The world seems to be sliding towards some kind of dark polarised state. It's really sad to see people hating others supposedly to demonstrate their love for their own ideology, their own chosen god.
How can it be that in order to demonstrate that you are really committed to your own religion you must hate anyone who chooses to be different?
This is a crazy and warped way to live.
I don't profess to be an expert on religions, theology and various ideologies but I have to say I'd be confident that it would be hard to find something like scripture or ancient scrolls that says something like "hate anyone, kill anyone, who does not follow our god".
For sure people seem to have a knack of digging up things that sound a lot like they might mean hate and kill others. Surely this is mankind demonstrating an inherent knack for twisting what has been written yesterday to serve today's purpose. Irrespective of where you are and what you believe, this twisting of what has gone before goes on all over the place.
And then we have calm, objective people saying that people need to be devoted to their own religion while having respect for other peoples' religions. These people are often deemed to be kooks and a bit soft in the head.
We are hung up on emphasising the difference between religions and that's making us blind to what's obvious.
Western society emphasises individual freedoms and diversity. Other societies don't. It doesn't make anyone right or wrong.
We can't move towards a homogenous global society, even though that's what seems to be happening. The more we push for similar life and values in every country the more we make it necessary for others to feel they must defend and hang on to what is precious and valued where they are.
Society can't be driven to sameness everywhere. It goes against the laws of nature, the same laws that insist that for balance we must have opposites. Otherwise things are unbalanced and fall.
The blindingly obvious truth?
Instead of focusing on why they are different from us, we just need to focus on respect. With respect there is balance. With respect there is harmony. With respect there is peace. With respect there is progress.
Without respect there is mistrust, speculation, fear, lies and eventually conflict.
Why is it so hard for respect to be the one global constant in all societies?
No comments:
Post a Comment