Being a child of the sixties

The other day, my boss referenced a speech by Prince Charles wherein he talked about 'cabuncles.'

That was a speech the Prince had made in 1984 - as I later found out.

I didn't know about that speech. I have fascination for the decade of the sixties. The reason for that being that the 60s were a tumultuous decade. That decade saw a lot of turbulence but turbulence is often the fountainhead for human creativity.

People need to have tumult in their lives for them to question conventinal wisdom and accepted truths.

Every generation should try to 'reinvent the wheel'; indeed, think of it as a sacred duty to do that. I am thinking of the values of life or what is handed down to us as revealed truth.

In the India that we live in today, there's too little of the kind of questioning that took place in the United States during the decade of the sixties.

So, we see this younger generation of Indians so at ease with their cellphones clinging on to some very old and meaningless rituals that have been handed down to them from their parents.

I find that astonishing: the use of cellphones or other high-tech devices doesn't make a person modern. Particularly, if the person's thinking is rooted in the 17th or the 19th century.

The entire purpose of education is lost when people study merely to get a degree but do not absorb any values from whatever education they may have had.

To illustrate, if we have been fortunate enough to have studied about 'evolution,' we should think deeply about it and whether the principles are in accord with our own received beliefs or whether there's any conflict between the two.

And I believe there's in fact a fundamental conflict between all religions and the principles of evolution. In that case, we have to dare to take sides: either the side of our parent's religions or the side of evolution in which case we have to be brave enough to be able to say that our parent's religious beliefs are mostly wrong to the extent that they talk about any historical occurances. Religions might provide a solid moral fabric or guidelines to live one's life by, but that's all that they can claim to do. They can't claim to be 'true.' Religions are merely fables. And if people need fables to help them live moral lives, then so be it. But it's rather infantile that people should need the fear of God to be 'good' human beings.

Similarly, if we have been fortunate enough to have studied about quantum physics and modern astronomy and astrophysics, we should take that to heart. The spectacular insights that these branches of science offer into the nature of the universe we inhabit is incredibly suprior to anything that is provided by any religion. But, science is hard. It takes time and effort to learn the principles of science. So, it's understandable why people prefer to believe the easy solutions offered by religion.

Also, religions have had far more time to percolate into people's minds: hundreds and thousands of years literally.

On the other hand, science is relative new.

Hopefully, in time, say 500 years from now, people will look back with incredulity at how gullible humans in the 20th century were to believe such silly things as there are in any religion.