Peace, Goodwill and Brotherhood

It's always been thus in the human family. Whatever is most familiar, whichever group one is a part of, whatever social customs and traditions are commonly practised are far superior than those undertaken by others. Our customs and traditions, our religion and way of life is superior, theirs inferior. Human beings seem always to require someone else to denigrate, as though only so can their own customs and beliefs be elevated, in comparison.

And yet human beings seek salvation, spiritual guidance, and a deep and abiding faith. Generally most religions attempt, through their sacred writings, to entice adherents to behave circumspectly, humanely, charitably. While they may not presumptively teach that all are equal under the eyes of god - since the almighty spirit that is hailed as god is different from one religion to another - adherents are still taught something about the "brotherhood of humankind".

Religions, religious belief and instruction, in the first instance of their creation make an attempt to be reasonable and moderate in their orientation, but in the final analysis interpretation is undertaken by human beings who lack the theoretical genius of the original humans who constructed the religion and its precepts and holy writings and the process and the product become corrupted.

Hindus believed intrinsically in the caste system, that one's place in life is predetermined, that destiny is aligned inevitably to one's caste, and caste is incontrovertible in the current lifetime. The single, largest failing in the original and ancient concept of that particular religious source. Christians believed that their religion transcended the failings of the earlier Judaism from which it borrowed - and believed that salvation lay only in the purity of belief in Christ.

Buddhists believed in elevating their spirits beyond the mundane concerns of daily life; in achieving nirvana by reaching a state of inner peace and tranquility. Judaism believed in cleaving to the strictures of a jealous god who would have no graven images before his indelible yet hidden presence; it is a conceit of man who created god that god created man in his own image, an image not to be copied.

Muslims are secure in the knowledge that they and they alone worship the true god, that all others are pretenders, and that Muhammad was the intimate inductee of Allah who serviced him with the honour of proclaiming Islam the world's only fealty to the almighty spirit. The ancient world worshipped their own panoply of gods and goddesses, all of whom owned attributes that explained the wonders of Nature herself.

Humankind has built upon the technologies and sciences that have gradually accumulated over the aeons, enabling us to acquire knowledge and practical devices that have enhanced our mortal existence. This speaks to our universal curiosity, our creativity, our industriousness. Yet the endless need for a belief in a spiritual father figure who looks over the world of humankind and guides believers in the way of faith appears to be hard-wired into the creatures that are human.

Still, that belief in god, the presence of an immortal, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-controlling figure; that immutable faith in something not seen, not heard, but there all the same, has not succeeded in securing for mankind any kind of spiritual peace. We go on searching for verities, yet there are no assurances. And what we really do best is destroy what we have assumed control of; the natural world that surrounds us.

And in the process destroy one another, because humankind does not appear to be able to live in peace with other orders of our same species. We look for physical differences that set us apart and that apartness is the mechanism that persuades us that there exist others inferior to ourselves; we look at cultural, social, traditional and religious differences that we can direct scorn upon.

And we exercise our existential imperative of survival by doing our utmost, under one pretense or another - usually in search of material resources that enhance our own existence, culminating in geographical imperialism to consolidate our presence. In the process, discarding our very humanity by persecuting and impoverishing, by mutilating and ravishing, by murdering the "strangers" among us, discerning them to be hostile to our own advances.

What a dark vision. And yet the proof is around us everywhere in the world. We are utter, abject failures as experiments in the dynamics of human interaction. Some superior being's dabbling in experimentation with lesser creatures inhabiting elements of his domain as a result of his singular creative processing.

The evil mind of man. Too sad, too dreadfully bad that those among us whose purpose, desire and beliefs in the goodness of humankind are incapable of asserting that which is good about us, simply because of insufficient numbers to counter-balance the greater presence of the baser elements whose numbers outweigh the finer instincts inhabiting too few.