Civilisation does not equate to civility!

Civilisation does not assure civility!

So, what is it that makes someone great? Is he the one who has conquered all his animalistic desires and knows that his real needs are beyond the realm of physicality and materialism? This man seeks knowledge and is satisfied when the lock of the meaning of life and the hidden secret of the Universe is unlocked. Such a man is fiction. Nietzsche described him as Übermensch. Hindus referred to him as Rama or Krishna, the revised 2.0 version of a complex man. 

Javanese Trishul

Another version of understanding how life works is to look at Hinduism's representation of the Universe - Trimurti, the Trinity - Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and their consorts. Brahma, the creator, has to work in tandem with his consort, Saraswati. Saraswati is the Goddess of education and creativity. The take-home message here is that to create anything; one needs to have enough knowledge and creativity.

Once the creation is done, life does not just go on unabashed. It has to be preserved and preserved well. To maintain this creation and look after it, one needs the brains, plus the resources for that. For this comes Vishnu, the divinity assigned for this purpose, who operates with his consort, Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. The point here is that to conserve any creation; we need affluence. Wealth is required to ensure the continuity of anything that we create. Maintenance takes money. And money begets money.

At the same time, to guard any property, one should have to power to destroy evil and negative forces. Human instinct is to usurp and squander. He will sleep until his material possession is more than his neighbour's. The guardian for this is Shiva, the dissolver (destroyer). Goddess Sakti or her manifestations Parvati or Kaali, the most ferocious form of divinity, is there to assist him in his task. To maintain the status quo and to keep one's possessions intact, he needs to have the power to destroy. Power is mandatory to stay in charge. Unstoppable rage is pointless. Shiva, by being the brake to unbridled violence, acts against the killing machine of Sakti.

One cannot go on destroying everything in sight forever like what the jihadists are doing. Nothing would be left to protect or protect for. Hence, the creation, preservation and destruction cycle needs to be repeated.

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Our laurels paved with sin?

Credit: orangjohor.com

Lest we forget that the building of civilisation is paved with a bloody trail of heartaches, violence, injustices and loaded with double crossings, mutiny and vices.

No matter how much we try to whitewash and sugarcoat our history, the fact remains. The victors and losers are equally culpable to take the blame for the mayhem that put us all in a quandary in the first place.

No one party can put their fingers to accuse the other of drawing first blood.

Winners always sanitise their ascent to power through mutual consent as though the conquered willingly embraced their intruders with open arms. People do many things to escape torture and fear of death to themselves or loved ones.

Towns did not flourish the God-sanctioned ways. Without fail, thuggery, vices condemned by religions, sex, intoxicants and threats helped. Skyscrapers did not sprout through teachings of the book but via earnings of the unholy kind.

Once conquest is complete, the victors are at liberty to pen their history as and how they want the future descendants to see. They can start mixing the solution for the eyewash.

These, one must remember, whenever one reads the developments of townships of Penang, Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur. Sure, Sutan Puasa must have had the foresight to see the confluence of Sg Klang and Sg Gombak as a potential site to prosper his tin mine business. But it was also Yap Ah Loy and his boys, with the money extorted from sojourners who crossed the Gombak river at the vicinity of Masjid Jamek, who rolled in cash to spur various businesses to take KL to its current metropolitan status.

Ipoh became the capital of the silver state with its tin business through the blessings of the secret societies, Ghee Hin and Hai San. The royalty did not oversee Ipoh's scaling greater heights from the sidelines but by taking sides cunningly. The British did not genuinely act as the peacemaker with the purest of intention but with a carrot, a stick and lots of backhand manoeuvres.

Thus are the cases too how religious influences must have spread. Rare are instances when the masses suddenly saw the wisdom of a particular religion and converted en masse. There must have surely been lots of goodies passed around, if not fear of the unknown.