I have been thinking super deeply upon the WHY of Ramadan. Why was it brought in?!
So I thought!
Not to sound super cringey….BUT I believe that, ALL religions were made to solve a simple problem:- How can we make the world a better place?
It so happens that Islam hypotheized that by removing the 7 deadly sins:- lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy, and pride We can remove all evil and make the world a better place. Literally every ritual is around that.
Deep respect for this. People shouldn’t do sins. BUT we are missing the context, the point was not to stop the sins. The point was to make the world a better place.
So without pretending as a genius, lets just see, what ACTUALLY makes the world a better place. Observe the graph, which tracks everyway how ‘world getting better’ can be measured (GDP, Life-expectancy etc). Notice something?
You’ll see that the world was a pretty static and it ONLY started improving from late 18th century!
What happened in late 18th century….the compounding of Renaissance, Enlightenment, Colonization finally kicked in. Industrial Revolution had begun
Though smoky skies and worker-conditions is how we remember it, Industrial Revolution in all its pride did made the world a better place
But, what’s the connection:- My final pt is that what led to Industrial Revolution in particular and capitalism in general was NOT the abstinence of 7 deadly sins but rather the proliferation of it
It was the greed of folks which led them to research new ideas and build new machines. The true genius of capitalism lies in making the world an actual better place…..by going contradictory of every major religion….Delve into the sins not abstain them.