Acharya Prashant: Can intelligence be wrong sometimes?
Tell me, all of you, “What is right and what is wrong?” How do you know what is right? And how do you know what is wrong? Someone told you what is right and someone told you what is wrong and not only that, someone also told you that there is something called right, and something called Wrong. And you have started believing in it so deeply, you have been made a fool of.
What do you mean by right? What do you mean by wrong? All our sense of right and wrong is a borrowed sense of right and wrong. All this ethics, morality, they are coming from outside, we never found it on our own. You are this old and mamma says, “Don’t hurt others, be respected to elders, speak the truth, be a loving person.” And all this is right. And the opposite of this happens to be wrong. But if you are a smart kid, you turn around and ask “Mamma why should I speak the truth always?” But mamma doesn’t know because her own mamma told that to her, and her mamma got it from her own mamma and nobody really knows. But a mantra is being repeated, “Speak the truth” And the world is now full of liars. Would have all been told in the childhood, “speak the truth”.
All have been told, “Respect others, don’t hurt others, don’t be violent.” But the world is entirely full of rapists. Have you not wondered why that happens? That happens because nothing comes out in our lives from our intelligence, all comes from outside. And when it comes from outside, that’s what we get, a botched up human being, a caricature of a human being, not a really healthy intelligent man.
All these rights and wrongs that you soak it like a sponge, from here, from there, have you ever paid attention, you would have discovered how incomplete and false they are. What is wrong in one country is right in another country, what is wrong in one house is considered right in other house, what is wrong in one age is right at another age, what is wrong in one religion is right in another religion, what is wrong in one’s viewpoint is right in other’s viewpoint.
