Revenge of History 3

History is pitiless. It will extract its pound of flesh along with blood, so greater the nature of the crime, greater is the payback and suffering. The outcome of indulging in enjoyment at the exclusion of the others and excessive pride in one’s own ability are recipes for destruction as history has repeatedly proved through the rise and fall of many mighty empires. Think of Europe, it had many intellectuals, scholars and thinkers from sixteenth to nineteenth century. Now where are they? Europe, at the end of its run of prosperity arising out of the Industrial Revolution and exploitation of the colonies can at best boast today of an extreme mediocrity in all spheres.

One may ask, if nations have to reap the fruits of the consequences of the past misdeeds of the ancestors of the present generation, is that a fair assessment, one would say that nothing is fair in life. The same question may be asked by the people who were tortured by their ancestors – "why did we suffer?"  History extracts it revenge over a period of time unless that is repaid or atoned for. One can only conjecture, if one believes in the Karmic theory, that such perpetrators and sufferers reborn at different points of time and the game changes in favour of the latter who take their sweet revenge. However, a more prudent assessment would be something like this – The descendants have prospered with the ill gotten wealth of the ancestors who spilled many an innocent blood for making their nations prosperous. These descendants thus reaped benefit of the economic gains of the exploits or misdeeds of their forefathers. Therefore it is natural that they should also suffer the consequences of the associated misdeeds because every pleasure is accompanied by pain and one cannot enjoy the pleasure part without suffering the pain. Thus if one has enjoyed the prosperity on account of the accumulation of the wealth of the ancestors, one is bound to suffer as a result of the accumulation of the”bad karma” that such wealth resulted in. A much more probable and logical assessment is that, with prosperity people tend to become lazy and as a consequence many problems set in - esp. the lack of hard work which is necessary for carrying out improvements and preventing degradation. They lose the urge to work hard and therefore are susceptible to the evils of a developed life. In the end that brings about destruction. In the past stronger barbarians often attacked the weaker prosperous nations driven by greed of wealth. Even if the nations did not develop by exploiting others, they did create many problems for their own people and paid back very dearly for the same, as was the case with ancient India., where spiritual and social degradation were the main causes of the decadence in the last millennium.

It is often seen in case of dynasties which prospered through ruthless misadventures that in two or three generations not only all wealth is lost, but a “curse” descends whereby the generations decay and perish. That "curse" scientifically stands for the lost initiative and general degradation resulting out of luxury and sensual enjoyments. In case of nations the class distinctions also lead to internal strife and dissents as the gap between "haves" and "have nots" increase.