Wake up Deluded Humans

Ashish Pant had made an interesting effort to outline the nature of society and the significance of religious organizations in it. The agenda of this article, however, needs to be made more explicit.

The article seems to suggest that societies are somewhat isolated entities. How do societies affect each other.

The emphasis on time alone is not sufficient. It needs to be supplemented with space and place as well.

Hi Asish,

Your sociological reasoning of ``evolution of humankind`` is thought provoking to say the least and very interesting indeed. In your final paragraph you say:

In all this, time is extremely critical. With time, the very definitions of society change and a whole new set of social evils may arise. At every step in time, we must recognize our ``Churches`` and ``sects`` and the nature of social evils that plague us. Else, we along with our ``Churches`` will become irrelevant and eventually perish.....

I tend to concur for most part, but I do not believe that human species will perish if we do not adopt to changes in timely manner. It only will result in stagnant evolution process. After all, human species, although superior among the life on earth (to best of my knowledge, of course) is just a piece of the puzzle among the scheme of things called mother nature.

re: Shafqat

Actually I see it completely different. The founding fathers of America saw religion as an ailing ``Church`` and created a ``sect`` which redefined the ``rules`` of society. They saw religious persecution and poverty as the main social evils in the ``old world`` and effectively countered them by implementing ``separation of Church and State``, creating secularism and practising capitalism. Their ``sect`` of capitalism has made the ``Church`` of religion irrelevant even in their own society. Example: How much religion does an election in the US depend on ? The issues are always related to taxes, budgets, economic policy, unemployment, wages, etc. Abortion and School prayer are the only religious issues that crop up now and then, and have failed to really impact a whole lot.

However, over time, every ``sect`` does become a ``Church``. As is evident by the growing dissent over the ban on school prayer. What was at one time seen as a progressive thing is now viewed by a lot of people as oppressive.

In terms of comparing this to the Muslim world of a thousand years ago, therein lies the eternal conflict of an old ``Church`` and a progressive ``sect``. Chowk, in particular, is full of detailed debates on this. I see all conflicts like Muslim vs West, Socialist vs Capitalist, Communist vs Capitalist as ``church`` vs ``sect``.

As far as the ``economic refugee`` bit is concerned, it was really supposed to be ``an Indian economic refugee from the ``Church`` of Socialism to the ``Sect`` of Capitalism.

I hope that makes my viewpoint a little clearer.

regards

Ashish

It seems interesting to me that the core elements of the ``Church`` are the same across societies and time. For example, in the United States today social order is maintained by recourse to a text(the Constitution) that was produced by minds considered essentially infallible (the Founding Fathers) and that is interpreted for the general population by wise and learned thinkers (the Supreme Court). Thus, the Constitution can be seen as a divine document, the Founding Fathers as infallible prophets, and the justices of the Supreme Court as clergy - not much different from the Muslim world of a thousand years ago.

saad shafqat

PS: what was the significance of putting `economic refugee` in quote marks ?

All this reminds me off Sociology 101 :)

As I read this and taxed my mind to come up with an effective argument, I realized that I had slept through most of sociology 101. Hence no argument . Though still a good read. :)