Universal embrace of tolerance could prevent wars, ethnic and religious conflicts
The reason why the world has no peace today is because many nations and most individuals deny the supremacy of a moral order, in their inter-personal, inter-communal and international relationships. The number of such individuals and nations increasing day-by-day who think that wickedness, cunningness and vice are better than virtue and violence is better than non-violence. Some whole societies or nations think that man is merely an animal, hankering after material progress and comforts.
They believe that man is satisfied merely by sense gratification and that he is an animal that Lives from sensation to sensation! They refuse to accept the evidence, namely that man has a conscience and that he has higher aspirations, such as the aspiration for peace, calmness and bliss. Even a most degraded person also has an inner aspiration for solace, satisfaction and peace. However, they fail to realise that peace, contentment and bliss are not the qualities of bodily cells; they are the qualities of the conscious self in its state of moral greatness.
Because of their materialistic thinking and attitude, scholars have given to society what is called the materialistic interpretation of history. This view of man and history has been popularised and publicised by historians, economists and social scientists. The result is that the modern man does not believe in the supremacy of the moral law. Man has, therefore, ceased to apply human values to his problems.
Take, for example, the problem of nuclear weapons. There have been many agitations and conferences to bring about disarmament. In the talks for disarmament or in the negotiations for the reduction of nuclear weapons, the only quality brought to bear is the fear of a way and the resulting annihilation. The talks are vitiated and they do not lead to actual disarmament because no moral values are brought to bear on the problem. The lack of a sense of moral responsibility is, in fact, the most sinister aspect of modern civilisation. The whole modern thinking of man is characterised by a lack of moral responsibility. A psychiatrist, today, would explain that a person murdered because he had developed a complex after his father had beaten him with a stick when he was a small boy! So, the responsibility is of the father who had been cruel to his son! In many other forms, the attitude that I am not responsible runs through every aspect of modern life. This has undermined the moral quality of life. So, if we now want world peace, the real effort lies in giving man a sense of moral responsibility. Let man realise that it is his moral responsibility to eliminate these because these cause peacelessness not only to him but to others as well.
Today we see people killing people in the name of Religion, but has any religion ever taught its followers to kill innocent people? The chronicles of mankind or various civilisations or nations bear witness to the truth that property is worth inestimable and incalculable amount and millions of men have been lost in the slaughterhouse of intolerance during the last 2000 years or so because of intolerance that ensued from a hurt ego, an unfulfilled selfish motives or narrow-mindedness that could not stand the existence of different views, different lifestyles, different cultures and different self-interests. Can anyone calculate or imagine how many families lost their peace and harmony and how many cities and civilisations were ruined because of intolerance? If only this virtue, called Tolerance, had been sustained—all or many other virtues also would have survived, for, when tolerance is lost, man loses his patience, self-control, spirit of non-violence, etc. Therefore it is not too late in the day, for, if even now those who are killing innocent people begin to observe this virtue mankind can be saved from the scourge of wars.
(Writer is a spiritual educator & popular columnist; views are personal)
