Questions like "which is more beautiful, a rose or a lily" are unanswerable
in any absolute way, all depends upon context and the purpose of the
questioner. To force our views into a straitjacket of logic is to impoverish them,
to create an artificial wall between peoples that then serves as the justification
for war, for conflict based on ignorance, for death based on misunderstanding.
Our nature has equipped us with the faculty for quick generalisations from
limited data, and this had survival value when we were primitive savages, yet
now it only serves to enable massive over-reaction, a technological enhancement
of a knee-jerk reflex that serves only to destroy. We must learn to see anew, to
view the world around us in its proper, complex, context. We should take differences as
positive expressions of valuable diversity, and not as opposition to be forcibly
eliminated regardless of the cost to ourselves, materially and spiritually.
Enlightenment looks through the eyes of love and beauty and not those of hate
and ugliness.
Complexity comment:
The wonders of love and peace are familiar to all, so why do we war ?
Perversity in human behaviour, as amongst the Gods we created in
our image, is largely a result of dualist thinking, the idea that all questions
must have a single Yes or No answer. This inadequate system of logic
dates back to the ancient Greeks, and has so affected our Western
societies and world views that it seems to be self-evidently true.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Truth itself is a single dimensional
reduction of the complex to the trivial, a blinkered viewpoint that ignores
the depth of characteristics that pervade all things.