Irony!

My son shared this picture with me with a laconic caption “Irony”

How true!

All religions and beliefs (not almost all, but all) revolve around the central pillar, holding the precarious pack of cards, of FEAR.

Take fear out, there is nothing left. How do you hold people together, hold them in submission?

Climate controlled couches with buxom nubile babes serving every need of yours, permission to drink from the fountain of youth, walled garden with eternal sunshine and gardens with fragrant flowers; all these are not enough as “promised heaven”.

What will happen when you do not “behave” is more important?

Hades ready to violate you, boiling oil cauldrons, timid looking servants ready to skin you slowly and painfully, burn in eternal fire without losing consciousness, some Bond villain lookalike wielding his cat o’ nine tails, pitchforks, horned demons, vampire leeches, feed to the lions ; now we are talking business.

The “promised heaven” is more attractive, than if it were offered as a stand-alone package, only in comparison to what you will get instead.

No wonder, Blood, Sweat & Tears, rightfully, sang, in their song When I die

“I can swear there ain’t no heaven, but I pray there ain’t no hell!

About heaven he can swear, but when it comes to hell he prays.

Evolution has taught us one thing. You want unquestioned submission, fear is the key.

You do not need to administer real pain, all one has to do is instill the fear that pain is around the corner and submission is offered on a platter.

Take family as an example (with kids)

One parent is usually the loving one while the other is a martinet. The time-tested, good cop- bad cop routine. Always works. Who the kids fear and hence respect. Who the kids love and hence take for granted.

No rocket science.

I have not considered a family with children all grown up, as here the tables are turned. The parents fear the children.

Payback time eh! 😊

Tribal chief, village ombudsman, chief of the warriors, kings, generals, elected rulers, religious heads – they all know that fear works.

And no one knows it better than those that practice religions.

God loves you, by itself, is not enough to have a following. If love and compassion alone is sufficient, then a penniless, vagabond traveler should have a bigger following than the ones that the organized religion commands.

The same God will torture you for eternity, if you stray, from some random set of rules, is necessary and more powerful to have a following. The “following” results in revenue, the real game actually.

One keeps a distance from a snake not from a earthworm. One stays away from lions and tigers, not from rabbits.

Earth’s orbit around the sun 53 times has resulted in me becoming a man who has nothing to do with religion, Gods and all that balderdash, which my children managed much sooner.

In my early years I did not know that I had a choice. I, like millions of others, was constantly bombarded by Gods and rituals almost endlessly. One of the earlier recollections, that never fades away, is my grandmother telling me, I repeat verbatim

“You do this, and the God will come and poke your eyes out” (ummachy kanne kuthidum is how it is said in my mother tongue, Tamil)

It is easy to imagine the terror that statement must have played on the child’s mind and the havoc it must have created.

Swear on God, pun intended, the lasting image of God in my psyche, had always been, someone like a Mafiosi, who would go around poking eyes out of innocent, helpless children, without anesthesia.

I do not think my grandmother mentioned the “no-anesthesia” part, but that is how fear works.

More implied than explicit.

She instilled the fear of Gods in me, so to say.

And that is how it works.

Why fear when I am here is, thus, not an assurance by the stated fact, but a threat more by implication.