Human ideologies are like shadows.
We create shadows, these shadows fight, and real humans suffer.
Sadly, we humans have collectively agreed
to live in the darkness of our shadows.
Any obstruction in the path of light creates a shadow in the shape of the obstruction. Our consciousness is a kind of inner light that gets obstructed by our self-hood, and we project our consciousness in the shape of our self-hood in the outer world. This self-hood is an aggregation of ideologies and images we wear upon us.
Our ability to ideate is magical in comparison to any other species, and we have used and abused it to create countless ideologies in terms of religious, social, economical, and national frameworks. Humanity has become a hairball of doctored ideologies, and these ideologies follow us like shadows. These shadows make up our day-to-day realities, and we live by them. Moreover, our default mode of connection with other beings is through ideologies. Traditions and cultures make sure that we continue to hand over these shadows to our next generations. It feels like we are not born on planet earth, moving in the cosmic ocean, but born in the world of ideological ponds who meet with each other through the cracks of the earth in between.
We live in a large ideological network. And, in our day to day relationships, mostly we do not love or hate each other; rather, we love or hate our ideologies. This has severely impacted the entire humanity, more negatively than positively.
For example, India and Pakistan are two nations created in the past by leaders of the time. A large number of humans hate each other just because they are born on two sides of this made-up border. Consequently, this made-up image of self-hood has murdered so many human beings. There is no reason for animosity apart from ideological differences. Religions, caste, class, skin colors, sports, economy, and so on are the same way. The result is a judgmental mindset, inequality, confusion, insecurity, wars, suppressions, violence, and many more. Thus, the whole earth has become a collective society of shadows that relish in this ideology-bound shadow consciousness.
The list is too long where ideologies have obstructed a deep connection of one human to another. Our sense of belongingness is the result of a very complicated ideological network. Look around, and you will rarely meet a human being with a free consciousness.
We walk wrapped in our ideologies as we walk with our clothes. This is an enormous burden on human consciousness.
Sadly, when shadows collide, they create suffering in innumerable ways for real human beings holding them. Real humans suffer from mythological shadows. In this world, human suffering is real, but its cause may be unreal, mainly when ideologies cause suffering.
Let’s ask ourselves, can we think of a culture where we can make these ideologies powerless or secondary? It can be a dream only, but what stops us from evolving out of this ideological jacket?
If a thing can be made, can we not un-make of re-make it? Some people argue that ideologies are essential because, without them, a human being is an animal inside. Due to these massive arrangements, we are able to suppress our animal inside. Therefore, we cannot remove these ideologies. It is a very sad self-conception that we are deploying these ideologies to hold our animal behavior inside. Instead, we can use human intelligence to transform into conscious beings. It would take a cultural shift at a large scale because if a few insightful people do it, then this will be suppressed sooner or later.
This short story elaborates on this aspect of evolution, wherein this world is a world of shadows, and blind attachment to these ideologies causes enormous suffering in the world. And, entire society has forgotten that they are real humans, and live only as shadows. Somehow one person gets insight into this shadow based suffering and comes out of shadows. Then, he wanders with this light for some time in the world, but soon he becomes an enemy of other shadows and gets killed by them.
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