SERFDOM UNDER SUPERSTITIONS, AND EMANCIPATION
By Swayam Nath
The point to which a human being is capable of being rational and skeptic is directly affected by the immediate surroundings of the individual, the value system in which he or she is; they are, brought up, the religion that the individual is brought up to practice, and so forth. It is quite challenging for a rational and sceptical individual to live in a society which falls susceptible to any form of superstition. Verily, it is because the individual falls in the quicksand of superstition himself, herself or themselves. Verily, the individual then, perhaps, is doubtful and is neither true to himself, herself or themselves, nor is he or she; nor are they, true to the society.
Superstitions are the nincompoopery of the past which in the present has been encrusted in the mundane modus operandi of the multitudes devouring them with unsolved doubts and strengthening itself upon the foundation of such doubts. Verily, such superstitions tend to dominate the submissive ones. In Nietzsche’s ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’, Zarathustra claims that every living being which walks upon the Earth obeys and if one does not obey oneself, someone else will command himself/herself/ themselves. Verily, it is those who are in the veil of doubt who because of the aforementioned external factors unknowingly allow the others to command and are voluntarily enchained in the serfdom of the superstitions. Verily, it is true that an individual’s principle should try to outrun the individual’s doubts and subsequently decimate doubts from the root, lest its vestiges should beget new doubts. Only, when an individual emancipates himself from this serfdom, can he/she/they taste the fruit of maturity and feel the golden light of enlightenment.
Now that humanity is progressively marching forward, swerving superstitions are entombed in time’s coast one by one swept by the tides of time itself and people are breaking free from the chains of immaturity and doubt, for rationalism is now in vogue. Science is sweeping the vestiges of religion; philosophy superstition’s, and so each moment is a gain, a moment of freedom from the tyranny of the archaic superstitions.
