Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity f...