ALTERNATIVE PICTURES OF SAME REALITIES

On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Giordano Bruno -an Italian mathematician, poet and cosmological theorist-  a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death. On Wednesday, February 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori (a central Roman market square), he was hung upside down naked, before he was finally burned at the stake. His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river. The charges made against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition was to hold opinions contrary to the Catholic faith.

When you read the lines above, you must have felt a chill running through your spines. You must have thought of it to be malicious to burn someone solely because he holds a different opinion and faith. But haven't you wondered about  the people who issued the death sentence. Do you think that they would have been regretted after the verdict? and they would have felt remorse for poor Giordano Bruno? If this is what you have been supposing, then you must be a naïve. Let me explain for you. The jury must have gone to their homes, after  decreeing the death verdict for our fellow. They drunk vintage wines, and had a great night with their family, for it was time to celebrate, because they have executed a person who was an imminent peril to the society, and he might have turned out to be a hazard to the religion. No regret at all. Just sentiments of gladness.

Shocking? Yes it is! But the reason is very simple. The jury had a firm belief that the religion they have embraced is the ultimate truth, and every single idea, perception and belief except it, is false and a threat to human beings, as it will drag upon them the commination of God. So just before this catastrophe happens, we must put this pariah to death, in order to save the humanity. This kind of beliefs are much frequent in our society hitherto. People usually believe what their religion, their society and their families believe in. If anyone goes against that particular established order and belief, they boycott him, as they can't kill him just because the modern fabrication of social laws doesn't allow it. We can assume that if we would have been in the old times, we had enough chances to observe of all of it happening through our unaided eyes. Just for a moment, recall the persecution of of Buddhists in India which took place in the 2nd century BC by King Pushyamitra, persecution of Christians in 64 and 313 AD, in Rome by Nero Caesar and Edict of Milan respectively, and recently the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar. Go through the history, and you will come upon a bunch of examples of this kind of persecution. If you will generalize these  persecutions, the result will be shocking. You will see that at least each religion has tormented its rivals, and at least each religion has been tormented by its rival too. And the reason is simple only one. They hate others, because they believed that their religion is the ultimate truth, and the rival religion is just a heap of stinking dung, which must be wiped out of the world, where humanity is residing. Everyone thought only their religion has the ultimate solution for the impending doom of the human beings. Everyone must embrace their particular religion,and follow their established rules. The one who don't believe will be persecuted, because they won't allow him to infect others with this fatal epidemic.

The example I have put up above, are of universal nature and of bigger canvases. But the same problem of belief, in self completeness causes chaos in our individual and social lives. Father has dispute with his son, and son is grappling with his father. Both of them think that the truth is in his side. The same goes for each and every contention. Be it as larger as universal scale like religious and ethnic conflicts, or be it as small as an altercation between two people of different ideas. Here rises a question. why does it all happen? What accounts for all of it?

The reason of all the phenomena, we discussed above is only one. Let's embark on the arduous quest of the answer. When we analyse the examples given above, we come across that almost in all major genocide of the human beings, the upper class was involved. You can't make  excuse that they lacked education, because they acquired the best available knowledge of their times. They were mighty kings and significant priests. Despite of this all, they waged war against their opponent religions. The reason was that they believe in the supremacy of their ideas, and this belief stemmed from looking into the alternative pictures of same realities.  Let me explain it.

Think of a man, who was born to a Christian family. He was brought up, with a huge Christian dogmatic effects on him, from his parents side. They inscribed on his mind that Jesus Christ was the son of god, who was crucified in repentance for the human sins. And one who embraces Christianity will be having a particular and special place in paradise, otherwise he will cry and yell in the blazing hell and will be roasted at stakes like a chopped chicken. He believes in all of it. When he attends the preachings of the priest in the church, as he holds him to be the highest learned man in his village or town, he finds out that the priest himself is repeating the same things which his parents taught him, but in a more elaborated and logical way. His imagination of Jesus Christ to be the son of God now, takes form of a firm religious belief. And now he is curious to explore more about Christ and Christianity. He goes to the library and browses religious books. And surprisingly he comes across the same things which he heard from the priest, and was taught by his parents. He looks around him and noticed that his loved ones, like his uncle, aunt, cousins,the school teacher and so on and so forth, all of them believe in the same things which he found out in the big volumes written by the great minds of both ancient and medieval eras, heard from the priest who is likely to be the most enlightened person he met in his whole life, what he found his loved ones believing in, as they are they are his dearest ones, and of course what he was taught by parents who are the people who take care of him more than anyone in this universe. After going through all of this pictures, he concludes that Christianity is the best religion, and Jesus Christ was crucified to purify the people who will embrace his message. Determining that, our fellow will easily reject any dissenting opinion and different idea, which goes against his belief, precisely because he thinks that he has enough empirical and theoretical evidences to believe the Christianity to be the one only truth, and he holds it as a final word for human life, and he has firm belief, that he must make each and everyone follow this particular truth, in every way possible, by preaching, by debating, and on the gun point if there is no one to strangle him back. Not because he hates another people who don't believe in Christianity, but just because he thinks of them to be foolish if they don't do so, and as a yellow peril to his religion.

Our fellow is unlikely to give up, because as he asserts, he has enough reasons to believe in Christianity. The parents, the priest, the teacher, the books, the relatives, and the surroundings. Each and everyone was Christian. They love him, and it is utmost unlikely that they lied to him. What that is true of our fellow, is also true of us. We believe in what our parents taught us. What we heard the priest talking about, what we learned in the religious books, what our relatives believe in. And all of us think we have enough theoretical evidences to believe in a particular religion or idea, and hold him as  the ultimate truth, and final solution for all problems. And he won't regret if he does something obnoxious in order to establish his idea in people's minds.

Why do we do so? Is it true to say that our fellow has enough theoretical and empirical evidences. I think it's not as simple and as true as he takes it to be. The reason behind all of it is, that our fellow has gone through the alternative pictures of an ideology. His parents, his relatives, his teacher, and again the priest, and the books, everyone is an alternative picture on reality, which is of course Christianity. All of them represent the same idea. They're different in their structures, they have different way of narration, but all of them have the same story to tell. It is just like you searched on Google to show you the images of USA, clicked enter and Google put before you, a bunch of pictures from USA. Skyscrapers, well-dressed people, the president as the champion of liberty and Human rights, clean and well maintained roads. All this images will create in your mind that the US is the same as Google showed you, but the reality doesn't match it. There are slum areas in USA, like India, there are poor people too, and of course US president is not a champions of liberty and freedom, as it shows. It is called the alternative pictures of one reality. If someone wants you to believe in a particular idea, he will show you  alternative pictures which represent that very idea. Just like it happened to you while browsing pictures of USA.

When we look one reality in the different pictures, we holds that very reality to be universal, as it happens mostly, with people who follow a particular religion. The major side effect of this kind of beliefs is, that the believer loses his ability to criticize and analyse. He becomes blind-folded believer, and he always takes  defending position against every different idea. His belief urges him to reject any dissenting idea, in every way possible, and defend his own ideology with utmost effort, it doesn't matter, if it seems like stupidness even to him.