Supremacy

There is this constant search for supremacy in the world among human beings who are trying very hard to deny their mortality.

We human beings are nothing but tiny fry whose lifetime in this world when measured against the cosmic world is shorter than the blink of the eye.

But many of us are taken to illusion of grandeur, blowing ourselves out larger than we actually are. Many of us are shouting and trying to make ourselves heard in the noisy market place.

The reality is that most of us are anonymous, living our lives in quiet desperation.

We look at the media and see the glamour. We look at ourselves and see how mundane we are.

So what can we do to get attention?

We look for the most trendy things that are happening and we try to associate ourselves with them. We try to be a part in a bigger whole. Many of us subscribe to entities that champion our ideals. For the most ambitious individuals, they try to make themselves prominent and take charge of the whole.

In the world of competitive, the strongest wins. We see this in all the sports - the more civilised versions of war. In the arena of war, we see this in the display of weapons and technology being devoted to the destruction of fellow human beings. We are heading ourselves towards total self-annihilation. Of course, we should not be so surprised - after all, the whole should reflect the individual parts which always ends in death.

In the world of economic competition, the tendency is towards monopoly - the total destruction of the opponents so that only the strongest survive. It is not surprising that the world is composed of a handful of global giants who are controlling the entire world economy. Economic life has not been as boring before as it is today.

In the globalised world, we see the exact few giants in the shopping malls in our neighbourhood as we see them in the big cities of the world. We just see the same thing duplicating itself all around.

The diversity of the economic world has disappeared. There are no more little shops run by the old little couple who are champions of their little neighbourhood, with a unique that cannot be duplicated elsewhere.

And different parts of the world have their own unique little quirks that one cannot find anywhere else. This is no more.

The world we live in today is a world of great cultural diversity as the migration of people reach a larger scale as air travel is now a commodity and the immigration policy of any major growing economy is being dictated by big global businesses looking for cheap labour.

The greater diversity of culture in many urban centres are fostering great loneliness among people. As they try to find their own identity, in a foreign place, they resort to their own ethnic food and their own culture. If their culture is defined stronger by place, and if they are in the wrong place, their culture is then replaced with either a philosophy or a religion.

Among the masses, religion takes a strong hold on the individual because religion is the result of one's own conviction, by definition. Religion transcends the harshness of geography and enters the imagination of goodness and everything that is opposite of harshness.

From sheer desperation, desperate are called and religion becomes the rallying call for the disillusioned.

This is the world as we now see it.

In economic theory, the great wisdom is that monopoly is something that has to be fought because the world belongs to everyone. Everybody should have an opportunity to participate in the great activity of human survival and feeding one's own family.

This is why economic wisdom called for an authority usually the government to break up monopoly and ensure that others have a chance to enter the fray of economic activities.

In reality, the world we have today is a world where monopolistic structures are being put up to try to dominate a situation. While this is certainly going on in the economic arena, the same is certainly also going in the religious realm.

The great wisdom of some religions is the retreat of the religious from secular life. The great dread today is the attempt by some to bring religion forth to the foreground as the dominant force in life. To kill secular life by imposing a religious life.

But the great shame is that for most people like us who have been living an obviously secular life, because we never try to impose our life beliefs on others, we trying very hard to do that to ourselves, we may now have to contend with the madness of others as to how we should live life everyday.

Such courage to try to impose one's religious values onto others cannot be the act of one person, but the result of people at the core of modern government who secretly condone such creeping of religious views into secular government.

Treachery is all over the place.

As economic theory says, the best approach to the greatest welfare for everybody is the freedom to choose and competition. In a world of diversity, there should be freedom to choose and competition in diversity.

This may have to mean that there may be nothing that can be sacrosanct which cannot be debated in a formal manner. There must be the right of others to try to understand that which is so special about a particular position in religion, especially if it affects your neighbours.

There is now a debate in this part of the world that because a religion is the official religion, the religion edicts overrides the secular civil code of the constitution of a democratic society.

The word "official" is a simple word but not many understands. These words have a reference. In the diverse world of many religion, whenever there need to be mention about what is the religion to be referred to for this country, the answer is that which is the official religion.

The world has suffered a lot unduly unfortunately over the other statement the one supreme entity to you or me. In the world of many gods, I am the one for you - as you and one has to declare to our respective spouses. Unfortunately, human beings have fought over the oneness.

Supremacy is selfish and cowardly.