Pamplanil Reacts (More than a letter to Editor!) Reason Religion & Democracy
Note: What is the biggest wonder in creation or evolution? There are many who belive in a creator “God” or in only “Evolution” and so this question is addressed equally to all humans.
But all believe in cause and effect and we are all not self-made, but by a supreme power, a cause without a cause, ‘the Big bang’ for the evolutionists and ‘God’ (Light eternal, Embodiment of goodness, Sachidanda, Love indwelling or in which we all dwell), both beliefs still remain to be scientifically and empirically proved, because Man is a two legged animal – animal always and rational sometimes.
It is this rationality that places humans one step above animals and compels humans to go forward, to act, to take decisions and make choices prompted by the light of reason and not by blind feelings or by sensible or sensual urges of feelings as do animals or in blind faith in the Faith of the unknown.
All are our masters!
This light of Reason in each of us varies from that of the sun to that of the fire fly and gives us the answer to the question we raised first. The wonder of creation or evolution, is that no two humans are alike in all respects, that is, our brother or sister we meet daily, are superior to us in some respects, to learn from and therefore our masters. Hence the adage: You have to learn even from a ‘grave digger’.
Can you think of anyone from whom we have nothing to learn from? This should rationally drive all of us to look at everyone else respectfully to learn from by listening to him/her with the docility of an anxious student to learn. Hence also the common wisdom: “Each one teach one” because each one of us have something to teach which makes us all Mastaerss and Students at the same time bound to complement and collaborate, not to confront and dominate but work together as equals.
Make Heaven, not Hell
In short the ‘so-called self-styled enlightened’ and ‘know-nothings’ (ignorant) have to “hang together or hang separately,” to make this vale of tears into a paradise of love and care, to turn this hell below a heaven on earth.
Sri Pamplanil is “frankly speaking his views on what Valson Thampu has written and james kottoor has commented on it. None of them can be the depository of the whole TRUTH but may have at least bit of sweet truths readers can learn from and equally half-truths or bitter bits hard to gulp down. Caught between this dilemma what should one do?
Be like a busy Bee
Like a busy bee that draws only the sweet honey from every flower in the garden of humanity be grateful to the scribes and confront the bitter flowers with the sweet honey you have through the injection called your honest reaction so that the common reservoir of honey for the benefit of humanity may grow and multiply.
Only a dead body refuses to react. You readers are all alive and kicking. So let all the three writers realize, you really are, and be ready to learn from what you readers have to say! james kottoor, editor ccv.
Please read below Pamplanil’s reaction
The article of Valson Thampu with the title Even God is misused by a theocracy and dr. james kottoor’s editorial comment: Reason, religion and democracy” (see CCV 09/05/2018) require thorough churning of the grey cells of the brain in order to extract the hidden Gnosis.
The saga of human civilisation has been the exploitation of the tillers and toilers by elite Shamans, Popes and Ayatollahs, in cohoot with the ruling class, since Homo Sapiens opted for cultivation of crops for food in the delta of the confluence of Euphrates and Tigris and the alluvial soil of the Nile and other great rivers spread across the globe some 12000 years ago. The underpinning of this paradigm has been the devious ways with which theocracy overwhelmed and subjugated the human race in one form or other.
Priests and Kings
In the beginning of the settled life of humans, the priests were kings as well. Many a time,the kings assumed the role of priests – the priestly kings. This unholy nexus of priests and kings has been ruling the humankind for a long time. This theocratic rule has been propped up and sustained by organised religions with the cynical exploitation of the inherent fear of the human species and their superstitious frame of mind.
The ruling clique projected itself as superior to the proletariat by donning outlandish dresses, diamond encrusted tiaras and crowns, opulent way of life in splendid palaces in the company of beautiful and alluring females relishing the best of things. The ruling class, egged on by the priests, built huge opulent structures and megaliths of marble and stone for showing off. Some examples are the huge Cathedrals of Hagia Sophia ( Church of the Holy Wisdom), St. Peter’s Church in Rome, Canterbury and West Minister Cathedrals in England, the Notre Dame de Paris and the vast and splendid places of rulers scattered all over the world. The rulers and priests had and still enjoy luxuries whose major components are exotic wines and beautiful sexy women to quench their lust and satisfy other physical cravings.
The ploy that often works to the advantage of the ruling class is the totem called God. Most deities are animistic in the sense that they are attributed with supra natural powers, be they are forces of nature or objects created by humans. These man created artifices are endowed with otherworldly aura and power and elevated to the status of divinity. In this scenario, the creature becomes the master. This illogical set up enables priests to amass wealth in the form of offerings to the statutes, etchings and other modes of representation of power invested divinities and fees for their services. Quite often, the Frankenstein’s Monsters created by the theocrats assume diabolical proportions devouring even their own creators.
Most of the religions exploit the inherent apprehensions and uncertainties of the common folk. The God-men, religions spawn, are mostly cheats and criminals. They indulge in crass and demeaning sexual exploitation of women and even pounce on innocent minors to satisfy their lust. These charlatans cultivate rulers and other influential persons successfully.
Barring a few exceptions, the Popes, the Ayatollahs, the Imams et al are nihilistic, obstinate autocrats, quite often blood thirsty tyrants who perpetuate their reigns by deploying gratuitous utter cruelties and cold blooded murders, and are worse than their counterparts in the secular world. They are the worst specimens of the two legged hairless animal called Homo Sapiens and with maniac aversion to any thing new in the realm of ideas and thoughts. They tend to place road blocks to human progress. They apply all means to tether the world to their obscurantist views and practices. One can, from empirical evidence, vouch that most of the organised religions, with their blood thirsty gods are the greatest curses that the world has to endure and suffer.
In Europe, the French Revolution, Intellectual Renaissance Enlightenment, onset of democracy, rise of humanism, spread of secular education, universal franchise, emancipation of women along with recognition of their sexual rights, dethroned divine kings and brought the rentier feudal lords to the bare earth divested of their powers and privileges. In a democratic set up, elected rulers are replaceable periodically, at least in theory.
But since no man can substitute another and solve his problems, and since none is a saint, representative democracy has its inherent draw backs. The tendency to grab wealth and helps, on occupying position of power and the inborn tendency to feather own cap, is a common phenomenon. Further any ruler would like to perpetuate his rule by means fair and foul. Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Kim and the like are the worst examples.
In India
In a vast and diverse country like India divided by religious and ethnic diversities antagonistic to each other, riven by castes and sub-castes, economic disparities and deprivations for those living in the margins in inaccessible undeveloped villages, surviving by subsistence farming, steeped in ignorance and without education is smothered over by the regime of theocrats. This system nips in the bud the emergence of genuine participatory democracy. The over-riding influence of retrograde superstitious religions, presided over by sham shameless shamans, sustains the hegemony of the theocratic state.
Judging from the prevailing situation in India, the leadership of the country may succeed in making a smoke screen of progress in the economic front and try fool the world for some time but not for ever. The relevant constituent of the GDP is goods and services consumed by the wage earners at affordable prices. What is on display is the strides made by the country’s crony capitalists, devious and fraudulent merchant class, adulterers, brokers and fixers in the social, cultural and financial world. The position of the marginalised and deprived is still at the bottom of the pile and will deteriorate further and further.
May be when there is no other go, the non-possessed will rise in revolt and annihilate and obliterate everything and every one. Nothing in nature or in the human domain can remain static. Change is inevitable; society is in perpetual motion.
The change that will come about may not be palatable to most of us cocooned in our smug niches But, at the moment, the day of reckoning seems far off in the horizon. By that time old men like us, hopefully, would have disappeared from the face of earth for good.