Early in my blogging life, I discovered Sandeep Bhalla, an Indian gentleman who has profound wisdom and courage. His country, like mine, is festering with torment; Afghanistan is doing the same. This always happens when a tribe, or some part of it, mistakes “truth” for the “Truth” and knows without any doubt that its viewpoint is “the” viewpoint and the “Truth.”
As I give a capital letter to “Truth” I practice one of those “complexities” for I too am a “knowing” creature. I “know” what I am putting forth here, but realize that so does the Taliban and its offspring in my country. That rigid certainty that they are displaying always has, “offspring.” Ideology always risks toxicity for it can easily prey on ideologues within its tribe but also other “tribes” such as my country. Certainty is a deadly toxin and will continue to wreak havoc on our world without the “deux ec machina” of ancient Greece intervening. When this conflict emerges on the stage of world history, the “simple thing” is to seek to destroy the “other.” This is because of the human tendency to “know I am right” and must obliterate the other side, the “Other” which in my arrogantly humble estimation is, “Wrong.” The only hope is that a “gap” might appear between the two contrary forces, two powers basking in the unquestioned assumptions, that each side will accept a bit of humility, acknowledging that, “Hey, they have a viewpoint also.” That “gap” was described by T.S. Eliot as, “costing not less than everything.” But metastasized “certainty” is a lethal poison regardless of how sure you are.
https://sandeepbhalla.com/author/sandeepbhalla/
literary lew 