Tolerance – a simple word and yet its attainment has become as elusive as the mythical fountain of youth. For a species that owes its existence theologically to the first 2 humans Adam and Eve and scientifically to the first Homo Sapiens that emerged out of Africa the amount of hate we show our own is astonishing. No animal kills its own species unless their lives or territories are threatened. Even then their fights are more a display of strength meant to scare rather than annihilate the other party. But humans are different.
We kill sometimes for the pure pleasure of watching others suffer, sometimes we kill the innocent whom we don’t even know in order to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, at other times we kill simply to make our point of view heard or accepted. The funny thing is that we also have justifications to make ourselves feel better about these acts of violence. Even the psychopathic serial killer will have some kind of justification for his behaviour – granted that the justification is warped and sick, but in his mind he is right. The rational for most of the other crimes are labeled as honour, self-preservation, justice, liberation, rebellion against oppression etc. But I feel at the heart of all these rationales is one root cause – intolerance.
As humans we have developed this great urge to be photocopiers, we only want people who are like us to be around us. Those who have wealth cannot tolerate the poor and similarly vice versa. Those who are corrupt cannot tolerate those who are on the straight and narrow. People in power cannot tolerate the helpless and the helpless cannot tolerate the powerful. Followers of one religion cannot tolerate the other religions and people from one geographic area cannot tolerate the rest of the world. And the worst part is that after all this intolerance towards everyone else at times we cannot even tolerate ourselves. Our sub-conscious tells us that there is something not right within us and our life is not as it should be and that is where our internal intolerance manifests itself as depression and even aggression. But being humans we readily find another external source for our intolerance and put all our energies into resisting that reason.
I am no fool and I am certainly not in search of Utopia. I know that as long as we inhabit the planet violence will be a part of our civilization. It started with Kane and Abel and will continue to the end of the world. Tribes, kingdoms, countries and civilizations have always gone to war and will keep doing so. But there is one big difference between the past and present – in the past wars were fought by soldiers defending their people’s right to live. Today we kill because we feel the others do not have a right to live.
We have got to come to terms with the fact that the beauty of this world lies in its diversity, if we do not agree with someone's philosophy it does not give us the right to decide that they should be terminated. We tend to cover up our most heinous crimes under the guise of morality and ethics, because then we convince ourselves that we were right. The next time you catch yourself or someone else implying that certain people or even entire communities are in some way lesser than us in terms of morals and ethics be scared, be very very scared because this is the seed that grows into a full fledged carnivorous monster in no time at all.
We kill sometimes for the pure pleasure of watching others suffer, sometimes we kill the innocent whom we don’t even know in order to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, at other times we kill simply to make our point of view heard or accepted. The funny thing is that we also have justifications to make ourselves feel better about these acts of violence. Even the psychopathic serial killer will have some kind of justification for his behaviour – granted that the justification is warped and sick, but in his mind he is right. The rational for most of the other crimes are labeled as honour, self-preservation, justice, liberation, rebellion against oppression etc. But I feel at the heart of all these rationales is one root cause – intolerance.
As humans we have developed this great urge to be photocopiers, we only want people who are like us to be around us. Those who have wealth cannot tolerate the poor and similarly vice versa. Those who are corrupt cannot tolerate those who are on the straight and narrow. People in power cannot tolerate the helpless and the helpless cannot tolerate the powerful. Followers of one religion cannot tolerate the other religions and people from one geographic area cannot tolerate the rest of the world. And the worst part is that after all this intolerance towards everyone else at times we cannot even tolerate ourselves. Our sub-conscious tells us that there is something not right within us and our life is not as it should be and that is where our internal intolerance manifests itself as depression and even aggression. But being humans we readily find another external source for our intolerance and put all our energies into resisting that reason.
I am no fool and I am certainly not in search of Utopia. I know that as long as we inhabit the planet violence will be a part of our civilization. It started with Kane and Abel and will continue to the end of the world. Tribes, kingdoms, countries and civilizations have always gone to war and will keep doing so. But there is one big difference between the past and present – in the past wars were fought by soldiers defending their people’s right to live. Today we kill because we feel the others do not have a right to live.
We have got to come to terms with the fact that the beauty of this world lies in its diversity, if we do not agree with someone's philosophy it does not give us the right to decide that they should be terminated. We tend to cover up our most heinous crimes under the guise of morality and ethics, because then we convince ourselves that we were right. The next time you catch yourself or someone else implying that certain people or even entire communities are in some way lesser than us in terms of morals and ethics be scared, be very very scared because this is the seed that grows into a full fledged carnivorous monster in no time at all.
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