Skip to main content

Killing for Myths


Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker has shown that people can go to any length and expose themselves to any risk merely to prove that the myths they live by are actually true.  The Brussels bombing is the latest episode in man’s quest for converting myths into truths.

Myths are necessary for making life bearable.  How miserable would life be without the consolations offered by the pie that is awaiting us in the sky after death?  How can we survive without those gods at whose feet we can unload the burdens in our hearts?

As long as gods remain painkillers and shock absorbers, they are harmless.  But the problem is when their worshippers want to impose their painkillers and shock absorbers as the only entities of the kind on everybody in the world.  Christianity did this for a whole five centuries from about 1050 to 1550 CE in the name of crusades.  Did the world become any better place for all those killings and brutality and conversions and what not?

Today we have people belonging to other religions repeating that history.  Imposing their god(s) and canons on others.  They are very active in our own country (Bharat Mata) too.

Perhaps, all this mindless violence and cruelty have nothing to do with god(s) and truth(s).  Perhaps, it arises from frustration.  Frustration of all sorts.  For example, having been left behind by the flight of scientific and technological progress, by the accumulation of wealth by a few, by feeling of rootlessness, by sheer neglect... The reasons could be endless. 

Whatever the reasons, whether they arise from personal frustrations or from the need to impose one’s gods upon others and thus establish sovereignty over the others, religious militancy has done no good so far in human history.  When will our devout warriors of god(s) realise this?  Never, I’m sure.  Because religion has had little to do with realisations!  It’s all about myths.

PS.  An Ode to Atheism

Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.
There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.
There are no bended knees in Atheism;
No supplications, no prayers;
No sacrificial redemptions;
No 'divine' revelations;
No washing in the blood of the lamb;
No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;
No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;
No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;
No christs, and no saviors;
No devils, no ghosts and no gods.
                               
                                                                By Joseph Lewis


Labels:

Comments

  1. Murthy K v v sMarch 23, 2016 at 11:57 AM

    Establishing dominance is the real motto behind any of actions like this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 23, 2016 at 1:06 PM

      I am also of the same opinion. But personal frustrations may also play a role since they tend to make people destructive and religion becomes a good mask for concealing the negativity.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaMarch 23, 2016 at 6:40 PM

    I sometimes don't know what to say. I wonder why people resort to such drastic measures. Frustrations play a huge role, you are right to point that out. People who are satisfied in their lives would not take such steps perhaps. Frustration and rage turn them blind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 23, 2016 at 7:31 PM

      I think religion also makes people blind. The blindness may act as a palliative in many cases. But coupled with frustration, it becomes deadly. There are other factors too, of course.

      Delete
  3. UnknownMarch 25, 2016 at 9:15 AM

    Matheikal, until and unless power hungry lords and their brokers stop using religion as their pawn, this state of affairs will never end. Recent reports, however, give me hope that the tide is turning with more and more people, including those in Saudi Arabia, reporting that they are atheists. The sense that I get is that the dog is beginning to bite its masters with people sick-at-heart with the religious strife around them and the havoc its causing

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 25, 2016 at 3:41 PM

      Yes, Lata, all through human history religion and political power have been interrelated. They relied on each other for mutual support. In fact, both are tools made by clever people to manipulate the fools.

      I share your hope that the sensible people begin to understand this and start "biting back".

      Delete
  4. KalpanaMarch 28, 2016 at 10:13 AM

    Religion is such an immensely personal thing that it's astonishing that anyone thinks they can force someone else to do things their way. And of course, there is that 'otherness' where fanatics believe that there is only one god, only one religion. Sad state of affairs. Well written Matheikal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 28, 2016 at 8:35 PM

      If religion remains a personal affair I will be converted to it :) - seriously, in fact.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...
38 comments
Read more

Independence from Dictators too

Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar asked the state to observe ‘Partition Horror Day’ on 14 Aug instead of celebrating the country’s Independence. His organisation, the RSS, as well as its ideological sibling the Hindu Mahasabha, had explicitly directed its members not to celebrate the Independence on 14-15 Aug 1947. From Bombay Chronicle, 9 Aug 1947 Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins gave us a graphic description of what the RSS did on 15 Aug 1947, in their classic book Freedom at Midnight . When the rest of India celebrated its new Independence, the RSS hoisted its own flag, “an orange triangle, emblazoned upon which was the symbol that, in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade, the swastika.” About 500 RSS men stood saluting the swastika on 15 Aug 1947 in Poona. Lapierre and Collins describe the RSS as a “para-fascist movement” whose members “saw themselves as the heirs to those ancient Aryans.” Rajendra Arlekar is an RSS man. He has been doing whate...
10 comments
Read more