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Jainism in a Global Perspective
One can go on with innumerable such examples that arise from ill or abusive use of science and materialism, of the absence of equity in human dealings, of exploitation. All these point out to the weekened ethical fibre and spiritual void.
Even a celebrated scientist like Albert Einstein persuaded through his famous letter to President Franklin Rooserelt that United States should take the idea of producing nuclear bomb seriously-as a counter to the fear that German Scientists under Nazi rule might build a nuclear bomb. And then it was Einstein who engaged in post war efforts to prevent nuclear war. Thus sometimes leading men and women can get distracted and it is arousal of spiritual consciousness that brings them back to the right equation.
Communism heralded socialist ideology promising equity and equality to all, elimination of exploitation and emergency of a classless society. And yet it vanished with in half century because it did not have an underpinning of spiritual dimension. It became a god-less society which made it inspirationally barren and dry though on the face of it just and fair. The ends and means bore no equation with one another and communism took the form of totalitarianism because of wrong means.
The ends and means are best reconciled in the spiritual and philosophical backdrop and not within the confined of any materialistic ideology - even if it is socialistic. Ferdinand Lasalle has been quoted pertinently by Arthur Koestler in the famous world classicon communism "Darkness at Noon":
"Show us not the aim without the way, For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view"
Colonialism : The one way of exploitation of far away territories and people has also given way to global interdependence between nations of North and South. Weary of wars and conflicts and ideological divides, humanity is looking for durable peace and understanding.
Human kind has been caught up in the illusory web of materialistic patternof life. Human beings feel rich or poor almost entirely by monetary
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