*The Level of Our Spiritual Lives

Today’s public discourse both in the mainstream and the social media clearly shows a major shift of pattern –a consistent one. Society’s perspectives on its former values, education and life, in general, has drastically changed. Why not? Time has changed where democracy seems to hold grip everywhere giving unconditional freedom for people to be who they want to be (gender wise and professionally), do whatever they want to do without restraint; living conditions have greatly improved and consequently life span has increased; the young seem to start having family of its own sooner than before, making the population boom all across the globe; society’s educational level has fully-fledged in such a way that everyone seems to be able to earn different academic degrees and titles from the various educational institutes; technology has advanced and made the world closer enough, and even the miraculous invention of nanotechnology paved ways to remedies for all societies’ odds and ills including medicine. Even to our surprise, religious institutions have started focusing their teachings on prosperity and “well-being” of their followers. They have offered their followers complete freedom (just like governments) to do whatever they wish, rather than commanding them to strictly adhere to the scriptures and holy books. However, I wonder that with all these unimagined wealth and luxury, technological advancement, new lights, optimism, hopes, and success stories, we still have and live with heinous crimes against fellow citizens, new diseases, severe unemployment, abject poverty, many untimely deaths in almost every hour that passes by. What could have gone wrong? What constitutes today’s refined human being? As a response to these queries, I am reminded of Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing on the spiritual life of a nation. He said, “The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.” Could it be that all the trees which we plant are with a rotten core, as Solzhenitsyn said? I believe that our spiritual life has deteriorated and has become the root cause of all these mishaps.

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