Wednesday, May 5, 2010

OH DEUS, Who art Thou?

Disclaimer: The following is not intended to hurt the sentiments of anyone and I sincerely apologise if I even accidentally offend anyone.

Morality and righteousness are, in my opinion, very flexible, fluid concepts. They keep changing and have, over the course of man's history, shuttled from one extreme to another. The best example I can perhaps give is the concept of religion. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely believe in God but I also believe, and I am willing to consider, perhaps wrongfully, that the while the concept of religion is man made, so is the human embodiment of the concept of God  as well. God was represented by symbols of nature when man was a species that communicated in grunts and wore just enough to appear modest.

Much later, the Greeks both feared and worshipped their own sets of Gods which were perhaps widely accepted simply because, at some point in time in man’s history, Greece was the centre of the world. Later came the Roman Gods which again gained widespread recognition and popularity due to the fact that the Earth spins on its axis and Rome became the centre of the world, then came the rise of Christianity and the older man made concepts of God and the variations were forsaken. I am not, for a moment, saying that our modern day interpretation and concept of the Almighty is incorrect, nor do I seek to question the historical roots, evolution and embodiment of the concept but I am simply emphasising that man is at the centre of this all. While this is by no means a religious treatise, the object of the above is to say that man is the creator of this world that we now inhabit with all its complexities and dilemmas, our social mores, our stigmas, our love, our hatred, all of it and so much more, has been spawned by man.  The best illustration of man having completely forsaken his own concepts of Gods as the ‘Ancients’ knew them is a popular game where a Demigod takes down the Gods of Olympus one by one. Again, I loved the game and I intend absolutely no offence by stating what I have above.

I personally believe that religion is a matter between best left between one and God alone and that there is absolutely no necessity to involve others and complicate lives. One’s beliefs may certainly conflict with another but that should be because of his own, personal, individual beliefs and not beliefs that are thrust upon him. Secularism, in this day and age should be so flexible a concept that one should be able, even in this day, say, worship Zeus without risking social ridicule. Scientology would be perhaps the most pertinent example to prove this point. Man can believe that God is whatever he wants him to be.  The key is not how one visualises God but that he fact that one has faith in God, and God can be whatever his imagination can conjure up so long as it brings him peace, tranquillity and inner happiness. 

ENDGAME - No, this is not about a computer game.

All species on this planet were created together, evolved together and shared the planet together. Man, however overtook the rest of the species and has, over the past few millennia, created the concepts of stories, figments of one’s imagination, created a collection of sounds which if arranged rhythmically enough, can be quite pleasing to one, and most recently, even begun writing blogs. We are, in my opinion, in the greatest era of man’s life where our history seems crystal clear as do aspects of our future. The sad truth however lies, in the fact that while man has evolved and emerged the true master of the planet, we have decimated it completely. Man is the only species that has only taken from the Earth without adequately offering anything in return.

It might have occurred to a few of you that I’m just prancing around, ranting about all sorts of stuff above without taking any of you to any logical conclusions. Well, my point is that we’re at the pinnacle of our civilisation and as the old world orders around us are all slowly gathering  to fall and appoint new world superpowers, there may not be much of the world left at this rate. Take a look at the temperatures skyrocketing the way they have over the last two years all over the world. This is indeed, the beginning of the end of life as we know it for if we don’t heed this last chance to save the Earth and even begin to try fixing all the damage we’ve done, we might as well resign ourselves to living in a man made concrete-tech world where we use holograms to project images of the planet as it once was and we may have to seek comfort from the fact that though we’ve destroyed our planet, we at least created the technology to simulate an artificial one.