Ideas Wreak Havoc

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 26 February 2025 "Most of the ideas are just to be appreciated but not to be assimilated." Here's a newspaper (Le Monde) account of torture practised in modern concentration camps: The victim is bound to a metal chair, then electric shocks are administered to him in increasing intensity till he confesses. The torturer cups his hands and slaps the victim on the ear repeatedly till the eardrum breaks. A dentist straps the prisoner to a chair and drills till he strikes a nerve. The drilling goes on till the victim agrees to cooperate. Human beings aren't naturally cruel. They become cruel when they're unhappy-or when they succumb to an ideology. One ideology against another; one religion against another; one god pitted against another god. This goes on. And people crushed in between them. The men who crucified Jesus could very well have been gentle husbands and loving fathers, who practised cruelty to maintain a religion or an ideology. If religious people had always followed the instinct of their heart rather than the logic of their religion, we would have been spared the sight of heretics burning at stakes, widows walking into funeral pyres and innocent people slaughtered in wars that are waged in the name of a fictitious god. Remember, any ideology, however sublime or exalted it may seem, is but a specialized prejudice. Adherence to any belief is cerebral death. Allegiance to an 'ism' is seeing the world through a prism: You never see it as it is. Ideology is a shield to protect and justify your irrationality. We are all incarcerated by our turbid beliefs and man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. Always remember this oracular truth that hazier an idea, more dangerous will be the repercussions. Adolf Hitler had a nebulous idea of racial supremacy or Aryan hegemony. It was so convoluted that it led to the Second World War and threatened the elimination of an entire race, Jewish. Alexander the Great dreamt of conquering the whole world and his overambitious idea culminated in his own lonely death. Ideas always have a volatile streak to them and that's why, an idea is often vulnerably volcanic in nature and dies its own death. Ideas and isms have wreaked more havoc than they've caused happiness. When an idea pops up, we immediately try to implement it without understanding it holistically. This is happening as we've been hit by AI and its practical manifestation called ChatGPT. Whether it's a communist ideology, capitalism or socialism, we tend to justify every idea and ideology with our half-baked understanding and jeopardise the very concept of peaceful co-existence. An idea soon becomes an ideology and an ideology is always monolithic. It's like a commandment written on a granite capsule. Its ossified rigidity appeals to people and we become coldly indifferent to exalted human emotions while being loyal to an idea. The biggest casualty caused by an idea or an ideology is compassion. Let human beings live life without the straitjacket of ideas and allow compassion to suffuse over the firmament of mankind. Religious ideologies have to be shelved before we do away with all ideologies because it's religion that births a host of silly ideas and beliefs and is the primary source of all lunacy that's prevalent in the world. But compassion has no ideology. Only Compassion, Empathy and Understanding can bring about a complete transformation to our beleaguered humanity. ----------- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/ideas-wreak-havoc/d/134730 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism