The Million Dollar Question

“In the end, we return to the question, just how much do you love truth?  Do you really love truth or are you just curious? Do you love it enough to rebuild your understanding to conform to a reality that doesn’t fit your current beliefs, and doesn’t feel 120% happy? Do you love truth enough to continue seeking even when it hurts, when it reveals aspects of yourself (or human society, or the universe) that are shocking, complex and disturbing, or humbling, glorious and amazing – or even, when truth is far beyond human mind itself? Just how much do we love truth? It’s a good question to ask ourselves, I think.” – Scott Mandelker

Yes, proverbially speaking we can call it ‘the million dollar question’ however if we look at the mankind and its current miserable state of affairs from a spiritual, ethical and moral standpoint, perhaps a vast majority of the world’s population, both in East and West, would simply question back as to why should one even begin to ponder upon something as esoteric, as impractical and as useless… unless of course it is likely to beget ‘a million dollar’ indeed.

Highly unfortunate yet an indisputable fact of human evolution on earth is our race has degenerated progressively on the ethical and moral plane while making landmark development in the more tangible and material aspects of life.  The divide between the esoteric and the material is inescapable.  In fact it exists by design.  And in essence, it represents the struggle of the free human will in terms of choosing between the short-lived pleasures of this world and the everlasting felicity of the next.  However without question, with every passing generation the human race has only sapped in its remembrance of the core truths and essential values that were once held dear by men of wisdom and principle and promulgated as highly cherished yet attainable ideals.  The saddest part is this decline did not occur altogether of its own accord; the untold versions of history tend to reveal that the inherent capacity of humans to be overawed by the allure of tangible pleasures has been thoroughly and continuously exploited by a certain section of our society in every age, even prior to the time when this foul endeavour eventually managed to take upon a more systematic yet a highly guarded form.  Hence it is no wonder that today we live in a world wherein pursuit of personal desires has become the way of life and quantifiable accomplishment the epitome of human achievement.  Ideals revered by the human society of days gone by perhaps make it to active consciousness of a teeny-weeny percentage of human population on earth nowadays.  Significantly vast numbers live a smug and comfortably numb existence perfectly cocooned in various versions of the well-architected illusion of the ‘Great American Dream’ in various parts of our world, very distant from even the slightest notion of the misery that a far greater section of human population is subjected to in order to keep feeding the myth of this great illusion of modern times.  Interestingly, it is a handful of ruling Elite around the globe that holds the reins and pulls the strings of both the affluent and the deprived segments of the human population.  An undying lust for power motivates them to snatch away the resources of territories and people that they have subjugated to their overt and covert rule at different times in history.  With one hand they fling a meagre share of this stolen wealth into the ‘structure’ that sustains the mass illusion of the ‘Great American Dream’ while the other hand tosses out war and weapons, blood and tears, destruction and misery, not to mention the agony of day-to-day survival wherein you do not know when there would be food on the table next.  With enormous arrogance, amounting to outright insolence on God’s earth and a complete disregard of God’s creation, they wreak havoc by abetting seemingly opposing factions in repeated episodes of pseudo-revolutions, pseudo-terrorism, and pseudo-wars.  They infiltrate religion and culture, they penetrate media and education, they exercise covert dominion over politics and finances of so-called sovereign nations, everywhere and anywhere, and they continue to rule by nurturing divisions in societies wherein people had coexisted peacefully for centuries despite religious and ethnic variances.  In essence they have systematically permeated the mind and character of men and women, which in due course, has led to the shattering of the moral thread of human society.   They have effectively changed the definition of right and wrong, they have muddled the concept of truth and falsehood; what was a sign of lowliness of character yesterday is considered ‘cool & hip’ nowadays and regardless of how it may defy the very concept of beauty itself, it is termed as a positive sign of human diversity, a symbol of freedom of choice and freedom of speech, or a mere matter of individual preference that has progressed and changed over time.   The question is how many of us are willing to take a moment to pause and ask ourselves if we would rather continue to sleep walk in this direction as we go through the daily grind of life on earth, or we’ll wake up and be willing to see through the illusion that surrounds us regardless of the emotional and material consequences that come entwined with man’s quest for truth.