Harap maaf jika artikel ini "berat" sikit. Saya masukkan artikel ini kerana ada beberapa persoalan yang menarik. Ia ditujukan khas kepada ahli2 umno - baik yang atas pagar, maupun yang dah sedang melompat pagar atau yang sedang memakan "nasi bungkus percuma" sekarang ini - maklum sajalah, dah penat "berdemo".

Manusia sebenarnya adalah satu objek yang berada di antara dua persimpangan kuasa2 yang menarik dan menolak umpama magnet. Kekuatan dan kebijaksanaan kita bukan diukur melalui kenampakkan urat2 (muscle) pada lengan atau kebolehan mengangkat barang2 - tetapi ia diukur mengikut ketahanan kita mengawal diri kita sendiri yang sedang digoyah oleh pelbagai kuasa2 ini. Mereka yg kuat ialah mereka yg bebas dari pengaruh kuasa2 ini dan mereka yg lemah ialah mereka yg terpenjara dan tidak dapat membebaskan diri dari ikatan kuasa2 itu.

Tuhan tidak membiarkan manusia tanpa pedoman untuk melayari kehidupan ini - maka Dia mengutuskan Nabi2 dan Rasul2 untuk membebaskan manusia dari cengkaman kuasa2 yang tidak sepatutnya yg akan menghambakan manusia kepada mereka.

Orang yg berjuang ialah orang yang sanggup berkorban. Dia juga tidak mengharapkan apa2 balasan - kerana ia dilakukan bukan untuk kedudukkan atau penghormatan sesama manusia. Ia adalah tanggungjawab kerana kasihnya ia kepada ugamanya melebihi kasihnya terhadap segala2 nya, baik pemimpin maupun keluarga sendiri, malah diri (nyawa) nya sendiri. Cerita seorang pemikir Nietze di bawah ini cukup berkesan untuk menghidupkan otak kita yg sudah teruk "jammed" ini - dgn pelbagai drama2 dan tangisan olok2 manusia.

Akibat pengorbanan inilah kita mendengar kisah2 pilu sahabat2 dan pejuang2 serta ulamak2 terdahulu. Mereka mati meninggalkan babak2 dan episod2 yg dikenang berzaman. Mereka tidak membina mahligai untuk diri sendiri, tetapi mereka mendirikan rumah2 utk rakyat marhaen yg tersadai. Kasih kpd rakyat melebihi kasih pada diri dan keluarga sendiri. Mereka rela dipenjara dan didera asalkan rakyat terbela. Itu semua tidak ada pada diktator tua.... Yang ada sandiwara belaka....... Dia banyak mengambil dari memberi. Pantas menuduh dari membukti. "Tangkas lari" dari menawar diri.

"But if love is adopted to serve a personal purpose, to satisfy a need or to fulfill a desire, it is not love. It is a commercial transaction. To love is to give, not to take or exchange. To love is to give up one's life, interest, possessions and the like so that another person may live, a cause may triumph, an ideal may be realised. This is the real meaning of 'ithar'. " - Ali Shariati.

Manusia yg tidak dapat melepaskan dirinya dari penjara2 kehidupan ini adalah manusia yang tidak punya pemikiran - atau dengan kata lain - BANGANG!!

--ooOoo--

"According to Ali Shariati, an Iranian philosopher, each of us exists within four prisons.

First is the prison imposed on us by history and geography; from this confinement, we can escape only by gaining a knowledge of science and technology.

Second is the prison of history; our freedom comes when we understand how historical forces operate.

The third prison is our society's social and cla#s structure; from this prison, only a revolutionary ideology can provide the way to liberation.

The final prison is the self. Each of us is composed of good and evil elements, and we must each choose between them."-Glenn Omatsu

--ooOoo--

Nota: Saya sudah hilang artikel penuh. Artikel ini dipetik dari koleksi majalah yg saya simpan. Cuba cari di internet artikel penuh dalam topik ini tapi tak jumpa. Walaubagaimana pun artikel ini cukup hebat untuk menggoncang pemikiran.

THE FOUR PRISONS OF MAN by Dr. Ali Shariati - Final Part.

In the previous installments, Dr. Shariati described the "four prisons of man" which impede his mental and spiritual progress, from being bashar to becoming insan. He also described how man has been able to free himself from the first three prisons, namely Nature, History and Society, by means of "science". But man's freedom from the first three prisons is meaningless while he is still chained in the dark dungeon of the fourth prison, the prison of his ego, which is the most formidable of all prisons and one from which man cannot break free by means of science. Dr. Shariati then proceeded to describe how man has found it the most challenging task to rise from this fourth prison, particularly in this very age of science and technology. In this final part, before discovering how to break free from the fourth prison, he explains the reasons why modern man has reached absurdity and vanity, thus making his task all the more difficult.

Man has reached absurdity because he has attached excessive attention to materialistic ideals - ideals which, once fulfilled, will give way to further frustration and futility. As long as the modern man is bound by his ego, he will be a petty contender doomed to defeat. He will be like that prince, as depicted by Jaun Izula, who glittered with gold, gems and armours but who, below his gilded appearance, suffered from a severe pain, for which he never found any cure. The armoured prince is meant to symbolize France in its modern situation, but he can also stand for the modern man of our time, who is well armoured and ornamented, but weaker and more vulnerable today, than any time in history.

At the centre of Rotterdam City Square in Holland, stands a curious statue, sculptured out of stone. All its body joints are shown to be disconnected from one another. Its neck is shown to be jutting out a little; its elbows are not in their proper place in relation to its arms; its knees and ankles are shown to be out of tune with the rest of the figure and so on. If you observed it from a distance, you would think that by a mere drift of a wind it could fall apart and break into pieces, despite the fact that it is made out of hard stone. This statue in intended to represent the sate of man after the Second World War. But it is also the representation of the man of today who has become stronger and mightier than any time before while, at the same time, he has never been more exposed to the danger of destruction and extinction than he is today.

Science has given power to man, but he is still morally weak. He may be able to bombard Mars from Earth and he may be able to conquer space and explore it by his sophisticated machines monitored from Earth, but this highly intelligent creature is morally weak, salary-bound and money-worshipping. He would be willing to do anything for the sake of money. It is said that slavery is still being practiced. There are those slave-hunters who still haunt the jungles of certain half-savage and primitive tribes and hunt their youth and sell them in black markets. But I have witnessed another kind of slavery being practiced at the highest "intellectual" centres of Europe, at Cambridge and the Sorbonne, where the slaves traded are not savages from the jungles but the most capable minds put up for auction for the highest price.

The bidders have converged from all over the world. They are the capitalists and agents of big corporations and companies from North America, Europe, China, Russia, and other parts of the industrial world. One bidder announces that he would pay this new graduate, doctor, chemist, engineer or sociologist, such and such an amount as his starting salary. Another bidder declares that he would be willing to furnish him with a private car. Another says that he would pay all that sum and a car with a chauffeur. The modern slave being bargained for, overwhelmed and bemused, looks at the masters one by one, and then follows the one who has offered the highest salary.

Professionally, this man is qualified enough to help a society overcome many problems and obstacles, but he is too incompetent to free himself from the prison of his own ego. Since the prison is within, and a part of his inner dimension, he must start from within him, revolt against it and liberate himself from it : a task he cannot accomplish because he has lost the key to this dark dungeon.

The key to his freedom is in "love" and not in science or in any other means. I do not mean to think of this kind of love in its Sufi, Platonic, mystical or abstract forms because such forms of love are prisons themselves. I see love as a mighty Divine force existing in the depth of my soul. Like a volcanic force, it can stir a revolution within me by arousing me against myself and against the prison which has kept me in captivity. The revolt has to start from within. I have to be exploded and burned from within. I have to be cleansed by fire. Why by fire? Can reason not help? It cannot help because reason can discover the laws of nature, but it cannot deal with this internal and "alogical" problem of man.

To paraphrase Pareto's statement, man's deeds and habits can be cla#sified in three ways : "logical", "illogical", and "alogical". That we live, work, earn a living, wear clothes, think, study, flatter one another, etc., all such actions and habits are logical because they can lead us to "logical" results. Our eccentricities are our "illogical" habits and actions. But habits and actions which can neither be logical nor illogical are "alogical". That which is alogical is not logical, but it is charged with more power. That which is logical is based on the principle of "cause and effect". But man sometimes tends to destroy this logical link between the cause and the effect so that he may be able to accomplish a higher goal or serve a greater cause.

For example, he may pour petrol on his body and then set himself on fire consciously and purposely so that society may be saved from another fire. This is not a "logical" action because one who performs it demands no reward or compensation. This is a moral principle and the meaning of what I mean by "love". Love is a force urging the lover to sacrifice his own interests and well being, and even his own life, for the sake of those he loves and for the sake of the ideal he has lived for.

One day as Nietzche was walking along a street, he saw a horse, struggling to get out of a ditch, gasping hard under the heavy load of a cart turned over against it. The owner was trying to force the poor animal out of the pit so that he would not lose his cartload. The animal was too tangled to move but the owner, who seemed to be too concerned for the load to care for the horse, began lashing it on the back in a very brutal manner. The horse began to struggle up a little out of the ditch, but it failed to stand and thus fell back showing a badly broken leg. The old philosopher, having been enraged by watching such a shocking scene of human brutality, asked the man to stop lashing the horse. He told him that first the cartload must be removed, and then the horse helped to get out of the ditch. The man did not pay any attention to Nietzche's words and kept on lashing and pushing the horse. This angered the philosopher to such an extent that he stepped forward and caught the man by the collar, saying: "I am not going to let you lash the poor animal so brutally!" The peasant released himself and knocked Nietzche down, and then beat him up so badly that he died a few days later. The same philosopher who in youth loved power and the use of brute force, now stood against it to save the down-trodden and the weak and, in the process, lost his life for a humane cause.

When we listen to this episode, we will react to it with a feeling of contradiction. We are aware of this contradiction in our feeling toward the episode, because each one of us has two opposite persons within himself.

Our first personality will appreciate Nietzche's spiritual refinement, moral commitment and responsive conscience. It will empathize with his sacrificial action in trying to save a poor beast from the tyranny of man. This is our humane personality which is too sensitive to tolerate such a scene of brutality and horror. But we have another personality which will react to the same episode in a practical way. It will scoff at Nietzche's sacrificing his life for the sake of a beast of burden. It will think of the whole affair as ridiculous and absurd. "A great genius of history laying down his life for the sake of saving a horse? What a stupid affair! How ridiculous!" So it will try to reason.

Nietzche's act is beyond logic. Logic is too limited to justify it. His act was a pure act of love : the essence of his conscience. But if love is adopted to serve a personal purpose, to satisfy a need or to fulfill a desire, it is not love. It is a commercial transaction. To love is to give, not to take or exchange. To love is to give up one's life, interest, possessions and the like so that another person may live, a cause may triumph, an ideal may be realised. This is the real meaning of "ithar".

To sum up, man is able to break free from the depth of the fourth prison, the prison of his ego, this dark and indomitable dungeon within his self, by the force of "love". Love has the power to make us negate ourselves, revolt against ourselves and sacrifice our everything for an ideal, or for others. This is the highest state of spiritual elevation. In his long and arduous journey, from being bashar to becoming "insan", man releases himself from the prisons of nature, history and society by means of "science", and from the prison of his inner being by means of love and faith (religion).