Wake up Deluded Humans

Human beings organize themselves in various social orders. Individuals make up families and
families make up communities. Communities, in turn, organize themselves around religion,
ethnicity, race, creed and caste. Furthermore, communities align themselves within nationalities.
Finally nations make up the world. For the rest of this article I am using the term "society" to
mean any one of these social orders.

At every level the fabric of society depends on intricately woven "rules" which everybody in
that particular society is required to abide by. These rules are essentially what define a
particular society or dub-division of it. We could, for instance, safely say that murder is
outlawed in every country. This stems from a basic survival instinct and we all agree we do not
like the threat of death and so agree that we should not tolerate it. The "rules" of a particular
sub-division of society are grounded in the least common denominator of beliefs of the majority
that make up that society. Of course, some societies at a national level may have a more
democratic process in creating rules, than others. Also not all members of a particular society
are identical apart from their least common denominator of rules that they agree to.

Taking this concept a little further we can see that every society has organizational bodies which
represent it. These organizational bodies in societies range from being theocratic, aristocratic to
democratic. Borrowing a term from Sociology, let's collectively call these organizational bodies
the "Church" (I do not mean the Christian Church, as we know it, although the term does come
from there). The "Church" is tasked with maintaining, defining and implementing the "rules".

Amongst other things, it deals with violators of any of the rules. Since the rules apply within the
framework of societies they often define the consequences for violating them while the "Church"
is responsible for meting out the consequences. Additionally, within the framework, some
societies even define procedures to make amendments to the rules.

Any philosophy, religion, ideology born in any society, at any time (yes, since the beginning of
time) attempts to address the social evils of that particular society, at that particular time. If
these beliefs challenge the very foundation of a society, the "Church" sees this as a violation of
its laws. Human beings react to new ideas in two ways. We either, reject it and persecute the
perpetrator or accept it and place the perpetrator on a pedestal. In other words, when more
people start believing these "controversial" beliefs then a "sect" is born. The "sect" sees itself as
young, dynamic and effective.

The "Church", on the other hand, is seen as old, resistant to
change, misguided and ineffective. The "sect" attempts to address the shortcomings of the
"Church". A lot of times the "sect" seeks to redefine the meaning of the "Church" by going back
to the fundamental tenets that the society held sacred in the first place, often adapting and/or
re-interpreting age old "rules" of the "Church" according to a new time and place. In fact, that’s
where the term fundamentalist comes from when referring to religious fundamentalists.
(Although, in my opinion, the media has really abused this term and it often uses this term for
what I see as aging "Churches")

However, over time the vision of a "sect" gets diluted and it itself becomes a "Church". It starts
showing the same ailments of a "Church". New "sects" are then born and the same cycle
continues.

In all this, time is extremely critical. With time, the very definitions of society change and a
whole new set of social evils may arise. At every step in time, we must recognize our
"Churches" and "sects" and the nature of social evils that plague us. Else, we along with our
"Churches" will become irrelevant and eventually perish. This becomes increasingly interesting
as the concept of a global world/society becomes reality.