Skip to main content

Beyond right and wrong

 


“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” The great 13th-century Persian poet Rumi sang that. Rumi was an enlightened person and like all enlightened people he knew that the line between right and wrong is rather too blurred. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are not absolutes except in science and mathematics.

Sonya, the heroine of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, is a prostitute. Prostitution is absolutely wrong, a cardinal sin, in most religions and moral systems. Sonya stands on the side of the condemned in ordinary morality. But not for Dostoevsky. Sonya emerges as one of the noblest characters in the novel. She was driven to prostitution by utter poverty. She had to look after her ailing sister and her children. Sonya had no choice but sell her body.

Ordinary morality and religion would condemn Sonya. But Rumi would have met her on that field beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.

Life’s truths and rights cannot be absolute. There is no God who would dare to dish out absolute truths and rights in the world of human beings. Human truths are limited. Human rights are circumscribed. By circumstances, by motives, by ironies.

One person’s fetish may be another’s food. One person’s god may be another’s demon.

Your truth may be your neighbour’s biggest irony.

Why do you insist on imposing your truths, your likes, your views on your neighbour?

This discussion is absurd, I know. We live in a post-truth world where truths and facts don’t matter at all, forget about absolutes and relatives. The heartbeats of slogans override the sobriety of truths and rights here. It is not about wrongdoing and rightdoing anymore; it’s about fabrication of truths and rights. The prophets of post-truth are alchemists. And alchemy was always fake.

Alchemy may go about sporting a long, white beard which pretends to be something what it is definitely not. Alchemy relies on false propaganda. Massive advertisements. Communicative abundance. Diarrhoea of words. Photoshops. Photo ops. Costumes. Fancy dress which is taken as real by a bunch of bhakts.

A field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing alone won’t do anymore. We are not in 13th century. We are in post-truth 21st century.

What is needed now is a field beyond absolute truths and post-truth. What is needed is real democracy. Real democracy teaches us that no man or woman is good enough to claim they possess the truth and to rule over fellow beings.

PS. This post has been provoked by the latest Indispire theme: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ― Rumi #internationalpeaceday

 

 

Comments

  1. StaffMergeSeptember 21, 2021 at 1:17 PM

    Excellent information shared by this post. StaffMerge present the best Video Interview Platform for making hiring easier and time saving process for Employers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Moon's BOYFRIEND September 21, 2021 at 1:36 PM

    I remember Sonya from class and I believe that she will meet Rumi at the field beyond truths and the contrary. The world names the truths and wrongs according to their will and you've explained it pretty well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 21, 2021 at 3:50 PM

      Rights and wrongs are relative to one's upbringing, religion, culture, education, psychological makeup...

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरSeptember 21, 2021 at 2:37 PM

    What is needed now is a field beyond absolute truths and post-truth. I am pondering over it. I am also pondering over - no man or woman is good enough to claim they possess the truth and to rule over fellow beings. Yes, we are not in 13th century (which was perhaps better than this post-truth 21st century). Your thoughts appear to be in the context of today's India. However they apply to the world as a whole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 21, 2021 at 3:53 PM

      Yes, they apply to the whole world. Trump, Putin, Jinping...all need to understand these lessons. Biden seems to be a bit better...

      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

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 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...
19 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more