Monday, June 15, 2015

The Business of Killing

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

Outside of eat, drink and be happy, we also like the business of killing.  I am no longer sure of the word happy applies to killing, as we seem to be surrounded with the business of killing.  Where ever you live in the world, from the streets of Chicago, to worn torn Middle East, Asia and Pacific, and Europe and Africa, Australia and everywhere we live we seem to be obsessed with the killing business.

Most of my weekly columns don’t require any research.  They are mostly reporting facts as is, or opinions based on observation.  For writing this column, I spent considerable time looking for information on when did the human beings start this business of killing each other?  The internet has millions (may be billions) of references to our evolution, and along with the evolution into current human form, we also have a history of creating and using weapons.  Weapons to kill, what else?

A lot of time was invested trying to trace the first human conflict and invention of weapons.  All this stuff goes back to hundreds of thousands of years, and whatever little we can find on history of weapons and killing relates directly to about 500,000 years and the evolution of neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic homo-sapiens.  While this sounds more scientific and something we don’t want to dig into any deeper, it simply means that human beings brain began to process complex social phenomenon such as language and religion.  It was a long time ago when human beings as we are today when the creation evolved with brain large enough to appreciate and learn multiple languages and understand that we all might not be the same.  There it started, this whole business of logical thinking and illogical thinking, which leads into the business of killing.

I am a Hindu by birth, and believe in god.  Everyone in my family I believe are all believers in god.  Hinduism is also traced with a fairly long history, that predates any other religion is believed to be a way of life.  Our preachers and historians, and our elders all state the same; Dharma and Karma.  Simply agreeing to the oldest religion as the one which believes in reincarnation, it leads to the belief of being good and doing good, and you are rewarded with another human life which is in Hind scriptures as the most intelligent form of life on earth.

Not deviating from the business of killing (the author is not an expert on religion or history or anything else, except being a Hindu in the USA), our epics are all ending with the killing business.  We adore the Ramayana and Mahabharata, but they are full of great virtue of the revered Hindu gods and goddesses, and names of men and women who look up to daily, and pray for their blessings.  The stories which we have been telling for thousands of years, and we continue to read them, write them and practice them.  We love this mythology of our religion, and we cherish the values of the scriptures with the ever changing world, we hold them close to our daily life and in birth, in life and in death; in all instances we believe that the great scriptures are things that we live and follow.

Actually all religions that we follow and all religions we practice and follow are of similar practice.  People are asked to do well and be good in every religion, and then the interpretation of the holy books of each religion that we would like to embrace is what leads us to do what we do.  The business of being good and doing well is widely publicized, preached and asked to be practiced.  But what we are embracing is using our brilliance to fight and kill.  Much of the business of killing now a days is based on religious beliefs and disputed boundaries.

Us humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and perhaps were at constant territorial conflict because of food or resources, and sometimes because of the opposite sex.  Only in the past two or three thousand years we have developed the fascination for killing in the name of geographic boundaries and religion.  In reality there are so many more of us on earth, and we continue to grow in population at alarming rates.  We are also developing ways to live longer and be more productive.  We are also finding ways to cut short our own life by the virtue of religion and geographic boundaries.  The business of killing seem to be blooming despite our ever expanding intelligence and comprehension.

Why are we in the business of killing? Only god knows.  Because outside of going to war for land grabbing, natural disasters are the only other reasons we use for mass killing is religion.  That’s the one thing only god can answer.  Every Holy Scripture preaches peace and coexistence, but those are the followers don’t want to practice it.  Why don’t we follow what we want to believe in?  There is no answer to this.

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