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.

Small mind and Bigger mind

 

People’s needs seem to move up when they expand their mind because as they start thinking about others around them, their needs move up to the higher level (charity, spirituality), and they start thinking about others (people/environment). When people care for others passionately, two things happen: Their mind’s horizon expands, and they forget to be selfish!

 

This is why Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs make sense. We always find the needs of the selfish self-centred people in the bottom of Maslow ’s hierarchy. They need to be praised, and they’re always looking for love and affection. They are emotionally insecured and they’re often running after money. 

Who were Gandhi and Mother Teresa?

Gandhi and Mother Teresa were the two revered public figures. Gandhi is known as the “Father of the nation” for India and Mother Teresa was admired as the most charitable ‘saintly’ figure of the 20^th century. But were they really so? Here are a few truths most people rather not know because these truths contradict with their own belief criteria that they’re so comfortable with.
 
People’s belief system works so naturally that they’re not even aware of it (their habitual acts). If someone ask why they’re doing so, they’ve no answer. Self-examination is rare thing among the people who are compliance with their traditions/religion.
 
Now, who was Gandhi? Gandhi was a male chauvinist, raciest, an astute politician and a manipulator. He forced many innocent fellow citizen to be faced the brutal beating or even killing spree at the hands of the British ruler, while he was securely snugged inside of the prison. Gandhi was also class-promoter who wrote white people are "the predominating race” and the black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals”. (South Africa, 1903). He slept in between teenage girls to test his “will-power.” This is the man who developed the theory of Satyagraha! 
 
Similarly, Mother Teresa said: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering."  (Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa). There are also many evidences of her taking bribes and money laundering—involving large sum of money!

Think big; think change

 

Some people are born to hurt others—by their words or deeds. Others are born to serve others and take very little for themselves. Some others are not capable of knowing what is right and what is wrong, and there are yet another type of people who may know what is right and /or what is wrong, but they don’t have courage to express their feelings. They don't realise:

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.—Steve jobs

Who is the God and why there are so many?

           Based on what we know, it seems, God is who we consider is worthy of holding such title! Choosing or naming a God acceptable to everyone prove not only difficult but impossible for numerous reasons. This explains why there are so many gods and goddesses, and why the few saints/gurus/monks/rabbis/priests or whoever devoted their life on finding the truth about God left us with their vague messages. They want us to figure it out ourselves who the God was/is. Since the concepts of god and religion are tightly entwined, explaining those ideas were not easy for them, and they did not want to misguide us or take this matter so lightly.

                The problems associated with answering ‘who is the god’ are personal—they did not have to be, but they are for now. For instance, many individuals are emotionally attached with their God that they take a great offence even when someone talks objectively about their Figurehead. These people do not understand other people outside of their faith who do not share the same experience (or the feelings) as they do with their deity. For example, millions of Hindus worship the ‘elephant-head’ deity, Ganesha, with a hope that Ganesha would make them rich and prosperous—as they grew up hearing this deity’s reputation of granting those wishes. It’s natural for these people to worship Ganesha and transfer such belief to their next generation as a family tradition.  This tradition is difficult for people outside of this culture to understand. This is why when a few of my non-Hindu friends made fun of some of the Hindu gods and goddesses, I understood perfectly.

Can a prison be a home for someone?

Something we read/hear/experience sticks in our mind forever. The "Shawshank Redemption" movie is one of these memory that I can't forget even after so many years.  

The plots in this movie are great and I like most everyone playing major role in it. Beside the two main characters (Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins), there is a third character--a long-term prisoner--who returns to prison with his own will even after completing his sentence and was free to go wherever he wished. 

I had almost forgotten his reasons to return to prison until three days ago. My experience of what happened three days ago helped me understand the reason. I had never thought this way before, but now that I've read a quite a bit and thought about it a bit,  it is true that  a prison can be a safer home for someone who has spent most of his/her life inside of it.

Shankara's explanation of the Brahman.

 

Who is the Brahman?

The fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks, "I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination, sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman." 

Source:

https://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/quotes/saint.asp?mc=60