The history of the humankind is an incessant clash of opposite and divergent forces and currents of will. This plentitude of wills, with varied sources, forms and consequences have provided the impetus and stimulus for the continued evolution and development of the human race. The dawn of the age of reason in the 16th century has heralded a new social, economic and political zeitgeist which has led to a complete overhaul of the way we perceive our universe.

The next logical step would have been the emancipation of the masses from the oppressive institutions and mores of the medieval ages. Instead they have become the fuel for a nexus of a decadent moral system and the inhumane clutches of global capital. Some causes of this unfortunate

The status quo of the quest of the masses for the illusive purpose of existence emanates from two symbiotic and prevalent structures and systems of power and morality: The clerical moral-cum-social system which provides the moral basis for the enslavement of the masses and the global system of capital and free-market that feeds upon the vast army of mentally servile, aesthetically and intellectually devoured and socially fractured humans. Both the systems feed of the produce of the other and perpetuate the dogmas and creeds of the other through direct and subliminal means. But perhaps the most brutal produce of this enslavement is the sense of purpose that it claims to fashion the masses with. This purpose which drains the masses of any stimulus for a progressive and liberal movement which would ensure the granting of all their social, political and economic rights.

The second element is the proliferation of the pseudo-ascetic lifestyle among the populace. This is a result of both human limitations and the ready availability of a convenient and holy escape. This sort of lifestyle does not mean a conscious and informed decision on part of the individual to renounce the superficiality of the realms of this world under philosophical and intellectual compulsions but is a result of a lack of any such knowledge which would provide solutions to the day to day issues and problems of life. Thus this individual regresses into a life of repressed renunciation of all his rights and all his obligations pertaining to the wider human cause. Such low life-forms are particularly dangerous when they seek to propagate their isolationist lifestyle and dogmas under the useful garb of religion.

The third element is the fact that dogmas are still the prevalent force in our region of the Orient and dogmas still hold the upper hand in the battle of dogmas and reason that dawned in the continental Europe in the 16th century. The Occident, with the help of such minds as Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Marx and Einstein has heralded an era of scientific, intellectual and technological development, though limited in consequential scope to the global elite, has led to the fall of the monarchical-clerical tyranny and we now live with the secular, democratic post-Christian Occident.

The morality, socio-political institutions and public discourses in the Occident are now considered to be the produce of rational and technological processes. The major swathes of Orient, on the other hand, are still in the clutches of dogma and irrationality. A general skepticism and non-acceptance of science and the rejection of the advances and consequences of scientific development are prevalent. Masses are mired in the twin entwines of fatalism and determinism and, as a result, are rendered devoid of any intellectual or aesthetic thought and endeavor. The faculties of rationality and reason, the prime tools of development and progress in human history, are strange outsiders to much of the near Orient.

A connected factor is the dominance of the obscurantist discourse over the pragmatists discourse. This obscurantist discourse is propagated and perpetuated by rogue pseudo-ideological states through indoctrination of masses and elevating the reactionary elements of the society to the echelons of social, economical and political power. These reactionary forces lack any vision or any solid ideology for the masses but are hell bent upon regressing the masses back into the medieval ages meant to be ruled by a clerical establishment that is reactionary and anti-progress to the core.

Another element is the presence of an absolute, universal moral compass through which all individual and collective actions of the masses are judged. This hands the reigns of developing the moral and ethical, individual and collective, conscious of the masses into a clerical establishment that holds no regards for the essential human side of morality.

This establishment devises and propagates such moral values as are necessary to strengthen and perpetuate their grip on the intellectual and aesthetic lives of the masses. This moral compass fails to comprehend that absolutism in defining mores, especially in the case of divinely ordained morality, negates the single most important truth: that of the existence of the humankind and the precedence the consequences of this existence takes over all other considerations. The basis of a humanist, secular and relativistic system of morality for the masses should be the general individual and collective happiness and well-being of the entire humankind.

Such is the complex structure that feeds upon the moral and intellectual abyss that the masses are faced with and is the kryptonite of the life for the masses. If our region is ever to get out of this vicious circle of extremist violence and militancy, our masses must collectively renounce these forced structures and super-structures of inhumane ideologies and oppressive morality and embark upon a social movement based upon humanist, secular and rational values.

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