The autopilot car of indignation

 

Reality is like a hologram. Its appearance keeps changing as your viewing angle changes. What to say about its meaning if even the appearance is not fixed? The meaning of reality similarly changes depending on from which mental position you see it. Take the example of a vagabond you see in a street corner in the town. You may think of him as a lazy lout, a thief, a potential rapist, an escaped prisoner, an unfortunate hungry man… Your perception depends largely on your own attitudes and mental makeup.

Psychologist Erik Erikson says that an infant which grows up receiving consistent, predictable and reliable care from parents or significant others will develop a sense of trust which will mark their relationships with people eventually. Such children are likely to become adults with healthy attitudes towards other people as well as life. On the other hand, an infant that is deprived of such care will develop a sense of mistrust, suspicion and anxiety. It will grow up and become a misfit in society, unable to trust other people and themselves. The way the same reality is perceived by these two kinds of individuals will be diametrically opposed. Same reality but opposite understandings.

This is just a convenient example. We have all received different levels of care (or lack of it) from our parents and other close people. That has left its indelible mark on our psyches too. But a whole lot of other things affect our psyches as we grow up.

In the previous post I spoke about Dr David R Hawkins’s theory of consciousness according to which people are driven by certain emotions and attitudes that correspond to their consciousness levels. People at the lower levels are driven by negative emotions and attitudes and their perceptions of reality are immensely clouded by these emotions and attitudes.

Criminals are people with very low levels of consciousness. Saints and mystics have very high levels of consciousness. Most people possess low levels of consciousness, according to Dr Hawkins. Most of our problems are engendered precisely because of that. The world is such a sad, bad place because of that.

I’m repeating the theme of the last post in slightly different words here because of a question raised by a fellow blogger and a virtual friend, Dr Parwati Singari, at a blogger community: “feminism irritates me, the great caste divide irritates me, hindutva brigade makes me violently angry, but a moment of introspection makes me ask are we on autopilot to becoming intolerant?” #liveandletlive

Feminism, caste, and Hindutva are just examples. It could be anything else like racism, religion, secularism, or even the apparently innocuous cow. Why do such things provoke us violently sometimes?

The answer is clear enough by now, I hope. Our attitudes, emotions, our consciousness levels, make the difference.

The perfect being would be a perfect consciousness, omniscient. Most monotheistic religions imagine one such God. Such a God would understand everything with such clarity that He (She?) would find it hard to be judgmental. Compassion would well up within Him, instead. “It is God’s omniscience that helps Him to endure the sorrows of the world,” as Francois Mauriac puts it. If we knew exactly why the man in the street corner is a lout, we would certainly feel love for him, not any other emotion. We would see the pathetic childhood he had, the bullies he faced at school, the cruelty he endured in society… Understanding will replace our judgmental tendency.

But we don’t possess such clarity of vision. We don’t exist at such high levels of consciousness. We are somewhere far below at the levels of pride, jealousy, greed, selfishness, and so on. That is why we find it difficult to accept diversity of opinions. Differences scare us. And scare inevitably produces monsters.

Dr Singari, I would like to end this on a personal note since it is you who raised this question. I appear like an intolerant schoolmaster when I write about sectarian politics and related affairs. I accept differences of opinion on all other matters. I accept people’s right to differ, not the views. I have my own views, clear and rational, on most things. Nevertheless, even when I confront views which are terribly absurd and bizarre, I let them be as long as they are not threats to public welfare. Mine is not an autopilot drive of intolerant self-righteousness. It is an indignation at the depraved man teaching me honesty, mass-murderer preaching about compassion, and the bigot hijacking patriotism. In a country where fair is foul and foul is fair, indignation mounts an autopilot car.