Wednesday 14 March 2012

History should be studied to learn and improve our lives and not to repeat the mistakes of the past.



Through history, we study the culture of human beings. The journey of the human beings from the forest and caves to the skyscrapers of today is full of enigma, sadness, blood-shed, gloom, glory and everything. Minutely looking into the growth of society, its mean of livelihood, climate and society, different religions came into emergence. Some evolved on with the understanding of man while others offshoot into new branches. From ancient nature worship to polytheism - monotheism – atheism – agnostics, religions have traveled a lot; a long journey full of all shades.
As we see the history we observe a peculiar thing that every religion was entwined in making people united and this was how religion served as the rule to unite people and thus politics and religion evolved together. Then religious heads or there beneficiaries became head of the states and people accepted the king as a representative of Lord. Then with democracy, liberalism, rationalism and demand for equality between man and man, transformations took place. Religion now either formed different sects or reformed the old traditions. Those were our heroes and mentors who actually gave the momentum to ability of human mind to think without any adultery and suppression. They propagated that humans should not accept the situations as they are but they should question, ask and keep on asking until they are answered.
There might be as many religions but the essence of every religion is universal brotherhood. From ages human has questioned his existence, existence of nature as it is. The questions troubled the mind of every thinker from every creed and religion developed to ease the mind of human. Religion emerged from the philosophy of living and understanding of our surroundings and till date religions are changing and molding as the human understanding is evolving with observation and experience (mental or physical).  
People are always proud of their heritage and it is something very necessary because through this we contemplate on the life of our forefathers. When a child is born, she learns about the culture in which she is brought up.  The culture or religion is not inherent but developed in course of one’s upbringing. And we love the traditions in which we are brought up, but it does not mean that we should not appreciate other cultures. Instead we should learn more about other cultures and such learning should not cultivate the tolerance but the respect for other cultures. If we study in more exactness we find that essence remains same from one religion to another though the garb might be different. As the world is moving on to globalization there is dire need for an individual to take the interdisciplinary view of life and lead a life that fulfills his objective as a free thinker to question and seek answers for.
The things that promote disharmony by digging the ghosts of past mistakes done by someone due to ignorance, ego, selfishness etc only widen the gap. History is the best teacher but if we refuse to learn we learn nothing. Whole history pleads for peace so one should keep the mind open and use history as a torch that helps us to learn from past actions to make our present better and future hopeful.

No comments: