Moral of the French Riots
BY: PRAHLADA MAHARAJ DAS
Nov 13, UK (SUN) — Nations throughout the world, communist and capitalist, first world and
third world, have engaged in what can be described as the Great
(secular-liberal) Experiment. Recent history has proven it to have failed.
The French riots are but the latest in the results of this failed
experiment. Material solutions of diplomacy, money, education, health care,
a global village, technology, etc. have not resolved any of the entrenched
problems of old. The only difference is now people use cars, boats and
airplanes for horses, camels and elephants. Now races and creeds war against
one another in place of kingdoms and nations. And now we have terror within
cities in place of battles on battlefields. What has suffered no change, no
diminution, is intolerance, hate and venom one person or persons have for
another. The desired objectives of peace, harmony and prosperity of the
Great Experiment are proving as elusive as they have ever been.
Despite unprecedented affluence, with no end of money, education, health and
laws being thrown at all the problems, the Great Experiment yet wants more.
Walls, barriers and boundaries have come down. Indeed there are not even
social or psychological walls. Nothing is taboo. Gone are the shackles of
superstition and other mumbo-jumbo. Everything is politically correct. There
is no censure even against attempts to defy, and indeed, contradict nature.
Homosexuals can be ‘parents’. Atheism is an optional – preferred – ‘belief’.
Abortion is a woman’s choice. Life and limbs of one life form are ‘cells’
(spare parts) for another. Vegetarian species are fed meat. And, yes, there
are no sacred cows. Welcome to the liberalisation, equality, freedom and
democracy. Welcome to the Experiment of the Fools.
He is a fool who never concedes defeat even when the results of his
experiment prove useless, detrimental and unproductive, especially when the
results are of such dramatic proportions as are visible even to a passing
observer. Persistent fools continue to throw more money, time and resources
in the cause of their failed experiments; they seek yet more faith and
understanding in their experiments, to give yet more time. While the
experiment fails again and again, their challenge is to again and again
‘properly’ interpret the results; never to revise their assumptions. They
prefer to re-affirm their faith and beliefs through articles, reports and
books; within the halls and rooms of institutions, museums and galleries;
and by the agency of debates, media and schools. Only contradictory results
are not helpful – glaring contradictions only more so. Tickets, memberships
and qualifications help to ensure only believers are privy to the Great
Experiment. A barrage of entertainment that mixes facts with fiction with
fantasy generally suffices to keep assuaged the general masses. It is only
the glaring, dramatic inconsistencies and contradictions, like the French
riots, that escapes the sterilization and censor of the secularists. How
convenient if only reality would not spoil the materialists utopia.
The Great Experiment would prefer to view the French riots as a glitch, an
aberration, an embarrassment even – not a problem, not failure. Despite the
fact that the riots are not an isolated event? Despite it being widespread
and en masse? Despite the ‘glitch’ lasting years, decades – in one form or
shape or another – with their enclaves as no-go areas for the indigenous
people for all this time? Within the Great Experiment, immigration was meant
to solve the economic problem of the north Africans; and it was meant to
fill the labour shortage of the French; and riots were not meant to be a
feature of this neat and happy formula.
Instead, not only have there been riots but secular France now asks whether
to send the immigrants back to north Africa or to appease them with money
and other incentives. In the first instance, they need to add a proviso to
include ‘those of north-African descent’ otherwise the exercise is
meaningless. In the second instance, there is every possibility that the
problem would surface once again, at a later date.
Yet more tinkering, more tweaking and more twisting of the Great Experiment.
Any other experiment with the assurance of failure as certain as this –
whatever the choice – would be completely and utterly dismissed, and the
assumptions reviewed. Even despite their house of cards falling around them,
the proponents of the Great Experiment have the gall to say, ‘What does it
matter if there is a God or not?’; ‘He may have set the clockwork in motion,
but there is no call for Him to run this creation.’ Never mind the
creation’s need, your, mine, our individual and combined fabric of life is
falling apart in every way, yet you see no ‘call for God’? We are witnessing
our personal and collective failures, what feature of the experiment yet
remains as the measure of our success?
Where is the shelter from fear of riots, plagues and wars if not in God?
What redeeming feature of secular and atheistic life will give us succour in
these circumstances? For a lack of any tangible connection with God, with
Krishna, we await but only more unwanted and unwelcome news. This is not the
cursing of a mad, deranged, bellicose religionist. This is the portrayal of
our reality, our circumstance. Our misery is not vengeance by God, but our
mistaken allegiance to an experiment that never could, that never did, give
us relief from life’s problems. News is usually sensationalistic; the real
drama happens to us every day. It is not in the headline grabbing news that
the benign shelter of God is to be felt, it is in the struggle of attrition
in our daily life, in our consciousness, in which we will experience the
difference.
That Krishna does not ‘have to’ run His creation is proof of His perfect
designing and creating capabilities. That we suffer as we do by our
exclusion of Him in our personal and collective lives is proof of how much
He matters to both. What other moral lesson can you intelligently deduce
from all these numerous, unending ‘glitches’ of the world?
