Origin of…

It was with some unproductive, monotonous and a work which I can attribute, safely, not my own that kept me away from writing a full whole month. I must add that the physical demands of this work besides the scorching heat of North India only added to sap more energy and left little to be used elsewhere. However, with this burden now off my shoulders, I can, once again, write a little to pass my useless time which otherwise would have been dedicated to sound sleep.

I chose the title “Origin of…” so as to deal with the origin or more precisely source of a number of things which obviously, in our society, are attributed a mysterious origin—which cannot be comprehended or explained and hence should be left over as sprouting from God. I shall, for the sake of my own easiness, take these “mysterious things”—for they are no doubt mysterious—one by one and without any predisposition about the order in which to arrange them. So let’s start with one of the most elated and hyped claim of religion that morality, compassion, love exclusively belong to their literatures and in the absence of those literary works mankind would not have been able to love, to feel compassionately and to distinguish between good and evil.

I could not help finding it extremely ludicrous that human moral values have origin in a book. This claim is shattered to pieces as soon as one gives away one’s narcissist approach towards morality and gaze at it with due considerateness to all of nature including the most ferocious bestiality. We can observe, not with much difficulty, that love and compassion, in their most crude form, originates in the ability to distinguish i.e. to recognize likeness, similarity of features; first and foremost physical features. Here, I am not concerned with the trivial thought of physical attraction of an individual towards another but with ability of an individual to know his own features (physical) i.e. his body structure, ways of responding to changes in surrounding, his needs in terms of food, shelter etc. You see, that is the real source of liking, real source of morality, real source of love and not to forget compassion—the ability to relate. One may be left alone, right from the birth, to grow accustomed to his own self and not to any other, not even creatures of his own type leave aside any other species yet he will first approach one like him. The awareness about his own body structure through his senses, the ability to recognize other’s—also through his senses, gives rise to something called similarity. This, indeed, is the crudest love, compassion—a likeness of what is similar to us. And this crude love is spread across all animals, not just intelligent humans. That is the reason why they—that is the animals—don’t need literature to love. They have the ability, through their senses and nothing else, to recognize what is similar. Everything similar gains love and compassion, everything different is part of suspicion. Good is what is same, evil is that which is different. Morality of even good and evil builds on the base of similarity. It is this written morality of which religions are so proud of: a morality which is descendant of crude form. You see, justice too have some traces of this type of morality. It is heinous to kill a human being while other life forms are slaughtered without attracting least of punishment through our judicial systems even though they continue to be a subject of our scientific knives and taste bud.  I am not criticizing animal killing but making my point about origin of morality. This original compassion for something similar now transcends and evolves into love, good. It is the base of all subsequent definitions of morality no matter which culture develops it. However, a search for similarity leads to a lot of weed growth. For example racism is a weed growth in which apart from humanity one finds similarity in trivial things. Social Darwinism, however, can never work for the sole reason that humans have got a good memory. Religion itself is a weed growth—a special likeness for people of same religion, their cultures, dress, food, etc. and if not hatred then aversion to folks of different religion, their culture, dress, etc. A sense of superiority is raised in such situations. Caste system in India is another such weed growth. Misogynism is a weed growth of this crude morality. Patriots are raised and traitors are killed under a more subtle weed growth. Thus we see we have left the original morality and accepted side productions as the original. And there is no shortage of men who claim that side productions belong exclusively to them. In fact, they even go to the extent of laying their hands on the original morality.

Love, even in its subtlest form, is not immune to this original creed for likeness and similarity. Although most of love blossoms from a search of desired qualities—a certain form of finding similarity, difference in a pair is also a deliberate attempt at accepting the difference itself as something given to likeness. It can go without saying that hatred will rise wherever there is no likeness or one is unable to find such likeness or similarity. Revenge and malice are born of good memory. Humans have that in particular. In those who have a strong element for forgetfulness, revenge is in traces.  Absence of active memory can even end such malice as is the case with many animals.

We move now to the origin of truth and lie. As is believed commonly, truth and lie are something eternal; eternal truth—more correctly—and lie is just a lie. However, least to my concern whether lie is eternal or not, truth and lie are something not eternal. They are side products of intent to communicate. The complexity of the concept of truth and lie is build in the proportion the means of communication grows. When you can represent things separate from actions, of which till know only humans are capable, there you see truth and lie and the intent to deceive. Man seems to be marred by the weed growth of his own inventions, here in this case a complex structure of language.

I have already grown weary not because I have written too much for this one article but with lack of sleep. So in an attempt to wind up, I endeavour one more topic—that of poverty. There are endless attempts at conquering poverty but none to know what made it first or what propagates it from generation to other generation.  The answer to propagation of poverty is simple—inheritance.  Inheritance not just in the sense of material property but inheritance of all those shortages, inheritance of daily grief to which the child grows slowly accustomed to and gives up his hope in despair, inheritance of the knowledge that he may have to sleep empty stomach, inheritance of looking daily at deep sunken faces around him weakened with constant hunger and finally accepting the fate as it is, inheritance of dealing with crisis on a daily basis rather than occasionally as their so called benefactors do. An awful lot of inheritance! What makes me more critical of religion or imaginary God is not the imagination of it but the laws it involuntarily gave to the society. Just like the law of inheritance! Now what made poverty? As I have always held in my earlier posts that fate is not the origin of poverty. Origin of poverty lies in the powerful: to snatch what he felt like; and weak to let go what he cannot defend. Then after, the lazy powerful man made laws of what is right and what is not. What is lawful and what is not!  What should remain with him that he has snatched and what should be returned! This is where laws of inheritance originate—to keep for progeny what was earned with power and now only to replace power with labour; it should be noticed that this nepotism is also a weed growth of likeness to something similar, something which is close to us. Since laws are never made to the purpose which they currently serve, people often forget the origin and accept the current usage as the genuine one. They originate, they evolve, their purpose change from time to time.

Now the concluding lines…

More harm has been done than benefit by thrusting the “benefit for all” tag. People need to think for their good only and not meddle with the whole of humanity. Every man is capable of doing good to himself and to others for man is not naturally evil, on the contrary, man is naturally loving.