A thought struck me recently that many conflicts in today's world are due to strong desires to right past wrongs. The problem is accenuated if the society, or a section of it, defines its identity on past wrongs or on righting these wrongs. To name a couple of examples: Israel righting Holocaust and the Babri Masjid demolition.
Once one's olive trees are defined in terms of wrongs, he will fight harder for it - and be more willing to give up on the Lexuses. Extending that logic to a society, one that defines its collective olive tree on past wrongs will be more willing to sacrifice the Lexuses.
For Indian society to develop, we need to stop defining ourselves in terms of past wrongs. We need a vision. And we need a vision to look ahead - not behind.
Once one's olive trees are defined in terms of wrongs, he will fight harder for it - and be more willing to give up on the Lexuses. Extending that logic to a society, one that defines its collective olive tree on past wrongs will be more willing to sacrifice the Lexuses.
For Indian society to develop, we need to stop defining ourselves in terms of past wrongs. We need a vision. And we need a vision to look ahead - not behind.
posted by eV at 7:31 AM
2 Value-adds:
what you say is a pragmatic solution but the humanistic one attempts to correct past wrongs. overdone, it just becomes an attempt to define the present and the future in terms of past wrongs as you say, but, without an adequate knowledge of what wrongs we have committed or have suffered and without attempting to redress them or gain redress for them, we couldn't move forward except as automata. revenge is a bad, sad, but very human, motive for progress and so is the desire to compensate for what was left undone.
Bottomline: i accept what you say but there will always be the tendency you describe unless we forget our past wrongs, which is not possible for us as humans; which in turn means no individual or society will be able to stop defining itself in terms of past wrongs.
Madatadam, True. The intent of my post was to say that in order to develop, one will have to look beyond the past and not let it bog him down - though such tendencies are quite natural.
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