Inherited Society

We live in a box , the box called Society. Society is relative to each individual , my society is different from yours, it is our interaction point to the world.As time progresses our society expands. Initially we inherit a society from our parents, their friends and acquaintances, then we build upon it, friends , lovers, husband , colleagues etc.

An important  gift of the inherited society are our preconceived notion. Religious beliefs and discrimination being two important among many.Religious beliefs , as many would agree are imbibed into us by our inherited society. We are told " You belong to x religion which has y set of rules and practices and are expected to follow them for rest of our life ", we humbly agree.There is nothing wrong in this preaching , but then comes the subsidiary set of rules: Dont marry outside religion, Be suspicious of people from other religion (at times hate them), Dont have food with them , in brief, they are lesser humans than you , in a sense untouchable.

The trauma of religion is, its said to be divine but treated as an asset, its strength is measured not by thre souls it heals but by the bodies it acquire, its said to be omnipresent but causes bloodshed for land, its aim is peace but ends up causing war.The idea of religion in essence is noble but the self imposed law that " Mine is superior than Thou " is the recipe for disaster.

Religion is the first parameter of segregation , it shrinks our society into a small circle of people, but then there is the second parameter, a composite one based on wealth, job type,caste, race etc. This is the complicated one because it is not evident or hard wired , it gets into our sub-conscious through practice .

Lets makes things simpler and consider a scenario.

There is a marriage in house , you sent invitation cards to all the people you want to see at the wedding, hand delivers it to few , make phone calls to others. Many of these people are not part of your day to day life , you meet them occasionally .But to you domestic help , milkman , gardener  you don't feel they deserve a card so you give them a oral invitation , because deep down you have a notion that they are going to come anyway as they are poor and can't  afford good food, a soft humiliation. 

Lets make it a bit more clear. Consider a situation , your domestic help's son accompanies her to work. Most people will make the boy sit on the floor for as long as he mother works, in some worse scenarios, they will be made to sit outside.He is denied a respectable place in the house which his mother cleans and maintains. 

It is a general practice among many to keep a separate set of cutlery for the  inferior kind.If you have them ask yourself on what criteria are you differentiating them and your will lead you directly to the preconceived notion one inherits from society around.  

The buck doesn't stop there, we are judgmental too, if a person from a different religion does an act of violence , we all stand up to question the religion itself but when one of our kind does something similar we hail and justify it as action-reaction effect. When a poor man son is caught in a crime , we question his upbringing and self-attest our discrimination as act of safeguarding ourselves. 

But the way I see it , our lasting lack of empathy orchestrates burst of violent rebellion.