Oh me Oh life of the questions of these recurring!
Of the endless trend of the hopeless;
Of cities filled with the foolish;
What is amid thee oh me oh life?!
Whit Whitman,
American Poet
It is true that the ultimate goal of human life in this world is to attain a
state of absolute peace and happiness. Even in Western philosophies, evil is
understood to mean nothing more than that thing that brings agony or
displeasure, constituting the disruption of the flow of peace and happiness
of mankind, and as such the struggle in life, they say, should mean a
struggle to conquer evil. Much debate is on since time immemorial as to
which way is the best way for mankind to follow, in his quest to achieving
this. There were different philosophers prescribing different methods at
different intervals of human history; those as prescribed by religious
institutions and the ones by their antagonists. The enlightenment that
happened in the 18th century Europe proved the consolidation of one of the
above systems: that of the antagonists of the religious institutions.
It wouldn't be wrong to conclude that Karl Marx was the very first man who
re-wrote history based on Darwin's theory/postulation of evolution (dubious
as that may) and concluded that the history of man is nothing more than the
history of a creature who is trying to survive, through a quest to achieving
absolute peace and happiness by economic liberation. He wrote as against the
famous statement of Christ " Seek ye first, the kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all shall be added unto you", saying, " Seek ye first,
the economic kingdom and all shall be added unto you". That since man is
only a product of chance (as "confirmed" by Darwin); his life is nothing
more than the service to the flesh. Let him eat his fill, drink to brink,
accumulate wealth, have sex, and do everything according to his heart’s
cravings. He has no obligations, no responsibilities, but rights and
liberties. His organization as gregarious should not be more than meeting in
order to come up with a social and political structure that satisfies the
need of the flesh only. It is only that thing that can be seen that should
deserve attention.
This brought about the notion of material
description of the world we live, in the realm of man’s social activities:
social Darwinism. This understanding evolved the two widely known economic
theories, capitalism and socialism. The two theories had in the last two
centuries profound influence over mankind. Since then, the indices of
national development everywhere in the world are mirrored from the spectacle
of the kind of food people eat, mortality rate, life expectancy and other
things that have direct correlation to what eyes can see and hands can touch
only. That even crisis in human organisations and communities are explained
only in the light of poverty. It tries by all possible means to prove to the
people of the world that poverty is the only problem of mankind and at
individual level only economic activity that should mark the height of the
liberation of human mind.
Socialism failed. We are today left with capitalism, which is nothing
different from the other sister-theory, except perhaps in form and
structure. But the goal is the same: material description of the universe we
live, and the goal to achieve happiness only through economic empowerment.
But yet at the turn of the century the system is yet to satisfy the cravings
of mankind as earlier thought it would. We find that in America, where the
system is most entrenched, people are always complaining about the
subjugation they suffer from, by this system, which occupies them only with
the struggle to feed and survive. They are beginning to read meaning into
life than what this system offers.
When Maria Pruezel, the mother of the onetime Broadway Star, Freddie Prinze,
wrote the account of what made him committed suicide, in 1977, she concluded
thus:
"Freddie had come to the Hollywood with a dream he believed about to come
true. But in Hollywood he stopped being a person and became as he put it - a
piece of ‘merchandise’. He was offered a fortune to endorse lunch boxes
bearing his trademark quip...Freddie the product had replaced Freddie the
person." She finished by asking rhetorical questions: ".... Was all this
what killed Freddie? Was it that the dollar was more important than the
human being with feelings and emotions? Was the image more important than
the real person? .... If this is the case, then we live in a society
suffering from spiritual malnutrition." (Emphasis mine).
This kind of dissatisfaction and misfortune that caught up with Freddie
Prinze is today seen in many individuals in America and other parts of the
world who are left with no option than to dedicate their life in the service
to the flesh. These individuals among the liveliest are celebrities. I
cannot remember how often I heard Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, saying
he is not happy in spite of the wealth and the attention he has garnered
from his audience.
To summarize the dilemma of mankind in
relation to happiness at the 21st century this anonymous writer says:
"Today we have higher buildings and wider highways, but shorter temperaments
and narrower points of view
We spend more, but enjoy less.
We have bigger houses, but smaller
families
We have more compromises, but less time.
We have more knowledge, but less judgment
We have more medicines, but less health.
We have multiplied our possessions, but
reduced our values
We talk much, we love only a little, and
we hate too much.
We reached the Moon and came back, but we
find it troublesome to cross our own street and meet our neighbours.
We have conquered the outer space, but not
our inner space.
We have higher income, but fewer
morals....
These are times with more liberty, but
less joy....
With much more food, but less
nutrition....
These are days in which two salaries get
home, but divorces increase.
These are times of finer houses, but more
broken homes...."
This system and its
kind of definition of what salvages mankind in this world has already failed
man in his quest to attain absolute peace and happiness. Perhaps the people
of the world at the 21st century should, right away, start
thinking of a new system that will serve their needs properly. The new
system should bring the indices of national development, to not only poverty
but also stability, in marriage and other things "annexed" to social
relation, and most importantly those aspects of life that go deeper in
dealing with what consoles the spirit of man. Maybe our new table recording
the rate of human development, should, after reading mortality rate, poverty
rate, life expectancy etc, among subject of a prosperous state, should also
read items like contentment, divorce rate, anti-social behaviours, etc. Our
new system should also start looking at man from a point of view of a
creature that has obligations and duties not right and liberties, which
relegates him only to a selfish being, going about seeking for his own
entitlements only, not minding that of others.
I believe it is this kind of thinking that
carries the potential of striking the much-desired balance between the
spirit of man and his physical self, which of course is the necessary
function for his continuing happiness.
April 2004