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Crisis of Ignorance

 Life is full of infinite possibilities, yet many of us spend our entire lives being aware of only a fraction of them. Does life discriminate or do we choose to remain limited? I feel that at any given moment, there are broadly two reasons why we miss these possibilities: external and internal. External reasons vary from society to society. Some societies are quite loud and condition the minds of people quite young in age. These societies have very strong fixed linear views of reality and force these views upon young minds with huge force. Since young minds have yet not developed the capacity to question these views, they get caught and live their entire lives believing these beliefs and dogmas to be correct. On the other hand, some societies are open to different possibilities and therefore the people therein are also open to new ideas, opinions, and thoughts. Thus, loud voices attract our attention easily and unless we develop the capacity to mute the loud voices, we can't hear the silent music of truth.

The second factor is internal. As we grow up, we also build a framework of the world in our minds. Our minds are constantly seeking answers to many questions. Some of these questions are answered by religion and traditions and the mind accepts the same without questioning further. Our brain is also an expert storyteller. It makes stories about many of these which are not answered by society or religion. This framework keeps developing over a period of time. Since constantly refining the framework requires a lot of energy, we generally stop refining this and get trapped in our fixed framework of life. Thus, our capacity to see reality becomes quite limited. We see only what we want to see and listen only to what we want to listen to.

Not so that we can't change our mindset or hear the truth ignoring the sound of the loudspeakers of religious and social indoctrination, we do not prioritize the seeking of truth. To conform to the religious and social indoctrination is an easy option. We choose an easy option. That choice makes us limited. I have a feeling that our generation of parents and teachers has failed to fulfill their roles. Primarily because we have ourselves become very limited in the mad race of materiality. We have become deaf to the silent music of truth due to the constant loud noise of materiality and dogmas. Since we are blind to reality, we have been unable to show the reality to our young generation.

By bringing up our kids with a very limited framework of life, where only packages and properties matter, we have made them quite vulnerable. The moment they face any challenge here, they do not have anything to cling to. That is why depression and mental issues are on the rise even among children. It is so strange to listen to the news of suicides by young kids. The children are taking arms and killing their fellow students in the schools. There are planned rapes and murders by young kids. If we keep sleeping over the problem, society will be doomed sooner or later. Why are we waiting for a similar incident with our own kids to be awake? Why don't we question the way society is indoctrinating kids for materiality and taking them further away from truth and reality. Why don't the parents and teachers see what they have done to the children? I feel that it requires courage to see the reality because that is like accepting our own failure, our own disease. However, awareness of cancer at the first stage is always better than ignoring the symptoms till the last stage when it becomes incurable. I wish we had at least that much wisdom left and we can see that not only we are suffering from the cancer of "fixation to our limited frame of life" but we have also passed on the same to our kids. The only way to handle the crisis of ignorance is to be aware and spread awareness. 


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