How Does A Principle Get Rooted In A Society?

By Sajeeva Samaranayake -April 30, 2014 

Sajeeva Samaranayake

Talking in our sleep

HOW can we embody human rights instead of just talking about them? Most of our political discourse is sitting on a doubtful assumption – that we are a democracy and that we all share some collective allegiance to a set of principles. That is just one way of looking at our society. And that puts a tremendous burden on a state which does not seem ready to wake up from its growing slumber and inertia.

A better question: Are WE the people awake? Do we really have the benefit of these principles today? Did we not live through the past 30-40 years watching them die a slow death? If they were established at some point in history, did they get sufficiently rooted to produce trees and branches and leaves and flowers? Are we all sitting inside a garden that is not only messed up but also badly cultivated? To repeat my first question is there in fact a proper way for principles and values to be rooted in a human society? Exploring this question may be useful for our future – especially if my suggestion that we share no principles today is accepted. But first of all we need to get a preliminary issue out of the way. Where does the basic energy of freedom come from?

Freedom is not dependent

Is self respect, dignity and wholeness dependent on constitutions and other empty promises signed by corrupt politicians in this country or resolutions passed by corrupt politicians elsewhere?  Or does it depend on what the upwardly mobile UN public servant says and does when governments fail or what the International Criminal Court does when everything has failed? Are not all these second rate remedies built on top of a sleeping human being who is yet to ask that question – WHO AM I? The human spirit may lie dormant for hundreds of years; but when it catches fire it becomes the source energy and foundation for all human creativity and free action. As Victor Hugo once said ‘no army can withstand the power an idea whose time has come.’

To understand who we are, we must have a sense of history and learn something about the ideas and values that shaped our ancient society. We can start with a dialogue recounted in the   Samanthapasadika between two founding fathers of the ancient rajarata civilisation – King Devanampiyatissa and Arahat Mahinda.

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