Man and the BEASTS

Man and Religion

One of my friend updated his status on facebook as

“

Humans are very similar to animals when it comes about eating, sleeping, display of fear, and mating. The only thing that differentiates is religion. A man without religion is nothing better than a beast.

”

These words are of none other than the infamous Chanakya or Kautilya of Medivial India, who is said to be the best politician India ever had in that time. His book called Chankya Neeti is the collected work of his and contains the essential knowledge of how to actually be honest and efficient in administration and policy making.

Above cited quotation if presented as such can be of many debates among atheists and theists. People will start giving out many reason why and why not these words are right or not quite so right. But irrespective of the opinion of religious people I would say Religion or No-Religion, we humans are quite behaving like Beasts or worsts than Beast.

When we talk about beast we are talking about some creature with no sense of what so ever and it behavior is determined by its primary needs i.e food, survival, sleep, mating etc. And when we are talking about Human, we are actually indicating to an intelligent society which has its own social rules, lives in society and is bounded by certain rules.

Now first of all Major beast species are highly evolved like humans in fact most of them are here on earth longer than the humans itself. Lions live in strict family rules and to prevent what we call incest mother expels the kids out of their den. Chimpanzee follows its own society rules and they are even headed by a Alpha-male. In fact their society system is somewhat similar to the ancestors of ours. Which makes sense as we are their decedents.

Several castles if flourish in wild also have their own system, which cannot qualify as society but as herd, in which not a particular rule is followed but they show a considerable unity and primitive hierarchy which is based on the who is the most powerful, Alpha-male/female.

Elephants have a female leader in their herd who is all powerful. There are several examples in the mammals who qualifies as beast but shows considerable restraint in their behavior and follows a strict hierarchic, primitive society based system.

Even if you do not look at the beasts, insects tend to show enormous efficiency and unity like Bees, Ants. Who work in the counts of thousand and does not usually fight like humans all the time.

In all the above cited examples the main thing is to note that, though species may be inclined to defend their territory and attack other’s, but no species just leave their territory just out to claim another’s until they are devoid of their own.

Moreover I think they do not have a religion because, they are always struggling for the survival all the time. Trying to complete their basic needs to being alive and to do that they are doing whatever they are evolved for.

Now comparing humans, we have evolved over a rather short period of time, most considerable modification was done in past 10,000 years. Which is why we are young relativistically. Moreover we are not constantly struggle for our life, the complex but secure society had changed our primary needs. Most of us no longer fight for food or for shelter. The complex nature of our thinking and the “humanity” we possess, had ensured that we form a society fabric which makes our chances of survival really great.

So when survival was no longer a fight we created the religion and with time we adapted the religion to our needs. History stands witness as our religions has changed over time just for the sake of our own wish. So that means that Religion is no longer something bigger than man. It is just a philosophy which is formed by the general public, explained by general public and reflected by general public. In fact if you observe closely you will find the interpretation of Religion changes with geography. Hence we can conclude that Religion has little significance on our life what so ever. May be 1% of the total population follows a hard core strict code but that is exception.

More over the destruction we had brought upon this earth. Mass extinction of species, despite of having an active religion which was supposed to help our conscience to evaluate our environment had failed miserable. None of other species tried to capture the territory exclusive of themselves. By this I mean Lions does not cleared out jungles to plains, because they like to live in Savanah. Monkey’s and lions lives in same area and they follow a strict set of food chain.

So in nutshell nobody tried to dislocate the delicate balance of their local ecosystem, except humans.

According to Darwin every species should be fit for survival, those who had not adapted according to the environment got extinct and those who survived flourished. But we are playing with nature which we do not completely understand, We are trying to change the environment to make sure that we do not get extinct and it really does not strike our conscience that in our quest to save the single species we are actually destroying the others. The collective efforts which are being taken to counter this destruction is substantially less.

If I would have to say or rephrase the famous words by chanakya, I would rather say

“

Humans are very similar to animals when it comes about eating, sleeping, display of fear, and mating. The only thing that differentiates is its endless greed. A man without greed is alomost better than a beast.

”