SURVIVING
Stephan C. Hmar,
Agartala, 24-04-2013
Reading history tells that the battle for survival always confronts mankind. There is no escape. And
that, to survive in those ancient times, the basic necessities were food, clothing and shelter and were acquired through hunting, rearing and farming.
Hard it may be though, I strongly believe that surviving in
those ancient days would have been a lot easier, comparing with our lives now,
as ignorance was bliss and survival was just about hunting, rearing or farming.
The airs of those days ought to be cleaner because of lesser pollution and
scanty population. And, supposedly there ought to be more wild animals for
hunting and spaces for farming.
Now, this layman argument on the harder or easier times for
survival is not the point. The big point is we need to survive no matter what.
Surviving is the obligation and
commitment we have for God who created us as one tribe.
We are here now in modern times. Things have changed a lot. Cumulative
intelligence and knowledge are selfishly grinded together now. Streams of
conscience wisdoms and knowledge originating from billion years of evolution
have now assembled into complex web of knowledge and technologies and evolved
out a globalize world governed and run by what is called the “know-how”. Things have change. And they
are changing very fast.
But, behind these fast-track changes, something is always
constant---the obligation to survive.
Only the technique of it seems to have changed.
With changes, perhaps the technique we need to employ to
carry out our obligations too changes to a great extent. Look at our present globalize
cultures: The basic necessities of food,
clothing and shelter to survive seemed just obsolete, old-fashioned and
out-of-date. Annoyingly, all these changes that has besieged us seems to shrink
these basic needs to just a tip of an ice-berg in this big sea for survival. As
of now, survival is not just about sufficiency in these necessities. It is more
a question of our durability and stability to survive as a unified tribe. Look around you and quite unmistakably you
will see that the antidote for this durability, stability or vitality of us
depends not on our “muscular strength” for hunting and farming any longer. The
antidote is “know-how” or rather “our collective know-how” of the loop that runs
this globalizes business. Without this know-how, surviving is only as good as a
rootless plant, bound to perish.
I would like to mean “know-how” as a brain which can have a
dissent, liberal and legitimate views based on facts. More than this, I would
like to define it as a brain who can reason and acts with his pure conscience.
Our instinctive phrase “survival of the fittest” perhaps
needs to be re-phrased as “survival of the conscientious mind” for fitness now
is more of brain-things. We need a conscious brain to suit the wave of changes
that gripped our present world.
Will our tribe survive technologies, assimilation or
intrusion by others? Now this is our first obligation to answer in order to survive.
Our passion and commitment to survive, but chiefly
accompanied by a weak “Know-how” is the source of all deep-rooted ill-feelings
and disunity amongst us. Now, will we survive the days and years ahead, with
these hatred and disunity? Without any collective efforts, will we survive
cultural assimilation or encroachment of our lands and peace by others?
We fight for fame and take power by intimidating our own
brothers, much like the saying of Lenin---if you have a gun, you can control
100 men. Power taken, not given is no better than a dew drop, soon to
vaporizes. Every trigger pulled for blind thirst for power will derailed us
more. On the other side, the sword of authority waved by our leaders from the
pulpit and true Gospel are not equated. Our beliefs are preached, not
practiced. This has become our trend, our trade-mark. Annoyingly, these trends
we have tamed so sophisticatedly well right through our Christian history have
a tragic effect of mobilizing us for life after death. This makes us an un-manned
tribe---tribe of heavenly origin--- while our real being is panting for
survival on earth.
Learning the know-how about our volatile civilization is a
difficult process. It demands submission, endurance, discipline and works, days
after days with no sort-cut. It has to follow a doctrine of a supreme religion
where “spirituality and the flesh” should go hand-in-hand. It has to dictates
the reality—the reality of what is now and beyond. Using this yard-stick of
religion, where do we stand?
It is quite clear that an easy going society like ours---
who can readily dash out from the difficulties of the realities and raced for the spiritual
side--- will seldom, find space in this kind of religion. The way of our religion and belief can be
just chaff in the winds if we could not equate with the sensible realities. It
can be wrongly used as an effective anesthesia to endure the pains of our cheap
and lowly lives. But, the bitter truth is this type of anesthetic religion has
its deadly side effects.
All these thought would tumbled me back to the
question---where are we now in this line for survival? Are we still a wanderer,
searching for mere food, clothing and shelter? Or are we insanely surviving,
just to perish? Or are we the unfortunate tribe in a wrong place and at a wrong
time? What is our strength to show the world that we are a full-fledged
surviving tribe? We need to rethink. When I asked all these to myself, I felt
our horizon murkier, our nights darker and our days devoid of air.
Every leader of our churches is confused in disunity and
hatred. And, then, we learners are easily corruptible, deceived by easy
luxuries. We are ready to unwisely indulge
foolishly into anything, anything at all, if it guaranteed satisfaction even
for a single day.
The ground reality
is----we are at a complete loss.
Our society needs to be fuelled up by the urge for
“know-how” for our survival. We need to follow a religion of conscience. And my
friend, this religion is Christianity. We need something which will elevate us.
We need something for this moment which will reflect through eternity. And the
answer, my friend, is not in the sky, not in Delhi
We will then realize
that, of everything in the Bible, we failed the most on the first obligation---the obligation for survival.
