Civilizations

Civilizations: Avenues of Genocide and Homicide By Dr Sandeep Kuulshrestha “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ever since the biblical Adam and Eve started the evolution of Human Race (or for atheists, ever since the theory of evolution courtesy Darwin has emerged), millions of so-called civilizations have emerged, from Babylon to Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley to the barbaric periods of Timur the lane to the schizophrenic era of Hitler and the emergence and decadence of communism. Except for communism, all the civilizations/utopias have used God for their own benefit, by killing people who didn’t agree with either a particular race or beliefs or thoughts or authority and then justifying with their own, self-created concepts of God. In communism the only weapon was “control”, while in other civilizations the weapon has been “coercion”. What I wish to emphasize here is that Civilization is a myth. Ever since the human race has emerged superior to the animals, there has always been, and will be, a clash of groups of people on the basis of religion, sects of religions, race, caste (more applicable in south Asia, particularly India) and fundamentalist theories. The people who can control these things, namely the politicians and the spiritual leaders, enjoy it as it gives them a constituency. This constituency business has been in existence since time immemorial. In earlier times, the Kings used this tool as a propaganda machine (the King of the other Kingdom is evil, I have been sent by the heavens above) to attack other states and to ruthlessly rule over the new possessions and get indulged in mass homicide. For Kings, even a small baby of the enemy is dangerous and in that context, innumerable kids have been assassinated. This holds true for communists as well, who have massacred millions of people, including the infamous elimination of Tzar and his beautiful family. In the past 5000 years, the world has only seen barbarism in the name of civilization. The human race still is uncivilized. Every man-made religion is nothing but a propaganda machine. In the countries where the people don’t have employment and any source of income, they are prone to adopt things like fundamentalism in the name of a so-called religion. In Afghanistan, The Taliban used to slit the throat of helpless human beings, succeeded by a giant chant of “God is great”. The God is really great, wherever He is, as these kind of wretched people are tolerated by Him. But this has happened in every civilization, every culture, and every society. Pagans were massacred by Christians in the postChrist era, Red terror initiated by the communists killed innumerable helpless innocent people during the time of Lenin/Stalin. Partition of India based on the two nation theory took around two million lives. Although, in writing, every religion prescribes peace, it is seldom followed by its preachers.

On the other hand, rich nations are now finding the uncivilized lot turning against them and targeting all their machinery to ruin the basic structure of their democracies. United States has a big weapons lobby, the worst of whose role was quite visible in the war of hegemony between USSR and the US and the weapons are still floating around. It was a genesis of another kind of anticivilization which has taken its toil on Kashmir, Chechnya and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. Considering this, we can very well say that at least during the cold war, there was at least a balance of power. However, the current situation of all great “civilizations” is really very bad as the war between the Islamic fundamentalists and the west has just begun, the seed of which was sown at the time of Creation of Israel. I am saying that civilizations have become the avenues of genocide and homicide because of the fact that human race has never kept quite and never lived in Peace. Till the time there would be inadequate resources, lack of education and employment, hegemony of super powers, the world will keep on moving towards a suicidal decadence and people like terrorists will rule our lives and they will decide the matter of the people’s life and death, in the name of God, because they perceive that God has given them the right to kill anyone, without mercy. Its not pessimism, it’s the way things are moving and threshold has been crossed already. That’s why; Emerson said the famous lines quite a long time back. We have never been Civilized. Once Mahatma Gandhi was asked, “what do you think of the western civilization?” and he replied, “I think it would be a very good idea”. Now it’s probably even because we can’t claim anymore that east is civilized. I reiterate, civilization is a myth and it would be so forever.