Essays: June 2022 Current Affairs | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly - UPSC PDF Download

The Paths To Glory Lead But To The Grave

Introduction
This great quote is taken from the ninth stanza of the Thomas Grey’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. The lines go like:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

The poet has beautifully beaded the words into a garland making a deep sense and passing a big message to the masses. He has told that whatever we gain in life by heroics acts, obtaining / assuming power, beauty, and wealth has very least sustenance, still life is perishable.

Of all the truth, death is the most universal, whose realisation is assured beyond any doubt and without any exception. One thing that man has consistently failed at is in achieving physical immortality. No alchemy, sacrifice, yoga and no enlightenment or Nirvana could materialise into an everlasting enduring life. One who has been born, shall die, so shall one who will be born. Entire life, people torment themselves for money, material, love, family, health, glory etc. But all the varieties of trouble a life might encounter, with all its preoccupations, find their submergence in death. Death is an inevitable phenomena associated with life, since the moment worldly existence of life form is realised.

Greek hero of Trojan War, the central character and greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad - Achilles- was tried to be made immortal by his mother Thetis, herself a sea-nymph. He was dipped into the holy water by her mother to attain immortality. However he was killed at the end of the Trojan War within the city of Troy by an arrow which struck him in the heel. It was discovered that he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him while dipping into the water, which remained dry. After his death, all his bravery, all the swiftness of his sword and all his insurmountable strength reduced to a phrase of grammar called ‘Achilles heel’ which means a weakness or vulnerable point. Indeed death is the ultimate truth. There is nothing that can stop one from realization of this truth.

Nevertheless, fear associated with death might be optional. The fact is, death seems scary, not because death is scary but because life, many a times, gets scary. The fear of death follows from that of life. One who is prepared to die anytime, is the one who lives the life fully. It is in such achievement of fearlessness for life that glory sprouts and nurtures itself. The durability of life is often associated with the intensity of glory achieved. Maria Corazon Aquino was a self proclaimed plain housewife till she decided to run for president in Philippines after her husband was assassinated. She was the most prominent figure of the 1986 People Power Revolution and was named Time magazine's "Woman of the Year" the same year. She toppled the 20-year authoritarian rule of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, restored democracy to the Philippines and served as the 11th President. Prior to this, she had not held any other elective office. She would say: “I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.” Sacrosanct and inviolable as she might appear, but she died of colon cancer in the year of 2009. Death doesn't demand a submission of being, but it ensures the same.

Before being social, man was only an animal. Concept of society, tamed him for the sustainable needs of inter-dependence. Path to glory resonates with such balance of needs and sustenance. Still, a beast always resides within. This beast stares and sharpens its claws, and attacks vigorously when drunk with power and pride followed by imbalance of conscience. Glory is not an unproblematic select to deal with ease. Oriana Fallaci - an Italian author, journalist and an ardent interviewer - having keenly observed her political interviewees, said: “Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison. To bear it is an art, and to have that art is rare.”

One can plan for a safer life by keeping away from any glory, for more glorious the path, closer it is to dying. Nevertheless, there is no safe box which couldn’t be torn apart by the claws of death. Death is like the deep dense woods whose immensity cannot be fathomed from ground because the vision is blocked by the first few rows of trees itself.

It is life that categorises; death on the other hand declassifies them all. Death is the union of all life forms. Paupers struggle on daily basis throughout their life to make it to the end of the day. Their life might not mean much to the society as much as they are said to have died like flies. On the other hand, upper class has their burial site booked, crypt engraved or funeral sumptuously occasioned. Eventually, rich men don't live enough to witness them all. No matter what we do, achieve or feel and how differently we do them, death unifies all classes of people. In fact, poor people might have lived like flies, but they all died as good as any riches. A couch of thorns or an embroidered bed, are matters of indifference to the dead. Death is like that volume of calm water where all the deeds die out like a ripple. German author and playwright - Wolfgang Borchert, whose work was affected by the environment of Second World War, writes in his play ‘The Outsider’: “A man dies. 

We all need some or the other motivation to sail through the struggles of life. Search for food is motivated by the inherent characteristics of hunger of human body. It is the acceptance in society, showering of praise, recognition or being envied by fellow being, that drives one to the paths of glory. Marcus Tullius Cicero - a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer who vainly tried to uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic- puts up his thoughts which came to be known as Ciceronian rhetoric: “We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.” When it comes to survival, death is the ultimate motivation. It helps men discover unknown boundaries, untraversed locations and unfathomable will. The philosophy of vicious cycle of rebirth, karma and nirvana basically stream-lines human being for peaceful coexistence, to abjure violence, to be accommodative and to comfort, sympathize and distract mind from the lamenting nature of death. 

A thought that makes life the liveliest is the idea of ‘memento mori’ which means ‘Remember that you must die.’

Culture is what we are, civilization is what we have

Civilization is a sustainable socio-cultural formation that performs various functions. It is, in its natural and necessary extension, a civilization that enables the reproduction of cultural patterns and creates the conditions for the further creation and shaping and stabilization of social relations for future generations. 

The term civilization emphasizes a systematic society in which different groups work together to improve the quality of life in terms of food, education, clothing, communication, transport and the like. It is not limited to cities, but talks about adopting a better way of life, made possible by the use of natural resources to meet the needs of a group of people. 

A society or civilization is not a particular group of ideas, customs, or a particular group of manufactured arts that make it unique. Our culture describes who we are, and our civilization explains what we are and what we produce and use. 

Civilizations tend to develop a complex culture that includes a state-backed decision-making apparatus, literature, the professional arts, architecture, organized religion, complex customs, education, and the coercion and control that elites associate with and maintain. Civilizations are among the most complex human societies, consisting of various cities with specific characteristics of cultural and technological development. 

In order to understand the term “culture,” it is desirable to distinguish it from “civilization.”. In many parts of the world, the earliest civilizations arose when people began to assemble in urban settlements. Civilization is often understood as a larger, more advanced culture, implying a contrast to smaller, more primitive cultures

In developing the term, sociologists used “civilization” and “civilized society” to distinguish between societies that were superior to them and those that they considered inferior and that they called savage or barbaric cultures. 

Samuel P. Huntington defined civilization as “the highest cultural grouping of people with the broadest cultural identity among men, without distinguishing man from other species. In this sense, there is no sense in which civilization is an exclusive concept that applies to some human groups and not to others. Indeed, most sociologists agree on the criteria that define a society as a civilization. 

On the other hand, civilisation represents a breakthrough in human society, which means that it represents an advanced level of social and human development. Group theorists use systems theory to view civilization as a complex system, a framework in which groups of objects are analyzed and work together to achieve results. 

Today, social scientists understand culture as a society with norms, values and beliefs, as well as its objects and symbols and the meanings given to them. The concept of culture reflects the inequalities between European societies and their colonies around the world; in short, it equates culture with civilisation as opposed to the nature of non-civilisation. 

According to this concept of culture, some countries are more civilised than others, and some people are more cultured than others. This new perspective removes the judging element from the concept and distinguishes between different cultures, not between them. This more inclusive approach to culture allows a distinction to be made between so-called civilised and primitive cultures. 

Let us look at the Egyptian, Greek, Western, Thai and Saraswati cultures as having the same origins in India and say that they are all the same Aryan civilisation, in an attempt to emphasise the idea that what separates Egyptian civilisation from Greek civilisation is ignorance and bad intentions, that one man’s benevolent attempts at unity with the evil of another man are, and that the Indo-Iranians are called Aryan because there is a common identity in the combination of culture and people. All that remains is to look at the commonalities that defined “culture” and its regionalisation, the hostility, communication and division that led to the development of differences, and the commonality (s). 

The formation of groups is a necessary precursor to asking certain kinds of sociological questions, but Durkheim and Maus insist that they do not pass on the problem of what constitutes civilization to historians and ethnographers. The idea is that certain common elements unite groups into one unit of civilization. A civilization or culture refers to the general way of life of the people in it and not to the culture that is capitalized. 

Given this definition of civilization, Huntington proposes several theories about the civilization that are discussed below. In his 1974 book The Race, the English biologist John Baker lists 20 criteria that make civilizations superior to non-civilizations. Baker tries to show the relationship between the culture of civilizations and the biological dispositions of their creators. 

Culture in the broadest sense is cultivated behavior, and cultivated behavior is the totality of what a person learns through accumulated experience, which is transmitted more than briefly through behavior and social learning. 

Culture is the way of life of a group of people, the behaviors, beliefs, values and symbols they accept and think about and that they pass on through communication and imitation through a generation to the next. The fundamental core of culture comprises traditional ideas and their associated values or cultural systems that can be considered products of actions and condition and influence future actions. 

A civilization is a society in an advanced social development state with complex legal, political, and religious organizations. In short, a civilization is a progressive state of human society which can be summarized as culture, science, industry, and government. 

Technology as the silent factor in international relations.

Technology is derived from Greek word which means “science of art” and “art skill” “cunning of hand”. It is the sum of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes and can be embeded in machines to allow for operation without detail knowledge of their working.

The simple form of technology is the development and use of basic tools. The prehistoric of invention of shaped stone tools followed by the discovery of how to control fire increased sources of food. The invention of the wheel helped the human to travel in and control their environment development in historic times including the printing press, the telephone and the internet have lessened physical barriers to communication.

Technology has many effects in the global world from invention among human being many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution what pollute the global world.

Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture. Technology is the application of mathematics, science and the art for the benefit of life. A modern example is the rise of communication technology which has lessened barriers to human interaction and the rise of cyber culture has at its basis the development of the internet and the computer

Technology is the branch of knowledge which takes measures concerning engineering or applied sciences. Technology is about developing machinery and equipment using the application of scientific knowledge. The first industrial Revolution with its technological offerings change the needs and aspirations of economic and social development radical and fundamentally. The needs arrows to develop the markets for this goods, for example Britain used many overseas colonies to promote these goods. Consequently, technology silently started transforming the ways in which people and things were connected across the sea.

The use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki compelled the Nations to think about what nuclear technology could do to the world. The nuclear which maintains nuclear arsenals can defend his or her country’s sovereignty and can also help other nations. Nuclear deterrence as a strategic concept aims to prevent war.

Technology has its compulsive say in realism which views political power as the subject matter of politics. Western countries endeavour to see the nuclear weapons free middle East.

The fourth Industrial Revolution which is about the convergence of physical , digital and biological spheres where technologies with the purpose of creating an inclusive growth and environment. Theses massive technological changes and inducements have already silently entered the dynamics of international relations

Read More Essays on:

• UPSC Mains Essay Preparation