In Search of Sacred

Modern civilization is built on the atomic dust of individualism. The spectacles all around to celebrate the narcissism of individuals at the cost of immense suffering. Individual desire to use each and everything for the fulfillment of self has only resulted into a struggle of being out of nothingness. The modern idea of self is based on the inherent loss of Being, the sacrifice of the sacredness, and the value of subject is too important to pay attention to the playfulness of life blossoming in every corner of the Universe. The three narcissistic wounds of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud have not changed the iota of human's mind, and it has remained volatile and unsecured as ever before. The undertaking of protecting and preserving ego (image) has only resulted into an unquenchable desire to deploy that image in every corner of the living space, which is well celebrated by the modern world as success. The trivialized success and its profane existence have not denuded the quest of human existence to be historical only through documentation and image-making apparatuses. The trivial success and its celebratory mechanism show how impoverished human beings are and their insecurity is too much profound to be overcome by the theatrics.

To the contrary, a value prevalent in pre-modern societies was based on the idea of sacredness of everything. Plato in Timaeus belived that the Earth is a living being and it has its own value. Those societies were immune from the division of subject and object. The spiritualized thinking was premised on the sacredness of each form, irrespective of living and non-living. The sacred attitude had something to do with integrity in life, where the source of value was not merely the figment of subjective imagination. In modern tradition, Descartes onward, a thinking emerged that nature is desacrilized, devoid of any value, and all sources of value are none other than subject only. The utilitarian ethics coupled with pragmatism have only reduced human beings as selfish automata whose concern is only to perpetuate self-pleasure. This vision of life is visible in the policies of the governments, i.e., to promote efficacy at the cost of human suffering. The recent few incidents in India are showing the obnoxious working culture and extreme pressures on employees, which are causing health fatigues. But the offices are being run on pretext of machine like thinking. The soulless governance, mechanical adjudication, thoughtless development, and imaginary success are the characteristics of modern society. The profound insecurity is the ethical code of controlling the lives of people. The fear-mongering cultures and disciplinary techniques are producing neurotics and psychotics. Under these conditions, one needs to revive the spirit of sacredness.