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"But neither would anyone have imagined," said Indira, "that some of their work would one day, a thousand years in the future, be counted among the greatest treasures of mankind and be admired by people coming to see them from all over the world."
"Nor would the builder likely have imaged that their great art pieces of the human form would some day be so perplexing to the scholars of that advanced world a thousand years in the future that they would puzzle over it for decades and come to no conclusion," I added. "But what about us, Indira, will our own modern creations, our sky scrapers, industrial parks, concert halls, and so forth, become museum pieces in a thousand years time? Will any of them remain standing that long?"
"That remains to be seen," I answered her. "Some engineers suggest that the World Trade Towers in New York would not have stood for a hundred years, much less a thousand years. They say that the design of the buildings was flawed so that the structural integrity was failing. They say that the towers would have had to be disassembled within a decade or two at the cost of several billion dollars, had they not been demolished in this badly botched up 911 terror operation. I wonder if any of our cities will still be standing in a thousand years, or even a year from now, or next week. We are not in a renaissance environment anymore where beautiful things are created in abundance towards a long-term future."
"I see a different parallel," said Indira. "I wonder if we are really any different then the ancient architects, builders, artists, and craftsmen. They probably thought that their idyllic world would never collapse and their beautiful creations would remain forever intact. Aren't most people thinking the same way today in their relentless denial of the truth about the present world situation? We live in a world saturated with nuclear missiles and dirty uranium bombs. We have built them by the tens of millions, while we are facing the potentially greatest economic collapse in history in the shadow if the continued rise of greed, fascism, and imperialism, all happening at the same time. Society is in total denial of any of those dangers, even the huge dangers that could wipe out the whole of mankind in less than a day. Are we destined now to suffer the fate of the people of the Chandela kingdom on a global scale?"
"No we are not so destined!" I countered her immediately. "We are not mindless automatons that follow a set pattern. We are human beings with the capacity to open our eyes and shape our destiny, and uplift the destiny of the whole world. We are a thousand years further advanced. Sure, we've got ourselves dragged deeper into hell that any civilization in the entire history of mankind, but we are not ignorant about in, and the fight has begun to get ourselves out of that hole. We know we face 40,000 nuclear bombs that stand ready to be used to incinerate 90% of the people on this planet. But we also know where they are, and we can destroy the in a week. We have that potential. We can do that. We also know that we face tens of millions of dirty uranium bombs that are stacked up on the ground ready to be evaporated into a radioactive pollution that could sterilize the entire planet. But we know where they are and we have the means to disable them in a week. This means we can deal with that exposure too. We can scrap our killing machines. We also know that our world financial system that supports the physical living of mankind is a soap bubble of hot air that is destined to pop into a fine spray of mist that no one can put back together again. But we can deal with that too. We can let the hot air out of the bubble and reorganize what it left and create a new system that supports the general welfare of society instead of only the rich that rob us blind. We used to have such a system once. Our country was founded on the Principle of the General Welfare. We can get back to that foundation. Sure, the Chandela kingdom was apparently founded on a similar principle, but we are one step further. We have begun the development of the Principle of Universal Love. We can deal with all of our problems, no matter how immense and stubborn they are, on the basis of that principle. We can also eradicate fascism around the planet with this principle, the very fascism that is wrecking our world with terror and genocide. We know that none of that can be done with force. But it is possible with love. We fought World War II to rid the world of fascism, but we didn't. The war became a contest between two killing machines in which one eradicated the resources for the other. And when the war ground to an end, the fascism that had unleashed the killing machines remained and continued to spread into every nation where it darkened the hearts of mankind. We can deal with that too, with the Principle of Universal Love. And maybe, just maybe, the profound principle that the ancient Hindus had stumbled on and the Chandela Rajputs had recognized, might help us to understand our own principle better, our Principle of Universal Love, and help us to get out of our deep hole that we dug for ourselves as a homemade hell."
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