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Friday, November 03, 2006

The Age of Vanished Normalcy

That's what Martin Amis calls the epoch in which we find ourselves. I plagarised from him in the most barefaced manner, cos this, I think is a term well worth plagarising. But at the same time, we have to admit that it isn't unique to our decade, or even our century. I'm sure when the Mongols invaded the Arab world, mullahs passed each other on the street and muttered, "Never did we think this situation would come to pass, brother. Never will life return to normal". And when Nehru declared our freedom, I'm sure joyful Indians, hugged their neighbours and said, "Never will we be oppressed again in the fashion of the Brits. The old ways of living are gone". And I'm even more certain that when the Brits finally realised that Imperialism was definitely passe, old men tottering around with walking canes and puffing pipes harkened to the Good Old Days and told each other, "Never again will be see days like those. Our days of Glory are over".

I think the beauty of it all is that Never is Such A Long Time, isn't it? We humans use it casually and think of it in human terms, but really its quite an inhuman word. Life always returns to normal, its just that normal keeps changing (and not vanishing, really). Acceptance of God was once the norm. It was a given. We didn't question it. And then along came Men who Asked Questions. And sometimes those men can be so tiresome, can't they? But they made us think, and now a lot of us accept that there might be a remote possibility that there really isn't a god.

Dawkins has written a new book, The God Delusion. He makes Atheism sound as rabid and totalitarian as Medevial Christianity. The point of atheism is that there is always room for doubt, always room for questions. Therein lies its charm. In that and its acceptance of most points of view.

What Dawkins forgets (in all his animated rhetoric) is that belief and faith will always be necessary. It is all fine for me to sit here, with my college education, and my comfortable life, and pontificate on the presence or absence of God. But when you hardly make enough to feed your family, when you struggle to get through every day, and some mornings the only thing that keeps you going is the thought of a better world which will one day be yours, who am I or indeed, who is Dawkins to take that away?

I love the way Larkin says it,

"It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round".

He was talking about churches, and the reason why they will never be obsolete. But it might just as well be applied to religion and belief, no?

11 Comments:

Blogger delhidreams said...

abnormal is normal...or is it the other way round...it is so difficult to define what is normal, because everybody has his or her own definitions...

12:16 PM

 
Blogger delhidreams said...

btw, i AM first here ;)

12:31 PM

 
Blogger MockTurtle said...

Didn't someone say that the only thing that is constant is change itself?
As for the legacy of religion, I think humankind will eventualy evolve out of its dependency on an unseen power. TV (or some form of it) will be the new God.

9:07 PM

 
Blogger Cloudy said...

What a beautifully written post! At one point, when I was young and thought I knew everything, I had the whole religion thing pretty much worked out. Now that I'm older and do know everything, I have my doubts ;)

6:16 AM

 
Blogger abhishek said...

Even Dawkins has a God, if he believes there is a universal truth. To many people, that is just what God is, including myself. The universal truth...it has multiple forms and manifests itself in many ways. Priests and scientists seek it. Some think they've already achieved it. When Dawkins comes and says that there is no God, he crosses the boundary into a debate what scientists have always not bothered to touch, because the existence of God is not a testable hypothesis. Unfortunately, Dawkin's athiesm overrides his other and perhaps only important message, which is that a lot of unecessary problems have occured because people disagreed on the nature of God.

11:11 AM

 
Blogger abhishek said...

Btw, that was a very thoughtful post. Reminds me of our class discussions in my theory of knowledge classes in high school.

11:12 AM

 
Blogger Sumithra said...

Cloudy forgot to claim 2nd!! :D I'm second!

Hmm.. this is a serious post. I admit I'm confused when it comes to God. Sometimes when I see all the beatiful things around me, I think there has to be a God - all this cannot have just happened or evolved. And then I see things that are ugly and painful and wonder what God's doing and when I'm really frusturated if He's there.. But I completely agree with you, quite a lot of us need something to hold on to.. a belief that'll help us cope.

7:04 PM

 
Blogger Sumithra said...

BTW, are you guys facing problems while commenting? I've been having problems since Friday. I have to try at least 3 to 4 times before my comment will get published..

7:06 PM

 
Blogger Revealed said...

@Adi: Yeah abnormal today is normal tomorrow, its all in the perception of it, like you said.
@Mockturtle: Someone definitely said that, its the timespan of it that sometimes confuses us I think. TV as the new God and Britney as chief priestess ;)? Why not? But yeah that's exactly what I meant. Whether its TV or not, we crave a crutch for existence.
@Cloudy: Ty:). I know what you mean. Yeats said that, he said "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate conviction" or even better Voltaire, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd".
@Abhishek: Dawkins does have a God, and he's evangelistic about his God. You're spot on about him blundering in where angels fear to tread. Scientists have carefully stayed out of this debate for centuries and I fear no good will come from this aggressive approach he's taken. And you're right about him clouding the most important point in his argument *sigh*.
And sadly, I never had theory of knowledge classes in high school :P
@Sunshine: It is extremely confusing and I'm sure most of us vacillate from one view point to another most of our lives :). That I think is half the beauty of it. N I'm sorry about the comments problem :(

10:22 PM

 
Blogger Obi Wan said...

Me 3rd me 3rd!

Though I myself am not a believer in the traditional concept of God, I can understand why He/She is there. God 'exists' because people need him to fall back on. I'm reading a Tom Holt book in which he's beautifully illustrated how Gods start losing their powers(even their existence) in direct proportion to the masses losing their faith in them!

10:26 AM

 
Blogger Revealed said...

@Obi: Y'know when I was young(er), my dad used to tell me that the reason some temples and idols have so much power is because of the power of belief being poured into them by all the people who come there out of desperation, hoping and praying for a better life. He used to say that it was the concentrated energy of all those prayers that gave power to a God. After all, that's why we have idols, they are just objects to focus energy on, faith moves mountains, doesnt it?

8:39 PM

 

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