Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Saturday, April 20th, 2024

Human Wisdom and Misery

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Human Wisdom and Misery

Since ages human beings have been striving for a better world to live in. The basic intentions behind 'human will' to design society and endeavors to develop political systems have been to fill human world with prosperity, tranquility and well-being., for this very reason human beings have dominantly demarcated themselves from other living beings by considering themselves superior and wiser but, "has this so-called human wisdom really guided them towards prosperity and well-being?" Let's have a short argumentation.

Whoever seeks for the inception of human wisdom in display has to look back to Greek Civilization. The Greek city states were able to produce such giant wisdoms as of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – to name only a few. Among all the thinkers Plato is found to be earnestly eager about human prosperity and well-being.

Therefore, he puts forward the concept of an 'ideal state' – Utopia in his book "Republic". Though very basic in nature this contribution by Plato has proved to be the foundation of political structures of many centuries.

Even though 'Utopia' could never be attained by the Greek civilization, it kept the concept of an ideal state alive in the centuries to come. Greek civilization itself was marked with mostly aristocratic form of government and even direct democracy (in the modern sense of the word 'democracy' as the term 'democracy' meant differently in Greek civilization and was even called as perverted form of government by Aristotle) was well-knit in monarchy.

Afterwards, monarchy prevailed, in its real form and strived to curb the human actions and integrate them into well-knit social and political structures, with the support of the religion. The societies afterwards experienced the influences of political structures; like Fascism, Nazism and Nationalism that also resulted into two World Wars and who does not know that the world after the Second World War was predominantly occupied by the Cold War between Capitalism and Socialism till the disintegration of Soviet Union.

Post Cold War era – the new world order started uneventfully, which made the political thinkers believe that the wars have ended and Capitalism has married democracy, so the world would stroll smoothly and even boringly.

But the incident of 9/11 shattered this sort of speculations and the world started arming itself for 'the war against terrorism'. Though there are celebrations ten years after the incident of 9/11 that suggest that 'the war against terrorism' has been won, but its repercussions have a different story to tell. All the political systems and world orders hinted above have not been able to achieve the perfect form of society or even something near to it and have kept on nurturing misery.

Through out the evolution of human intellect to design better world for human beings, human beings have, undoubtedly, produced some remarkable thoughts and practices and the mentioned realities have utmost importance in the evolutionary process and they have been the incidents which have shaped today's world, which may be considered as the height of human wisdom, but what about well-being? Have human beings abolished 'misery'? Let's have a look at the world.

Let's see Africa – hunger, thirst and helplessness are making mockery of human civilization. Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are ravaged by the extensive use of modern and deadly weaponry. Let's not forget Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and many other parts of the world.

Human misery seems overwhelmingly dominating the socio-political scenario and the key reason being human thinking to sacrifice human life for ideologies and isms. The political and social structures designed by human wisdoms have been regarded so sacred that human life has become meaningless. Human wisdom has fallen prey to its own cunning arrangements. The structures which have been designed for well-being are the reason of jeopardizing the human existence.

The current world order that has been designed after the incident of 9/11 is not very different from the earlier world orders that were marked with clashes and wars, as well. The only difference is its orientation, otherwise the clashes remain intact.

These clashes have only changed forms. If earlier the clashes were because of the tribes, nations and political philosophies, today they are because of civilizations. The post cold war world order, as Samuel P.

Huntington suggested in his, "The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order" has been marked with clash among the different civilizations. Though, the theory presented by the Samuel P. Huntington can not be considered to be entirely applicable to current world order, it does depict that there are certain clashes among the few of the civilizations if not all that were presented by Huntington.

One of the dominant clashes can be found between the Muslim world the Non-Muslim world, mostly the Western civilization. After the incident of 9/11, Muslim world has been labeled as extremist and terrorist and has been considered in great opposition to modernism prevailing in Western civilization and even Christianity.

In addition the war against terrorism has played a major role in intensifying this clash. Moreover, there are many countries that are suffering from the international wave of terrorism that has been a hallmark of the new world order. In addition, the war that was launched by the US in Afghanistan also remains controversial as far as its repercussions and its outcome in proportion to the resources spent there are concerned.

In short all the political, religious and ideological endeavors that are designed by so called 'human intellect' have only given birth to the systems and orders that have not ordered the lives of human beings and have further brought them to threshold of clashes and wars.

The basic reason behind the shortcomings of all these endeavors have been that human beings and human values are not valued as much as the isms and ideologies and human beings are sacrificed to their so-called sanctity though it should be difficult to consider any ideology or ism sacred if it sacrifices the most sacred thing on the planet earth – Yes, the human life. In the amalgam of the teachings and propaganda of all these ideologies and isms, human beings must not forget the dignity of human life.

No wisdom can be considered wise unless it values life more than thoughts. Human beings have to change the way they behave in this world and interact with their fellow beings but above all they have to keep in mind that they have to value human life above all ideologies and structures if they really want prosperity and well-being and a world order and want to put an end to misery.

Dilawar Sherzai is the permanent writer of the Daily outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at outlookafghanistan@gmail.com

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