The Dark Ages: Revisited?

The last week has been a bad week for the human race. With all the blasts, the earthquake, and yet another atrocious rape case in my city, we are once again reminded that although we have come a long way in terms of science and technology and human development in general, there are still parts of the world which remain far behind the 21st century. 

It makes me realize that the old ways are so etched inside our being that it is often hard for people to let go and give way to the new. In my country, women are not respected as much as men. They are wives and daughters and sisters before they are human beings. And no matter how many women start entering the work world, or start living independent of men, they are still wives and daughters and sisters first. They are to serve  men and take care of them before they take care of themselves. 

Similarly, when it comes to violence and terrorism, it is mostly just a convenient way to get what you want and protest against governments. But at the end of the day, it doesn't make much sense to harm those who have nothing to do with it. Before the concept of 'nations' came around, this is pretty much how things worked. People's lives were irrelevant compared to rulers' egos and power. I am not suggesting to compare present day governments to kings who used their citizens as puppets, but I am saying that people's safety seems to matter less as compared to politics and establishing beliefs. 

People like to think that we've come far and are propagators of 'modern' thinking. But somewhere inside us, the past remains. While some of us still yearn for power and attention, some of us forget the new times we are now living in and have a tendency to think like we would have in the past. We forget that we still haven't developed the ability to win against nature. 

Some part of the past, the dark ages lives within us, and there is not much we can do about it. But what we can do is to fight that part of us, and start living in this amazing new world that the human race has built for itself.