Reason – Page 8

Repression of Truth

Why does God punish people for doing something when he is their destiny maker? I asked and “Stop your nonsense” people replied. We are all taught to be honest since childhood. But no one dares to live an honest life. If someone tries to live an honest life we mark them as a rebel and try to repress him. Because their freedom irks us and makes us feel jealous.

I was posting against the government taxation this morning and my father wanted me to write all my thoughts in a diary and not in public. His argument was that I would offend many people and they wouldn’t let me live. Is it not paranoia? Is it what speaking truth has come to?

We live in a world where everything has become an offence. Just a few minutes ago I had posted a funny comic where batman sits on a Superman billboard making superman’s image look like Nietzsche. Facebook banned me from posting anything for 24 hours because it thought that I posted something about Joseph Stalin. What if the image is Joseph Stalin? Why does it need to be marked as an offence? Just because the man was villainous doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t post anything about him. What is this but the repression of truth? You can’t forget or erase history by not letting people speak about it. People need to speak about Stalin! People need to know what happened and only then we won’t have another Big Brother who spies in your toilets.

We are so afraid of the truth that we started using Euphemisms. Euphemisms are soft-spoken words in replacement of the brutal truth. You call a handicapped person specially-abled because you are afraid that you will offend him. Hence, you throw sugarcoated lies as soft as butter right at their face. Why are you so afraid of the truth? What had happened so much that you never even want to listen to the truth let alone speaking.

“Homoeopathy or alternative medicines may not work” I said and it offended most of the people who listened to me. Let’s forget about the statement being true or false and just concentrate on people’s reaction. When a statement was thrown at them. They didn’t try to analyse it. They didn’t even plan to give a counter-argument or even ask me some proof. They rejected my statement straight away with no basis or arguments. Meaning we have made truth and false subjective and our opinions are judging something to be true or false.

Right from the ancient history, the truth has always offended people. Even Socrates was poisoned because people thought he was poisoning the minds of youth. In reality, he was just educating them. But the authority figures began to feel paranoid about his teachings because his intelligence threatened them with insecurity. I don’t blame them. They were not as civilized as we are today. Amidst all the technological advances and easy availability of access to knowledge we still feel insecure when it comes to the truth.

Government should be criticised! People should be stripped down with criticism and only then can you totally understand if they would work! Only criticism helps government or authority figures evolve. Only negative remarks help you to perfect as you won’t leave any negative remarks in the future. We are human! We are flawed and imperfect. We are bound to make mistakes and we evolve from those mistakes and make new mistakes. That’s how our life should be. We should not be in the assumption of perfection and repress truth because it offends our perfect assumptions of the world. Let the truth live!

Guess I’m not a MAN after all!

My name is something which represents happiness, but I find myself crying lots of time and I happened to belong to the heterosexuals who are attracted to women and are unfortunately called Men. But I guess I’m not a man. Because “Only women cry”. That’s what they tell me when I start crying. My emotions are repressed every time I try to express something. I like hairstyles, new fashion trends, I like to look good and I take time to get ready. Guess I’m not a man because “He gets ready like a girl!” they shout at me. Sometimes I’m forced to do unhygienic things because I’m a man and I’m supposed to be a brute with no feelings. I’m educated about consent and should never force something on a girl. But I should take it as a gift or a boon if a girl kisses me out of nowhere. Because I’m a man and I’m supposed to be a pervert 24/7 with no preferences of my own. I’m supposed to wait, be respectful towards ladies regardless of their behaviour, be the initiative and compromising person in a relationship and should mostly be the person who has to propose first just because I’m a man. I’m a liberal person with a lot of respect for the Feminism movement. I guess the movement is not all about women’s empowerment. It’s about learning the fact that no one should be discriminated against by using baseless conventional bullshit such as “Women like pink” and “Men are tough”.

“Man up!” we say to someone who doesn’t find the courage to fight. I think we don’t dare to see reality. We should man up and see that every human person is different and have different traits. Zodiac signs don’t work! Personality traits won’t work! Generalizations and universal statements are thrown at people by grouping them which doesn’t necessarily fit everyone belonging in that group. Just because I have a penis and facial hair doesn’t mean that I won’t cry; that I’m not sensitive. Many women with hormonal imbalance have facial hair. If I generalize and claim that all people with facial hair are men, then will women with even one hair on their chin become men? Or is there any degree or measure of hair to prove someone to be a man?

Gender is a gender! It doesn’t have a degree. You are just a man/woman/other! You can’t be more or less man/woman/other by doing specific things other men/women/others do.

‘Darwin Day’ and why we should start celebrating it!

I seriously don’t understand why this day is not celebrated as much as it has to be! On this day, Charles Robert Darwin, who single-handedly fought a battle against creationists and had won was born! Before his contribution, ‘Evolution’ was called as ‘Transmutation’ and was just a science fiction. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin had an abstract idea of evolution of society from micro-cells, but it remained un-explored until Darwin explored, thought and fought against the conventions to state his theory of evolution!

I was shook in surprise when my companions were unaware of his contributions even though they were familiar with the name. I began to question around and was disappointed to see that many of us don’t really know about his contributions to the modern world. By now, you must be thinking Why should we celebrate Darwin Day? What did he do? He just discovered that men evolved from apes. What’s the big fuss! But no! That’s not all! What he did was a battle against conventional religious beliefs which paved a path to many rationalists and reasonable people today. He fought GOD!

Just like most of the people in 19th century, Darwin was a believer too. He even had a theology degree in Cambridge. Only after that, he went on a voyage which changed the way he thought. He lost his faith when his son and his favorite daughter passed away. That’s when he conceived the idea of species evoluting into other by a process he called ‘natural selection’. Even though he had a clear idea of what his theory was, he still feared to publish it as it is beyond the understanding of extremely religious society he lived in. His grandfather was isolated from the society for writing a poem on his own version of evolution. He suffered questioning faith and fighting a battle with himself for 20 long years until Alfred Russel Wallace, a fellow who was influenced by Darwin himself wrote to him about Wallace’s own theory of evolution by natural selection. This scared Darwin and had also motivated him to publish his completely written book along with Wallace’s paper called ‘On The Origin Of Species by Means of Natural Selection’. This book suggested that all life is related! It is revolutionary! It’s something the world has never witnessed! This has offended many religious groups because it is against their idea that god had created everything around us!

Darwin v/s Creator:

Back then, the reasonable people were shut down when a creationist yelled “Look around us! What do you think created everything if there no creator?”. Of course, the reasonable asked them “Why do you think everything needed to be created to exist?” but when creationists asked them “Well then, how do you think everything exists?” the reasonable just lost the argument and had lost in thoughts. It was always a mysterious question which haunted everyone. How did we start existing? Is there a creator who’s creating us?

But the theory of evolution explained it all. By each new edition of his book, Darwin started strengthening his arguments. It was all clear now! No matter how the idea created a massive negative opinions, nothing can stop the truth from being the truth. His idea that species which change according to the situations, climate and environment around them can survive and reproduce more younger ones.

“Let there be Man” became a fictional statement by world’s best selling book. Man just wasn’t a man. He was a cell, mold, multiple-cells, rodents, apes, walking apes and then Men! Nothing is just created out of blue! It evolves! He devised a tree of life which can be used to trace back to common ancestors and relations among all life on earth! That plant you cut down to build a damn table, is actually your 1000 trillionth cousin! That chicken you munched on is your grandchild by distant. All this thought because of one man who fought all the conventions and broadened the minds of then creationists!