Silence means approval in many cultures

I’m a business graduate. I had learned in my strategy-course that there is a great advantage in being the “First Mover”. Social system also works similarly. People are praised for their new/innovative ideas that have helped improve the society’s overall welfare. But many great people have also been punished—and even killed—for their new bold ideas, even though the society at large has benefitted from such ideas.

 

We find many example of such great ideas. Socrates and Galileo were two of the wise men whose ideas have revolutionized the world but not without paying the hefty price with their own lives. 

 

For instance, Socrates was the first man to recognize the limitation of human knowledge and believed that people do wrong deed out of their own ignorance. He introduced a new deity—people’s own inner voice or reasoning. Socrates was poisoned to death for failing to consider the gods that others were following. 

 

Galileo’s discovery of the “sun doesn’t revolve the earth, rather the earth revolves around the sun in 1610” wasn’t taken positively by the Catholic churches. The churches were teaching their followers just the opposite. They had said: “The earth is the center of the universe and the universe was created by their god”. Galileo’s discovery proved what the churches were teaching was wrong. Accepting Galilei’s discovery also meant losing their livelihood, since the churches ran from the donations their followers made. Thus, the furious churches asked Galileo to abstain from teaching or defending such heliocentric ideas publicly.

 

Punishments like the ones above have scared many people from sharing their  ingenious ideas/inventions with the public. I can’t compare my difficulties of sharing my own findings about the gods and religions. I am also having difficulties in selling my “universal cultural” ideas with the public. I find most people are like a sheep. They rather sooed (steered) by a rudder, than build/find their own path. These people have no idea what moral and morality mean. This frustrates me immensely sometimes!

 

The people I’m dealing with know so little. They’ve read so little or not at all the worldly stuff. These people know only their culture. Their God. Their traditions. Arguing with them that there are other gods and other cultures and other traditions is like arguing with an arrogant teenager.