If this be the Age of Fatalism…
…then I shall be its Destroyer.
Any one person’s perception can always be misleading or inaccurate, but the sentiments of fatalism are strong at this time.
The unchecked rise of unbridled capitalism might have been the biggest mistake of the 20th century and it may soon be that the likes of Carnegie and Ford would be remembered in the same light in the dark future as that of Hitler and Stalin in the present age.
What I write might be blasphemous to you, but the fulcrum of history has always been turned by blasphemers.
But I am not one of those rabble-rousers who would drain from the hearts and minds of my audience all notions of hope. Like I said, if this be the Age of Fatalism, then I shall be its Destroyer.
While we witness the compounding of contingencies that critically manifest themselves day by day from zealots, radicals, conglomerates, kapitalofascists, Nature itself, and the sundry assortment of dictators, tyrants and despots, the overzealous perspective skewering systems are subliminally and overtly injecting the venoms of cynicism and fatalism into the minds of the zombie masses.
The Authorities are elevated to a messianic level. For now, it seems our saviours seem to be those prancing around in business suits meeting in upscale places, eating less than 10% of the luxurious food being served to them on silver platters (and throwing the rest of the 90% away, presumably), whilst they talk about rising food prices and battling poverty.
On the other hand, a different party go overboard in rightfully denouncing the above mentioned hypocrites and become foul cynics nobody (or only the weird would) wants to hang around with.
Some would say that our planet is fast hurtling into destruction and that there is nothing we can do about it; others say nothing save for belief in some messianic doctrine. Some would say that it is headed for cataclysm and we can do something about it, but it is almost too late. There are also some who say that we are fated for destruction and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it (it’s just pre-programmed in the Mayan calendar).
We have no space on our crowded planet for fatalists as these.
My philosophical doctrine is this - every problem is a result of human folly and hence has a solution. The alleviator of every problem is always the erasure of ignorance. Undesirable occurrences that do not come about as a result of human folly are not problems at all, but challenges meant to test, elevate and cause the growth of the most sentient species on the planet.
So why worry? It may seem like naive pollyannaism but in truth the above philosophical doctrine is rooted in action. There is always something that can be done to alleviate any seemingly insurmountable problem.
Solutions are of 2 kinds (that I know of) - (1) solutions that attack the problem by going to its true source and eradicating its true source, or (2) solutions that are the antithesis / opposite / reversal to the very nature or essence of the problem.
Simplistic? Think again. Life is meant to be simple. Simplicity is absolutely normal. The very essence of nature is simplicity. Simplicity is the fractal building block of the Universe. We make things complicated. Our sentience, sapience, intelligence has always been a double-edged sword - this is natural, considering the dualistic nature of the Universe (read Surah Yaseen of the Quran).
My manifesto is this - to overcome all our present limitations and challenges and to grow as a species, the way is not to increase intelligence, but rather to get our present level of intelligence first in order, putting things in perspective, rearranging, recompartmentalising, ‘defragging’ our minds (if you will allow the computer metaphor). The solution is not to increase intelligence quantitatively but to increase the quality and usefulness of our intelligence.
A hard drive saturated with all the knowledge in the universe would be of no use if its data is not arranged in a practical and useful manner.