Contemporary concerns and Worldviews
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: June 13 2015 -
Duty and moral obligation form a major part of any ethical discourse.
The two are generated through norms of a community.
As much guided by norms and ritual practices, what is desirable are also closely linked to what a community sees as good and evil.
All these ideas are closely embedded in the specific life-worlds.
One acquires the notion of duty and moral obligation through myriad political and social dimensions.
Communities have produced and reproduced various notions guided by the overarching socio-economic structure.
Through the everyday life experience, one internalizes the idea of even good and evil.
Thus, community becomes the corner stone through which moral worldviews are shaped, internalised and practised.
In most of the communities around the world, the world of good and evil have been linked to how the societies have constructed myths and legends.
Evil and good have been constructed through binary relations easily demonstrated through exemplary motifs.
However, certain values attached to these exemplary patterns are elevated to such heights which can rarely be reached by ordinary human beings.
This basically means there is a need to relook and analyse values derived from myths from a totally different perspective.
The elevated values attached to myths are not always meant to be pursued.
In other words, the narratives over these values have also been created to construct a barrier or to restrain members of society from pursuing the same.
The existent narratives and histories do tell us extraordinary tales of people following the prompt of their own inner core.
These tales also often become a counter model to the overarching structure of society.
Although the ethical and moral realms are produced and reproduced through inherited traditions, the question over the control of these values becomes contentious with the emergence of emancipatory politics.
Prominent historical markers like that of colonialism or the overwhelming encounters with external worlds and modernity have brought in tremendous changes.
Thus, reading of traditional worldviews cannot be independent of contemporary concerns.
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