BHAPA HASHI of the planet asprin!

There you are ...
The Jedi name generator (available on the web) christened me this after asking some random questions.

And why on earth would I be looking for my Jedi name you ask?
Well, I have been thinking a little and feeling a lot since the Mumbai blasts took place.
And in thinking, and in feeling, I realized the truth in the Starwars saga: one of the biggest dangers in taking on the dark side of the force is that you become a part of the dark side, for, something as simple as hating your enemy converts you to it.

It holds true today. How can you fight evil without becoming evil yourself? How can you use just the amount of force that is required to nullify the threat without using excessive force? One false step and you are one of them ... just a small transgression of a line that is murky at best and the defender becomes the aggressor.

Hate is generally the culprit ... it is what causes the good to cross the line and join the ranks of the bad. If we could be perfectly objective, we would recognize the exact steps that are necessary in order to eliminate a threat without indulging in atrocities that give birth to the next incarnation of the threat.

But then, I now realize, humans can only be humans (apart from Zidane ... who became God the other day - because of a human fault). We are probably the only species on this planet that have the capability of choosing what to do. We are the only ones that can consciously put a space between stimuli and response. We are the only ones that can go beyond our natural instincts and do things that are contrary to our fundamental instincts ... like putting our own lives into jeopardy in order to save another (apart from Dogs I realize ... especially wrt this particular example).

We live in an age when technology has made it possible to live longer than ever before, and to do so with good health. However, we have created a million boundaries which do not have any physical reality ... but then mental reality is the only reality that there really is ... and now we fight over and for things like religion.

What is wrong?
Provided our race actually manages to survive for a few more generations without triggering some cataclysmic event that destroys civilization as we know it, there may come a time when our progeny look back at these years and wonder what sort of barbarians could possibly do the things that we are doing today. What sort of morals and what sort of religion could cause people to kill other people senselessly. What sort of governance could ensure that such events take place ... and more importantly, what sort of individuals could possible constitute such a race and such a society. (A lot like what you felt when as a kid you looked at the first depiction of the neanderthal man ... before they realized that homo-sapiens did not evolve from them but were a parallel lineage)

Look at it objectively, and how are we any better than the Englishmen who dunked old women in water or burnt them alive for being witches ... how are we any better than the people that burnt Joan of Arc at the stake in the name of religion? How are we any better than the perpetrators of the holocaust? .... People that we look down upon and consider barbaric and inhumane.

Perhaps, this is not a problem at all. What we are is not the problem. Perhaps, the biggest problem we have is the inability to accept ourselves for what we are ....
a composite of evolved brains cause a duality where we are capable of thinking beyond what we are but incapable of actually acting it out.

Another problem is perhaps a dearth of philosophical and religious thought in our times.
Our socio-political system is mostly driven by western thought ... and western thought by the greek schools ... but in all these centuries after plato and socrates, we don't really have an alternate thought structure to replace theirs. We are living at a time when a social breakdown will perhaps force people to re-think phiosophy and re-create society more in keeping with the current conditions of the world.

Look at our religions ... apart from some which are based on nature, all are based on worshipping one son of god or the other ... a multitude fighting over prophets and seers ... quirky because these days the same people would rather promptly lock up any one claiming to be a son of god in some mental institution.

Our society is too full of cynicism and high school science to ever give birth to another prophet. We are a lost generation who have enough science to be unable to accept God (and his incarnations on earth) with the unwavering faith of our ancestors ... and not enough science to believe otherwise.

This restlessness is bound to vent itself in a million ways. Every generation shall have its own excuse for violence and blood shed, and it shall never end.
This is not a statement of hopelessness but an acceptance that humans are humans, and so much like the philosophy of yin and yang, the primal and the Godly are so mixed up in us, we cannot be one without being the other in turns.