Take for example the recent issue about the evidence provided on climate change by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The board is formed by eminent scientists and headed by a Nobel laureate. Even then, it was found that they did not analyze the facts properly and jumped to conclusions. Thus, while the path itself is benign, the execution may indeed be imperfect and end badly. It may be true that all of them involved had the utmost human well-being in mind. However, that did not stop them from being over zealous and not analyzing the facts properly.
Coming back to our discussion, is the expectation that others should be convinced the worst thing that can happen? Have we reached the end of the trail? Not quite. There is an even more sinister possibility.
That possibility is that of forcing others to be convinced no matter whether the other person wants to be convinced. That, to me, is the start of terrorism. Now, terrorism being such a sensitive topic nowadays, I am not claiming that this is the only reason for terrorism, but just one of the reasons. There may be a number of other factors for terrorism - economic, political, or societal. Here, I focus more on the religious aspect of it.
Terrorism
Terrorism, in this sense is essentially fundamentalism taken to the extreme. Not content with just expecting others to become convinced, a staunch believer of his opinions may take it a step further and force others to accept his convictions, more by force than by coercion. It is at this point, an ironic thing happens. Not only does the other person forced to accept the belief due to circumstances, but it also inculcates a new fear within him - a fear against the belief being forced upon him tried to address in the first place, just manifested differently!
In a way, we come to a full circle here: we started by trying to understand a fear and in turn, replaced one fear with another. This is why terrorism is fundamentally antithetical to religion. While a belief or faith tries to address a fear, terrorism replaces one fear with another, thus negating the whole process.
You can also notice a few other patterns here. Take for example, the typical fundamentalist or terrorist approaches - be it forcing people to wear a particular garment (such as in the case of the Taliban) or preventing someone to follow their own will (numerous cases of self-proclaimed censorship such as those committed by various parties like Shiv Sena or Sri Ram Sene in India or even in other countries). In either of these cases, they force people to follow certain rituals or beliefs that they hold dear. It is one thing to explain why some actions are preferable and another to force others to perform those actions against their will, and that occurs when someone traverses the leftmost path in the tree.
The omissions
Like before, let us take a closer look at the omissions. While fundamentalism leads to terrorism by means of attempting to force others, I have not portrayed a similar trend on the right-side. Does it mean that the more 'scientific' approaches do not force opinions on others? While there may be rare occurrences where that may have been the case, by and far, the 'curious' path prefers to provide the proof for the belief and let others analyze and accept the proof at their own pace.
Does that always work? If we provide all the proof in the world about what we know, can we hope that others will come to accept them? Of course not, as we shall see next.
2 comments:
How do these fit with the chart ?
They do not. Naxalites are more politically driven than knowledge driven. The framework deals with the inquiry into the unknown, which Naxalites aren't really bothered about. Hence, they would fall outside the chart.
Terrorists are still valid within the framework because of their initial claim towards religion, which inherently is an inquiry of the unknown. They eventually lose the religion part and get more involved in politics and hence they are represented as being partly within the 'faith' circle).
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