By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
When we are sick of the really bothersome kind, we curse or cry in pain. Then we do everything to avoid suffering the same thing again. So new medical discoveries on how to deal with such disease, as our immune systems come up with new ways to combat it.
Interpersonal relationships also get diseased or they go sour. As a result these are ended through divorce or annulment of marriage. But in many cases, the couple would kiss and make up, and the relationship gets better.
For those who don’t kiss and make up, the parties involved will go their separate ways, more matured and with a broader viewpoint. That is, after all the pain and smarting are over.
When there are wars, people get displaced, or they die, or otherwise suffer. Then we try to find ways to avoid similar unwanted experiences.
Long ago, after some years of college drudgery, I left school to go and learn more and experience what the Ananda Marga Yoga practices had to offer. One of the simple things I learned that turned out to be so profound was “clash and cohesion.”
These can interplay in an individual as when suffering a disease or between individuals like couples.
In society, it is called the process or interplay of the thesis and anti-thesis which results in a synthesis. The thesis is the prevailing status quo. When the rulers or the powerful become exploitative, there will be protests or revolutions and other forms of upheavals. After all the struggles and strife, a new elite will emerge as controllers of society. Being new in that position, they will implement some changes to make society better. Economic opportunities and wealth will be distributed in a more equitable way. There will be new laws and norms. You could say, society in a way progressed.
But once the new groups or families in power become so entrenched, they will start taking advantage again of those in disadvantaged positions. They would control elections and other social processes to perpetuate themselves in power. The situation become the new thesis, as the force of the general populace long taken advantaged of will become the new anti-thesis.
There would then be protests, then social upheavals. People would suffer and people will die. It will result in a new beginning. And the cycle begins again. Each time society will improve as would be shown by better institutions.
The opposite, however, can happen. Society can become worse. But not for long. Sooner or later, it can be decades or centuries, there will be upheavals.
That’s how nations or countries got formed and international organizations like the United Nations or its predecessor, the League of Nations.
The point is, all the struggles and strife throughout the ages in individuals or in society somehow resulted in progress.
So whatever troubles we are in like health or relationship challenges and social upheavals, are just parts of the inexorable natural process. Call it revolution or evolution, or just change, or whatever.
From such perspective should we look at our troubles as individuals or the bombings in the Middle East or in Ukraine, or elsewhere.**
