Conservatism is important, but one must be cautious when explaining its significance. It is not a natural trait, nor is it a God-given quality. Conservatism is rooted in an insecurity-based politics, which makes it naturally at odds with the evolving nature of human beings. As a species, we are constantly evolving, and while conservatism is necessary to set the rhythm of this evolutionary process, clinging to it means adhering to outdated religious or political rules that govern our societies.
Humanity must continue to evolve and adapt until we reach our full potential. To pursue this potential, we need to break free from all boundaries. The belief that living in the past is the safest and best course of action is simply wrong. During evolution, there is no ultimate human knowledge—whether it be religious beliefs, national constitutions, or governing systems—nothing can be perfect because we must adapt and evolve according to the needs of the times we live in. If we keep living in the past, it is like looking backward and not paying attention to what lies ahead. If you don’t pay attention, sooner or later, you will collide with something. This is what is happening worldwide today. Conservatism is colliding not only with new generations but also with scientific and technological evolution. From abortion to euthanasia to blood transfusions to stem cell research to advancing genetic knowledge, these developments confuse the conservative population, yet time does not stop.
Contrary to popular belief, loyalties are not usually for sale, nor is it a clap with one hand; they require commitment from both sides to make a noise. When it comes from both sides, it can lead to a thundering success. A belief system cannot be forced or enforced because our awareness is constantly evolving and changing.
This adaptation to evolving knowledge is rare—some have it, most do not, because of our individual level of understanding. Our personal and individual loyalties should naturally be towards both God and humanity as a whole, but we have been stuck in the past because of conservatism.
Race, gender, color, nation, or religion are all related to our installed knowledge. Dissecting our identity to the core can bring clarity to the individual. As living, breathing human beings, we are all a bundle of physical and spiritual combinations. I was watching an Indian movie, Delhi 6, and I would like to quote a fitting passage:
“In every speck shines his divine light
Look within yourself, he is not far from you,
If you have love for yourself then embrace everyone
Because we are all in his form. That is worship.”
In plain and simple words, any system that brings glory to some but destroys others in the process is not from God, nor is it spiritual or natural. It is influenced by human insecurity and related politics, individually and collectively. Humanity has been a victim of identity confusion because of our politically tainted beliefs and governing security systems.
Since the beginning of our awareness, our politics have revolved around family, clan, community, nation, or belief systems. But these days, with the internet and our individual evolution, we are slowly but surely creating a global village. Some of us like the idea of venturing out, but branching out is very difficult for the vast majority to process. Change is in the air; you just have to look at humanity’s reaction to conditions such as the spread of Ebola, AIDS, and global warming. Our space stations and satellites have been at work for a long time, but what we don’t realize is that they are joint ventures of humanity as well.
When groups preach and promise superiority over others to their followers, it clearly teaches that other groups are inferior. Whether it is related to race, gender, nation, or religion, it is all connected to the politics of prejudice and discrimination. You can say to yourself that you are not prejudiced, but if you still consider your group better than others, you are influenced by prejudice and discrimination. When it comes to equal human rights, there is no middle ground—it is either all or nothing. In a court of law, you cannot claim you are not responsible for a crime because you belong to a certain group; no one will listen to you. It is time to own our actions because we all have the same free will and sense of justice.
Equal human rights mean that there are no differences based on color, gender, race, nation, or religion. You cannot just claim that you are going to heaven and everyone else is going to hell. No one can or should claim they are a little bit right or wrong. If a justice system is blind and treats everyone equally, you cannot and should not be conservative or liberal when it comes to being a judge. It is all about the law, and the law should always be based on a solid foundation of equal human rights for all.
Interestingly, when it comes to religions, we are taught to conform and believe blindly. If you question the authenticity of the rules or disobey, you are looked down upon by the leaders and other believers for not having faith in their teachings. Group mentality often leads to the prevalence of discrimination and prejudice, regardless of the group. This discrimination is not only directed at outsiders but also at insiders, leading to the formation of subdivisions or sects within groups. Such divisions are not beneficial for humanity as a whole. Intolerance, violence, and even wars can be stopped if we start taking individual responsibility. However, we are often insecure due to our lack of political knowledge, and groups create external enemies to manipulate us, while most people get hurt by their own kind.
Religious beliefs that attempt to divide people are not rooted in the texts or holy books. They stem from discrimination and prejudice-driven politics, born from an out-of-control, non-spiritual sense of belonging to the groups we choose to follow. Loyalty to family, clan, community, nation, or religion is considered the right thing to do in a group setting, but this can lead to spiritual crimes in other contexts. This is why humanity is divided into hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces.
The solution is not in looking for a savior, dynasty, empire, or superpower to control and overpower every race, gender, nation, or religion. Loyalties are not for sale, nor can they be forced or enforced. The problems are related to our violent nature, and we need to come to terms with it from within as individuals. No one should let anyone use them for political purposes.
The individual is the most important aspect of this picture, so educating individuals holds the key. Helping people to evolve further will enable them to see that the Earth is round and has no physical boundaries or walls. Human beings, along with other creatures, are residents, and there is nowhere else to go, at least not yet.
Passing on to another dimension after death is another story. For now, we need the knowledge of evolution so we can learn to live with each other. Western societies, as melting pots, are clear examples of our ability to live together and trust other human beings, even if they do not belong to any particular group. Genetically, we are all matched. Scientifically, we are all made of the same stuff. Spiritually, we may be alive as part of the same entity, like human bodies with God as cells, because we live, age, and die the same way as our cells and bodies provide living conditions.
All our differences are caused by our taught and installed knowledge from our ancestors, who survived and climbed to the top of the food chain. Their main pursuit was security, not only from predators but also from their own kind. Since then, security has been the primary focus of our societies, compromising our trust through ancestral knowledge. They lived and survived like other creatures, and by connecting to our conservative knowledge, we continue following the same path. It’s time to forge ahead and embrace changes, even if it is not easy to take chances. We have no choice but to evolve.
We mark our territories and fight over them just like our ancestors did. But now we have sophisticated chemical and nuclear weapons that do not respect the boundaries of communities, other creatures, and innocent beings. This human dilemma is strongly related to group politics. We consider our belonging group as the main authority, influenced by long-held beliefs of prejudice and discrimination. It’s time for a change because humanity needs to evolve to the next level and overcome the shortcomings of our ancestral knowledge.
Can we solve our social problems? Certainly not as groups, because we have been trying for millions of years to dominate humanity, and it has never worked. As groups, we have always been political, and unless we change our path, there will always be prejudice and discrimination against others. As individuals, we can hope to be educated enough to learn to belong to humanity as a whole. This goes against everything we have been taught and believed as a group, so it will be an uphill battle for humanity to overcome the old ways of doing things. Judging by what is happening in the external world, each of us has a constant internal battle.
Changes are needed from within individuals. We all evolve differently and at different paces. Most of our societies suffer from conservatism and are politically divided, so they swing back and forth as the hands of power change. Iran is a good example. Like other nations, they want scientific advancements, but they try to control their population through conservatism. Before the revolution, that society was quite advanced, but things changed when conservatism took hold of power. Now, Turkey and America are going backward, and Britain voted to leave the European Union, forming Brexit. These actions are similar to how animals mark their territory out of fear. I don’t play political games; I view everything through a spiritual lens. For me, equal human rights and justice for all with a boundary-less Earth for one humanity is the goal. I may be an idealist, but that is what I believe in.
As individuals, it is time for us to wake up and evolve with changing times. In my opinion, spirituality is love for humanity and all its aspects. Peaceful coexistence is possible, but it requires effort and courage to break free from the shackles of conservatism and group politics. We need to nurture an environment that promotes individual growth, understanding, and acceptance, fostering a world where everyone has an equal chance to thrive.
It is mind-boggling to me that many religious people, who should embody spirituality in their interactions with society, do not demonstrate this spirituality when choosing political parties. They often oppose helping the needy in their time of need and then have the audacity to call liberals godless people. Spiritual initiatives like equal human rights or universal healthcare are openly opposed by conservatives, and most religious people vote for conservatism.
My issue is that people attend a mosque or church with the desire to become godly, yet they act against helping the weaker, elderly, or vulnerable in need. This is quite contradictory. Social services are also opposed by these so-called godly people.
On the other hand, leftists who believe in socialist agendas often neglect justice for the individual. They always prioritize the masses, causing individuals to lose their value in that system. In spirituality, there is no injustice, so equal human rights is the best spiritual system for governing. We must balance individual rights and collective human rights as societies, but sacrificing individual human rights is not spiritual. Therefore, individuals should have the ability to take the state to court to fight for their rights.
Evolutionary nature tells me that we are not perfect. Will we become perfect when we reach our potential? That question can’t be answered without assumptions, but I believe in doing the best we can with the best of our knowledge. What the future holds is not relevant to the present, so I wouldn’t bet on it. To address present problems, we need present-related solutions. If we keep looking to the past for solutions, we will never change and will never be able to bring humanity together because we have been taught prejudice and discrimination as ancestral knowledge or wisdom. Even today, our schools teach religion and nationalism before anything else. Historically and presently, we follow group-related politics—whether related to race, gender, nation, or religious beliefs—all of which eventually breed prejudice and discrimination. No individual likes to be treated with prejudice and discrimination, yet those who treat others that way are people too. It comes down to the spiritual rule 101: “Don’t do to anyone what you don’t like done to you or your loved ones.” To me, it’s a personal and individual problem, always related to personal security. If everyone feels secure, we would naturally support equal human rights.
If we eliminate discrimination and prejudice-based politics as groups, we can educate individuals to connect with humanity as a whole. However, a group would never do that because it would lose political power. So, change must come from the bottom up, led by educated individuals.
Imagine a world where no one does to others what they don’t like done to themselves. What would happen to humanity? I can just imagine wars disappearing, and we would find internal and external peace. However, this is a stretch for now, and I may not see that much human progress in spiritual sections. Creating peace, whether internal or external, is within our grasp, but do we really want it? This is the question we should all individually ask ourselves in the dead of night when we are alone with ourselves.
Our sense of belonging has three offspring: Ego, Pride, and Honor. They always make us weak individually, thanks to our out-of-control sense of belonging to our groups. We can’t stand up against our groups even when they are doing wrong. Emotions are powerful, but ego is a power that can cut both ways—it can be a weakness as well. When you think about what others will think of you when you take any action, you become a victim of one of the three offspring. If we dig into the causes of our actions, these children of belonging will show up, letting you know that you have been put at the bottom of the triangle by politics when you should be at the top. This is what I mean by “who flipped my triangle.”
I believe in individual strength, which makes people question socially accepted truths and related rules. If we don’t have people questioning what we do, our societies will never change or evolve. Conservatives constantly question the whole nature of evolution. If no one had proven it to them, they would still believe in a flat Earth. They can’t see that all human progress has been gifted to them by evolutionary people. They shamelessly use all technology but still can’t accept enough to give credit where it’s due. They use drugs to live with diseases but oppose medical advancements. Some people are against blood transfusions, yet they still want to live in the past, even though transfusions save lives. All progress in science, technology, medicine, and social sciences has come from people who broke away from the confines of conservatism. Most scientists don’t even believe in God. To me, it’s a matter of how you look at God and what it means to you.
Conservatives use all the facilities provided by boundary breakers but stubbornly reject accepting evolutionary nature. I believe we are designed to break our own rules. Our rules are there to slow the rhythm of social control so we can adapt and evolve rhythmically without tearing ourselves apart. Conservatism is necessary but shouldn’t be something to get stuck on. Getting comfortable in those boundaries is unnatural for humans; it’s influenced by fear-related politics. No power has ever been able to stop this human phenomenon. Evolution is in our genes and can’t be harnessed, so we need to follow our nature instead of resisting it in the name of conservatism.
Religions have enjoyed popularity and still do to some extent, but they were not and still are not able to stop changing humanity. Where we were, they wanted us to stay, but we are compelled by our nature to evolve. We can’t stay where we are. Things like honor killings are progressively becoming questionable. Wars are unacceptable to certain segments of populations across all groups, nations, and religions.
By looking broadly into history and even present days, we are becoming aware of our behaviors. We now know that conservative politics compels individuals to commit spiritual crimes against opposing groups in the name of a sense of belonging. A person may not want to kill their loved one but feels compelled to do so because society points fingers at them. This compels them to commit spiritual crimes against their own loved ones. So, yes, even as societies, we need to change this kind of out-of-control sense of belonging.
The real war is going on inside the modern, changing human being: to stay within boundaries or change with the times. I believe our evolving nature is powerful enough to bring about change. It may take time, but we have been, are, and will always be evolving. Can we change conservatism? Well, it has already changed. No political system in the world has a purely conservative party anymore. They have to become liberal or progressive conservative parties to survive. If you look at the agendas of conservatives, they have moved to the middle to win. Otherwise, in Western nations, there is no room left for them. Humanity has moved on to changing times, so no one wants to be left behind.