Man's Fate and God's Choice - Bhimeswara Challa (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

in the shadow of violence. It is negative in the sense that our non-violence is based on the fear of another’s violence. Violent responses are often our natural instinctive responses. We cannot wholly wish away or slyly sidestep human violence

 

 

 

110 Cited in: Lauren de Boer. Science as Wisdom: The New Story as a Way Forward. Interview with Brian Swimme. 1997. Earth Light Magazine. Sample Articles and Reviews. Issue 26, Summer 1997. p.10-11, 15,

Accessed at: http://www.earthlight.org/interview26.html

 

that is often laced with malice. We have to accept the reality of its deep roots in the human psyche. Today, violence is the weapon of the strong and of the weak; of the oppressed and of the oppressor, and the preferred way to get along in the world. It has become commonplace to convince oneself that there is no escape from violence if one does not want to be a perpetual loser, that ‘might is right’. Further the violence we are bothered about is what touches us personally; the rest is ‘news’ that titillates our attention, a secret sense of relief that we are not the victims and, even worse, someone else is. Violence is part of life; birth is violence, so is death. The animal world is not without its share of violence and cruelty. The irresistible instinct for survival plays a leading part in the perpetuation of violence among beasts too. But man alone kills for power, pleasure, and profit. In The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Dostoevsky asserts that no animal could ever be as cruel as man, so artfully, and so artistically cruel; we may add, on the morrow of the 21st century, ‘so scientifically and so technologically’ efficient. Man’s violence directed at his own kind, as well as towards other species defies description, even reason. Like the origin of evil, the basis of the streak of the virulent in the human species, often tinged with wanton cruelty, is still a mystery. By violence, we often implicitly mean a dastardly act of murder, rape, or war. These are extreme and heinous, but human violence is far more subtle and pervasive: injustice is violence; ingratitude is violence; indifference is violence. The attraction to abuse the powerless, the lure to ridicule the defenseless, seems to act like a drug on the human personality. It is as if we are programmed never to let go an opportunity to humiliate or hurt another person if we know we can get away with it. Language and choice of words have a tremendous impact: it could be scooting or scalding, they convey what we think of ourselves and of each other. In some cases, violence stems from childhood deprivation, resulting in more violence in adulthood. Sometimes, human violence is a survival response to violence in nature. Some posit that it is ‘learned behavior’; others say that it is an infectious disease endemic to certain environments and communities. Over the last decade or so, there are stories about genetic explanations for violence, about genes for such traits as ‘ruthlessness’ and ‘murder’. Genes may have something to do with the propensity for violence, as they do for other character traits. Several well-regarded scientists including anthropologist Richard Wrangham and psychologist Steven Pinker have emphasized the evolutionary and genetic factors that trigger a person’s consistent engagement in violence, despite cultural differences. But depravity need not spring from deprivation. The true nature of human ‘depravity’, whether we are basically good or evil, is an important theological concept. Whether depravity and sin are at the edge or center of our being is debatable. The ‘doctrine of total depravity’, which we are told is different from utter depravity, is a central tenet of Christianity, that humans live in ‘captivity to the law of sin’. It posits that because of the Fall, all humans are ‘enslaved in the service of sin’ and that ‘man cannot be justified before God by his own works’. Whether we are ‘totally’ or ‘utterly’ or ‘partially’ corrupted, the question is: are we in such a state that we cannot be saved without the special and direct divine intervention?

In the Hindu concept of cyclical (not linear) time, creation is now poised in the age of the Kali Yuga, at the end of which all creation will be destroyed, and then the world will go back to the beginning of the Age of Truth, Sathya Yuga. In the new cycle, the Sathya Yuga will be followed again by the Treta, Dwapara and Kali Yugas. What we witness in the world, closely, indeed eerily, corresponds with the predictions for the Kali Yuga. The Hindu epics like the Mahabharatha and Srimad Bhagavatham contain graphic descriptions of the degraded human condition in the Kali Yuga: this yuga will be “wedded to avarice and wrath and ignorance and lust, the right hand will deceive the left, and the left and the right will entertain

 

animosities towards each other, desiring to take the other’s life.”111 In Srimad Bhagavatham, the sage Suka describes to King Parikshit the unfolding of the Age of Evil, Kali Yuga: “Thenceforth, day after day, by force of the all-powerful time, O king, righteousness, veracity, purity (of mind and body), forgiveness, compassion, length of life, bodily strength and keenness of memory will decline. In the Kali age, wealth alone will be the criterion of pedigree, morality and merit. Again, might will be the only factor determining righteousness and fairness. Personal liking will be the deciding factor in making the choice of a partner in life, and trickery alone will be the motive force in business dealings. Capability of affording sexual delight will be the (only) criterion of masculine or feminine excellence, and the sacred thread will be the only mark of Brahmanhood.”112 And “filling one’s belly will be the (only) end of human pursuit and audacity of speech will be the only criterion of veracity. Skill will consist in supporting one’s family; virtuous deeds will be performed (only) with the object of gaining fame; and… in this way, the terrestrial globe will be overrun by wicked people…”113

The scriptures vividly describe the ‘end of the world’ scenario and what then will happen to the human species. The two common features are that the world as we know it will end, but the faithful will be saved. Most Western monotheistic religions have doctrines claiming that the ‘chosen’ or ‘worthy’ members of the one true religion will be ‘spared’ or ‘delivered’ from the coming judgment and wrath of God. They will be ushered into paradise either before, during, or afterwards, depending upon the end-time scenario to which they hold.114 Although every religion predicts the end of the world and the moral debauchery of mankind, according to some it will not be the first time. The Jewish Torah, for example, records a fateful moment in human history when mankind was truly on the brink of annihilation. It reads, “and God saw the Earth, and behold it was corrupted, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And “God said to Noah, ‘the end of all flesh has come before Me, for the Earth is filled with robbery… and behold, I am about to destroy them’.”115 It is almost universally acknowledged that corruption, in its broadest sense, is insidiously sapping the vital energy of our species, and robbery — in its widest sense of taking more than one’s due from another person, or from society or from Nature — has become endemic to the human condition. What is corrupted at this juncture in the life of the human species is consciousness itself, and almost everyone is guilty of ‘robbery’, in its Biblical sense. The dark doings of the Kali Yuga, foretold so vividly and unerringly, are already apparent. The world seems single-minded in its devotion to ‘normalizing the unthinkable’ and the horrific is becoming commonplace. Unconditional, nonreciprocal, selfless love is the first casualty of this Age. No word is more abused, misused, and misapplied than ‘love’, which has dried up in almost every relationship. What is more regrettable is not really the ‘death’ of love but of compassion. Our passions, not compassion, rule us. We need both passion and compassion

 

 

 

111 Cited in: Understanding Hinduism. The Mahabharata, Vana Parva, Section CLXXXIX. Kisari Mohan Ganguli. Future History of the World. Kali Yuga. Accessed at: http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaliyuga.htm

112 Cited in: Understanding Hinduism. From Srimad Bhagavat Mahapurana. The Evils of Kaliyuga. Book 12, Discourse 2. Rendered into English by C.L. Goswami, M.A. Shastri. Accessed at: http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaliyuga.htm

113 Cited in: Understanding Hinduism. From Srimad Bhagavat Mahapurana. The Evils of Kaliyuga. Book 12, Discourse 2. Rendered into English by C.L. Goswami, M.A. Shastri. Accessed at: http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaliyuga.htm

114 Wikipedia. Eschatology. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology

115 Cited in: Rabbi Raymond Beyda. The Best Policy. Parshas Noach. Table Talk. Accessed at: http://www.torah.org/learning/tabletalk/5765/noach.html

 

for a wholesome life. As Honoré de Balzac said, all humanity is passion and without it all human endeavor will be ineffectual. And compassion is not mere kindness but, at a more fundamental level, as Thomas Morton said, is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all living beings. We must be passionate about compassion and inject our compassion into our passions. But what we tend to do is isolate the two and give free reign to our sensory passions.

The past hundred years, in particular, have triggered changes whose ambit and depth have few parallels, if any, in recorded history. Modern human beings have almost become a new ‘sub-species’, whose mode of living and thinking scarcely resemble that of even two generations ago. Man has become at once the most creative and destructive being on the planet, capable of giving and taking life with equal poise, virtually replicating, if not replacing Nature. In so doing, he has lost control over his imagination, and the boundary between what he can do and what he is capable of destroying has become blurred. Each day brings new and more horrific horrors, as if the perpetrators, no different from any one of us, are in some kind of a macabre competition. The lethal baggage is not only mass murder, torture and mutilation; it is creating a murderous mindset for the generations to come. The horrifying fact is not only that more than two million children have been killed in combat in the last decade, at the rate of some 500 per day116, but that they are also the killers. Peter Singer in his book Children at War (2005), notes that child soldiers, some not older than six years, are to be found in three-quarters of the current fifty or so conflicts. He reveals that in the Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, 80 percent of the fighters were aged between seven and fourteen. It is pointed out that “not only have conflicts fought by children become easier to start, harder to end, messier, and with greater loss of life, but they are creating a brutalized and disaffected generation who are growing up knowing nothing but violence.”117 Many of them do not know life without a gun, and some “sit and look at running water and just see blood, of course, if and when, they see any running water.”118 This is one horror even the prophets of Kali Yuga did not and could not envision: mothers killing their children as a trade-off for sex, or children killing their fathers for ‘suicide’ compensation or to inherit their father’s job; or teenagers getting rid of their new born by dropping them down the garbage chute. For some parents, in a terrible commentary of modern life, the fear of leaving their children alive in today’s world has become more terrifying than the awful act of murdering them in cold blood — in their mind, it is an act of concern, compassion, and cascading love, not cruelty or