Saturday, May 5, 2007

Discrimination

Discrimination has been one of the basic instincts of human nature since forever, the second nature of humans ever since their origin. This instinct has been suppressed over and over again on religious or ethical grounds but still it remains one of the primary acts we perform on daily basis.

Observing it deeply, we find that discrimination is actually multi-layered and there is further discrimination in each layer itself. For example, the major criteria for discrimination has always been religion throughout the history of this world. Peel that layer and within the same religion, there is discrimination based on culture, origin and language. Peel that layer and there is discrimination among blacks and whites. Within blacks or whites, there are rich and poor. And these are not the only major factors for discrimination. Within each group there are educated and uneducated, well mannered and ill-mannered, males and females and the list goes on.

Humans were given the ability to discriminate because the beauty of this world is in its variety, its diversity. To enjoy this colorful world, we had the blessing of discrimination, but the tendency of human mind is to use every right power for the wrong purposes. This made discrimination, which was meant to help us admire, appreciate and love the different colorful forms of life, the reason to deject and hate each other.

It is a fact that human mind tends to authorize each instinct that seems to be for the betterment of the individual, no matter how devastating the effects may be on others. This makes us think why would discrimination be used as a very frequent tool by our minds against different forms of the same species as us. It may be just to fuel our inherent sense of pride, but the real question is that what is pride actually and how does pride, gained by discrimination or otherwise, help ourselves? The answer to that question is that pride is the force that acts in our self-defense against lack of confidence in ourselves, in our very existence. It is the eternal journey of man to justify the reason of his existence that drives us towards a temporary refuge, a form of ecstasy that stops even if for a little while the surmounting and tormenting questions we keep asking ourselves, "Why are we here? What gives us the right to live?" And this refuge, this path of ecstasy we are talking about is termed as "pride" in our society. First we discriminate, then we justify our superiority to others and then we find some comfort in the assumption that we, belonging to a particular group, are superior than others and thus have more right over life and existence than others. The main questions remain unanswered but we train ourselves to think that if someone's right to existence are to be doubted, it should be group we consider "lower" than ourselves first. This thought, how lame it might sound, helps us feel better and continue with our lives. Thus the more a person feels unconfident about himself, the more pride he tends to acquire, thus balancing the negative force against him with the negative force against the fabric of humanity as a whole, but who cares?

Human mind is simply wonderful, so full of surprises. One part of our mind is so capable of tricking the other part. Our sense of right can be blinded so easily with the sense of wrong. Sometimes these patterns of human mind are the only support that help us get through tough times in our life. But the decision is still there to make; are we ready to sacrifice the potential of all the love, happiness and joys of equity for mere personal and false justifications to comfort ourselves. Its the eternal decision between the right and the wrong, and what helps us tell the right from the wrong? Its our sense of "discrimination".

Life is wonderful.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

seriously enjoyed your writings and loved the way you think, pretty much deep and logical and relates so much to our reality.

unfortunately, you stopped blogging your writings...or haven't written anything since then?!