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ARTICLE : Jews want miracles, Greeks want wisdom...
Dear Friends:
Every society evolve its orientations. As newer leaders press their
ideas on society, society tries to accomodates them. How was our society
in the old days and how is it today?
Sri Aurobindo has written some on this subject. There is an important
difference between the way disagreements were settled in the old days and
the way they are now. That is, in the old days, war was more
frequently considered to be the only way out for settling disputes;
today, we like to try negotiations first. But war exposes people to
large-scale death. In the old days, the leaders of the society devoloped
a structure that was designed to protect the majority of the people from
having to go to battlefield, by giving a specialized group of people the
responsibility of fighting for them. Actually many societies followed
this structure; thus we had the kshtriyas, the Japanese had the samurais,
the British had the knights. A structured society helped develop various
skills that specialization allowed them to do. Despite its blemishes,
this structure proved quite successful.
Today, everybody is expected to be proficient in every possible human
activity, because our leaders chose not to follow the old ways but enforce
a new structural model for society where everybody is expected to be
proficient in everything. This way can only generate a culture of
mediocrity, that we have now. The question is: does this current system
is the way for us? Can it sustain our society?
I feel that we would be enormously better off with specialization,
because of the enormous human wealth we possess. We simply do not have
the same need of small societies that must make their citizens proficient
in all walks of life.
In this respect, it would be benficial for us to look at the old Vedic
society, when people of all profession groups were valued members of the
social fabric and they generally enjoyed the recognition they deserved.
We of course, do not need the political caste system that is with us now.
But that is for the leadership to attain. As citizens, we have another
issue to contend with, how do we define ourselves? If we generally
ignore our past experiences, as we do now, we will be forever trying to
reinvent the wheel. A recent example is the article called 'the two
faces of Goddess' that Ashokji forwarded to SRH. That article reflected
almost nothing that Scriptures say about Divine Mother, or how the Sages
have described the experience of Her grace. As Hindus, we must press that
at least some of our authors are true to the Scriptures.
With best regards,
Dhruba.
