecasting, web-site creations will be of no use.
The human-beings who are role models should be steeped in their respective religions and culture and should be mature and wise enough to respect other religions. Such role models can both interpret and transcend their affiliations. They are a fine mixture of subjectivity and objectivity. They know that religion consists of two parts-the rituals and the spirituality. They will be bold enough to point out and remove erroneous interpretations of respective faiths and the destructive part of rituals and spread the spiritual part of respective religions. Such human-beings must be spotted, cultivated and nurtured by international community. They are available in every culture, religion and nation. U.N.O. can play a big and positive role in this regard.
UNESCO can be shouldered with this responsibility of pooling together these peace ambassadors and utilize their services, which they provide gladly. Such role models, if are house-holders, their experience in managing homes with family members of different mentalities with love, affection, responsibility and the knack of dealing near and dear will be handy for this task. Most of the religious heads will be like salesmen and have the obligation of ‘selling’ their ‘product’.
Only role models described above will be able to transcend and work for humanity as a whole. We no longer have the need of religious preaching. We need people who know all about their religion but have religious tolerance and are equally reverent of fellow religionists. Politicians must be excused from the building of international understanding and peace. They can confine to their nation-state and implement the welfare measures they promise to their electorate.
There is also the necessity of the study of texts of ancient wisdom of various early and modern civilizations, faiths, cultures and affiliations. We must become the confluence of civilizations and faiths. There may be doubts about the existence of God but there will be no doubt about the existence of Divinity.
Divinity is essence of human consciousness. Rather Divinity is Human Consciousness. A religion-transcending understanding of human consciousness can be had with the help of the Upanishads. A study of Upanishadic insight informs us that the contents presented in Upanishads are applicable to any human-being irrespective of one’s religious, cultural, national, communal- and caste- affiliations.
An understanding of human consciousness transcending sectarian bonds helps to defeat chauvinism and fundamentalist tendencies in human-beings. A human-being by nature is blissful. All the likes, dislikes and inner mental world of the human-being are transitory, illusion in the sense of impermanence and unreal nature and are mere super-impositions on the natural blissful state. The thoughts arising from inner mental world make humans disturbed. The determinations and actions of humans arise from these illusory and unreal mental suppositions and guide us. When one is aware of the natural state of human-being is same in all human-beings one can mold one’s thinking and destructive actions in the name of and for respective faiths may be diminished.
Senseless terrorism taking inspiration from religion and separatist movements can be calmed. Absence of fear of punishment, sanction by the society of killing fellow humans for any reason and the false belief of reward for destructive actions against fellow human-beings of different faiths and affiliations proliferate terrorist actions. So national governments must give full support to the international role models deputed by UNESCO for the free and unhindered spread of peace, understanding, calmness and commonsense among its people. Only political administrations, without help from spiritual role models cultivated like this by UNO, are not capable of maintaining peace and provide protection to their citizens. Police and other law enforcement authorities can control and curb violent tendencies in human heart only when augmented by spiritual authority of the international role models defined in this article.
The life-sketches and life-styles of these selected role models should be made part of primary school curriculum in all nations and all students must be aware of such role models. As human-beings learn everything by imitation, these studies will be immensely helpful in molding little tender brains at an early stage. In short, we must have a movement to imbibe spiritual values in human-beings- the spiritual values being- tolerance for different faiths and affiliations, refraining from the spread of hatred against other faiths, spread of love and affection among all human beings and shun any actions that kill fellow human-beings taking misguided inspiration from outdated religious or other affiliate beliefs. These peace ambassadors will create a beautiful and calm world for us to live in, enjoy and silently dissolve into the nature.
11-Apr-2012
More by :
Dr. Varanasi Ramabrahmam
Top | Perspective
|
Thank you so much for your kind attention and learned and discerning observations.
Glad sir for your kind blessings. |
|
|
|
congrates for nice food for thoughts. it is interesting but raises some questions about action on ground. The international level and ground level both are disappointing. There is nothing but loot led systems. the organised are looting with impunity.
but the acton plan is more important now. we have documented our views in rural business hub u tube and also in marketing the unmarketed. now i am 75 and when looking back feel disappointments. the commoners have been cheated all along the way.
|
|
