World can be broadly divided into two: LOVE and EVIL. Ever since the world was born, love has been at a never ending war with evil. One's victory is the other's defeat. It is everyone's duty to help love win this war. What world needs to prosper, is people living with love for each other and trying to make each other happy. People need to have the qualities of kindness, care, concern and sympathy. To make a good society we need to root out all the evils, as much as possible. Some thoughts that may come to anyone's minds: "A perfect world is boring. Life is not fair, lets deal with it." The reality is that a perfect world or society is an IDEAL situation that will never happen, so we will never get bored. The closer we get to achieving it, the better it is for humanity. Why can't the world become more fair instead of resigning and accepting defeat with the idea that we can't achieve everything? Yes, it is true we can't achieve EVERYTHING, but we can achieve SOMETHING. To defeat evil, the first thing we need is a perfect understanding of what all are the true evils which basically sum up all the problems in this world.
1. Superiority complex:
The feeling that you are superior to certain other people, and hence are entitled to harass or bully them, and to attain joy at their expense. We see different forms of this in all walks of life. Take for example the school or college environment. How many of you have never been subject to some form of deliberate harassment or mental/physical abuse during your school/college days? If you weren't, then you have been very lucky and you belong to a minority. Even then you must have been witness to such events at some point of time. This kind of harassment can have a permanent negative impact on victims, and can destroy them mentally/physically, critically affecting their careers. Despite all the anti-ragging laws in educational institutions we know ragging exists almost everywhere in varying degrees. The root problem lies not with the strength or implementation of the laws, but rather in peoples' mindsets. The thought that ragging is 'okay' since it "helps individuals develop self-confidence and gives them the ability to deal with tough situations" is as outdated as the most backward sins prevelant in the society such as the 'Sati'. This existence of this very thought is the main reason why people don't feel the need to take proper action against this malpractice, and a section of students go ahead with it, without regrets. The case in educational institutions is just one of the many similar examples that can be seen in fields upto politics and sports.
2. Lack of empathy:
This leads to people being selfish, without any care or concern towards how other people feel. Living only for themselves, makes people keep looking for ways to satisfy themselves, regardless of how it affects others. Such a person ends up exploiting others for his/her benefits. A prime example of this problem can be seen together with the feeling of lust. Lust is not an evil as such, and resides in EVERY person in different amounts. However, lust together with a lack of empathy constructs a big danger and this is the reason why rape happens all over in this society. Does rape happen mainly because men want to show their superiority to women (I hear this argument all around these days)? No, it happens because an evil together with an inherent characteristic of every person, subdues the self-respect and dignity of the individual (offender). If a person is empathetic, he will not attain pleasure at another person's sorrow. Again, the case can be extended to many other topics as well.
3. Lack of intellect:
Intellect refers to looking into logic and reason before making a decision. The absence of intellect leads to conformism. An example is the typical Indian classroom. Teacher asks a question to students and those who say yes are asked to raise their hands. Before deciding whether to raise hands, students look at the each other and think: "Oh, not many are raising their hands, so lets not raise hand myself." Conformists don't feel the need to stand for the right, and look instead at what is the general trend or public opinion. Then he/she agrees to this opinion that has the better support of the public instead of thinking on his own and forming an opinion without prejudice. This tendency is alarmingly widespread and you might have already been annoyed several times by this in your life either if you have been the subject of opinion, or if you simply had tried to question the wrong things happening around. Absence of intellect makes people resistant to change and refuse to question or speak up against the unjust norms. For instance, sections of people keep blindly defending outdated views and beliefs that consider women as inferior to men. Another one is the 'moral policing' when men and women are seen together in a place or travelling together. Such things will keep society in the dark ages for decades to come unless every right-thinking person tries to man up and stand for the right instead of siding with the trend.
There are no perfect people in the society and all have some kind of evil existing within themselves. Just that some have lesser amount of evils and others have more. When we get a good grasp of what the evils are and try to root them out, we can improve. The realization of what is good and what is evil has to be fed into individuals as early as possible during life. A person is the product of what all he/she hears and learns right from childhood. A society is in turn the product of all its people. True education is one that PRIMARILY imparts these essential moral values in preference to maths, science and technology. We live in a world that needs to change for the better at every given opportunity. This world means you, and me. Only if we work together can love triumph over evil.
16. Have determination, and belief in whatever you do.
