Guiding Principal

 

The Durga Puja is a symbolic representation of the triumph of good over evil. The societal justification if kept at this simple term makes it very convenient for the mass people of India majority of whom were or are afflicted by limited aspect of critical thinking.

The catch point here is the oversimplification of the term good and evil where the perceived benefits of being good is intangible yet huge and the perceived punishments of evil is tangible and yet of equal magnitude.

Humans, if not are a group of social psychopath but they generally would always want to think themselves as good. All our justification of our actions is basically aimed to the fact that we are somewhere down the line want to communicate to our inner self that we are a good person and a nice person. No matter how much questionable our actions are we try and justify the same.

It is a lazy approach towards life and over that an undisciplined way of rationalizing which is not very apt for our mental health. And even if it is, yet the society is made up of people who lack clarity in their thinking process. We as humans like to mimic others and take the less risky path and when it comes to ponder upon once’s own actions, they would do the same.

Life is simple yet complex at the same time which might sound paradoxical, but it is something like the dual property of particles and waves of light. Life is light but that light can only burn bright and provide warm if the life form has a constant avenue of thinking his or her actions and by that, I mean any and every action a person undertakes. A consciousness on the events and actions a person will cause and unleash on this material world.

But there is one issue with this aspect of humans. Everyone is too busy and even though most people are gifted with the mental capability to think, yet people are too lazy to do that. May be people will but they will end up trying to justify their own actions rather than take a third parties’ neutral stance and make thinks work. That equanimity requires a bit of work and a lot of training to discipline the mind. It is like lifting weights for the muscles. You have to have a routine and disciplined approach towards the same in or der to manifest the equanimity and in turn develop your own capacity to think critically and with clarity.

Religion it seems today were an instrument to ensure that the mass of population who were not critical thinking would use the same for their reference for actions. However, the same was perhaps initiated during a simpler time and hence a simplification of the stories would often be the best medium to ensure that the mass mental adoption of these stories would be inducted in the society and would act as a guiding principle.

However, when the same is not adapted to the demand of a changing time and changing fabric of the society, the same would become redundant and dangerous for the society in general. Unchanged and unfazed age old traditions would result in fanatism and result in much more number of fanatics in the society and that is when the virtues of religious becomes poisonous and the head of that fire hydra would often resurfaces to ensure tyranny in place of discipline in this world.