A very interesting question raised by my fellow 6/1 blogger Conrad.
In my not so humble opinion, the answer has been staring at our faces for decades. None of them work in the long term. All of them have been tried and found wanting. The human being is simply not willing to bring about a world that can live in harmony with all members like other species do.
The nearest society has come to some kind of a Utopia is when it engages in totally spiritual approaches to life. This simply means that we let what is innate in us to operate freely so that superimposed value systems of superior/inferior, good/bad, etc be replaced with what Frans de Waal calls our greater powers of abstraction, and involves “a move toward universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring, and punishment.”
At this point, for most people religion comes in as religion and morality has been inseparably enjoined since long. Oxford English Dictionary defines religion as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. This is not what will bring about morality in our lives but I strongly believe that spiritualism will certainly do. OED defines spirituality as “Relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.”
Quite how a spiritual life can be inculcated in us is something that I am not qualified to suggest. I however think that small beginnings made in our schools right from the childhood can and does bring about this as, I have personally seen happening in many of our schools that teach our children good values from the beginning. For those interested, here is one such school and I reiterate that, there are many thousands more in India and hopefully, in the next couple of generations, at least in India, we will see a society that will be harmonious with sound moral values.
This is my take on this week’s Friday 6 On 1 blog post topic. The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Conrad. Please do go over to their respective blogs to see what they have to say on the topic. Thank you.