When coming to information and knowledge, our parents are our first teachers, then comes the closest of your family that is the people you spend your childhood with. Growing up we further come into contact with friends and then the formal education system which includes teachers and other subjects which are to form a basis of our education for the future. But before we even get to school, we are already taught and have ingrained in us some of the most important concepts in life. The most important among them being the difference between good an evil, perceived right and wrong, the socially acceptable do's and don'ts, the codes of ethics and moral and also importantly love. There are a lot more of the nuances and fine print details that our parents do their best to teach us and our grandparents try to imbibe in us or our extended family tries to impression on us at that tender age. Our very patient grand parents explain, Our parents love and our aunts and uncles try to bribe us with sweets, chocolates, biscuits but overall they try to teach us something, something that in its core is faulty. We are taught all this but the one fact our people forget to teach us is to think for ourselves We are told to listen to advice and to listen to our parents and elders always apparently because "they know better". What we are taught are pre-fabricated notions and conclusions on what is right and what is wrong
Lets take an example:
A certain set of people in India practicing Hinduism as an active religion are told not to eat meats or any kind of Non-Vegetarian. When a kid gets curious and asks why, he is told that because that certain sect has practiced it since long and since they do pooja you shouldn't partake in meat or alcohol. That in itself stifles that kid's thinking ability, giving him a pre conceived notion and enforcing onto him without a logical or even a remotely valid one with no links to fact is why that kids thinking might be a bit curtailed. The logical reason that this particular community in question are not usually involved in much physical activity, their main profession once upon a time being spirituality and bureaucracy hence their need for a high amount of protein intake would be low. The elders of old knew this and to keep everyone healthy they gave out wisdom saying that for their own health the members of this community shouldn't partake in much of protein containing meat. The health and the historical precedence, the logical and factual basses are not covered and in India most of our knowledge is being covered as superstition. This needs to change.
A lot of other similar analogies could be applied to our interpretation of good and evil. According to our texts and the knowledge that was passed on to us since old times, A good son is one who cares for his parents, cares for their need and does as much as he can to keep them comfortable and happy. An exceptional son never abandons his parent even in their old age. We tell the tale of Srvana Kumara just to prove this point. To make my point I shall now take the example of one out greatest villans in mythology, the Demon King Ravana,, whose example is taken as the epitome of evil and someone whom kids should never emulate.
Taking the King Ravana, he ruled over an immensely rich kingdom of Lanka. In all aspects he led a rich comfortable, not lacking for anything life. However on his mothers whim, just to fulfill her wish he left his home for over a year and performed great penance for Lord Shiva. He obtained on his mothers wishes one of the most powerful and exceptionally impossible to obtain articles in all of Hinduism. No other person in all of our epics is supposed to have got the Atma Lingam of Lord Shiva through penance. The other side afraid of the power he was gaining and his skill tricked him into losing it before he took it to his mother. Again the king was just trying to follow all the rules good men had to follow at the time. Taking advantage of that they denied him his hard work that he had done so that he could take care of his mother. Yet our country hails Ravana as the villan who didn't care for anyone and was bent on destroying Dharma. In face this story tells us that Ravana was indeed an ideal son who cared for his mother and his family a lot.
What we need to teach the younger generation is that Good and bad is just a matter of perception based on the side you are on and that all evil is bad but not everything your side says is bad should necessarily be evil. There will be people opposed to me writing this and will ask me if i am an atheist or a mad man to praise Ravana. I would like to remind all such people that even Valmiki calls Ravana Ravana Brahma in respect of his great knowledge and even Rama does penance to get rid of the Brahma Hathya he was forced to commit because of killing Ravana. if you still have doubts then please do read the Ramayana. Do ccurse if you feel that I've made mistake, after all that's a part of the learning curve. If you feel that we are evil for supporting Ravana then please by all means call us evil for that we would happily be. After all everyone cant be Rama in the world, we woud rather be ravana's and keep the world in balance so that we don't descend into chaos .
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