What Causes Humans to Become Sadistic Savages?

Every day I read and watch news items that keep reminding  me about the painful fact about the possibility in the existence of millions of  sadistic savages among the several billion of the humans that are present on earth as of now.

Read these news yourself by clicking these links:

'Guard rammed by luxury car in Kerala by businessman!'

'Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant beheads Egyptian Coptic Christian workers!'

'Egypt retaliates and bombs Lybian Islamic State targets!'

'Police Brutality in India' 

'Police Brutality in the USA'

Well, there is no end to such news. World over people engage in brutal assaults against fellow human beings, either taking law in to their own hands or in the name of  upholding  the law.

Terrorism in the name of economic, political, religious, linguistic or racial differences and terrorism in the name of official counter terrorism are both painful realities of our world today, just as it used to be in the past.

Individually and collectively humans engage in anti-human activities. At least a minority of the humans keep themselves as anti-socials and keep doing extreme brutality over other human beings.

But another larger group of humans, though not directly involved in any brutal acts against other humans themselves, nurture brutal secret sadistic pleasures within them and silently support sadistic savagely cruelty inflicted by some humans on other humans.

Their minds cannot get peace unless  'an eye for an eye' justice is brutally implemented!

Why do these apparently harmless looking species take sadistic pleasure in killing or inflicting pain on their own kind so savagely?

Given an opportunity, a good number of humans try to harm other humans. Why do they do so?

Arrogance in human beings are on the rise. As wealth, status and other facilitating opportunities empower men, they tend to lose empathy. And empathy is that quality that essentially makes a human different from a ferocious beast! While I was typing this blog a friend of mine forwarded this link which reports about Stephen Hawkins warnings against aggressive behavior which is in line with what I wanted to write. Incidentally, Hawkins is the scientist extra-ordinary of our times!

It is very easy to instigate a group of harmless humans to become brutally harmful. Violence and brutalities are part of human civilization and such unfortunate events are caused by instigated humans during communal riots or riots caused by other issues that instigate human senses. Some spiritual and political leaders take full advantage of this general weakness of ordinary people to get instigated to commit thoughtless inhuman acts! 

What would be in the mind of the police officer who sadistically tortured another tied up and helpless human being to death when he or she go back to his or her home? Does remorse come to their mind at any time later? Would such a person be loving his or her family members?

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I do not know. I am not against the law enforcement personnel using some kind of physical force when needed and when it is fully justified rationally. Rationality is one of those qualities that make a human different from animals. That is why humans are humans! Animals in general are not rational!

Does it mean that the people who do not possess a rational mind are more beastly than human? It would not be even rational to designate them in the category of the beasts. That would be an injustice to the animals. Hence, some wise humans brand such savage humans as the 'evil wards of Devil'.

How to judge a person's devilish nature? It is impossible by observing their physical form. Physically, most devilish wards look like handsome or beautiful humans. The residue of evil nature resides invisibly within their minds!

That poses a great difficulty for the non-devilish people, the real humans. How to distinguish the devils among them? How to resist these evil people and escape from their acts?

Some ignorant humans are tempted to believe that evil can be fought only by evil. One needs to take the sword to fight the sword, they say. Gullible humans keep believing it and act accordingly only to find evil on the rise rather than subsiding!

In reality, evil men and women are cowards of the highest order. They do their brutal acts on others because they are fearful people who fear some thing or someone always. They have no courage to directly confront those who are powerful. Hence they show their beastly acts of brutality only on helpless victims!

Evil men and women lack wisdom and knowledge or possess only some knowledge which they believe as full and final. Such ignorance make them foolish and blind towards reality. That causes them to become victims of their own misdeeds. All of them normally perish forever unless some remnant human wisdom in their minds gets activated at least momentarily by some means that they get an opportunity to get out of the evil that enveloped their minds. 

Inherently, humans have physical natures that are required for their survival in a not so perfect world. That are the basic animal instincts of physical survival. The instincts of flight and fight. The instincts of food hunting and procreation. 

But humans are much more than animals. They have a mind that go beyond the instincts of their animal cousins. They have been provided with several mind features that aid them to overcome their basic animistic nature and become real humans.

And real humans possess the qualities of love and brotherhood. Real humans tend to adopt good rather than bad. They are provided with the mind qualities of distinguishing good and bad. And that quality is the divine quality in humans whether they realize it or not.

Like animals humans are also mortals in the normal sense. Both die and perish bodily after some time of existence on earth.

All beasts and beastly humans perish permanently for ever after some short time of existence on earth. No amount of wealth or power would save a beastly human from the reality of death and non-existence. They would never see their wealth again nor see their descendants prosper on the wealth and power they gained during their short lives of few decades on earth.

Whatever name or fame or ill-fame they gained would never ever satisfy their human egos after their death. Their body and mind would perish for ever. There is no second chance. Even if there is a re-birth as some of the humans try to believe, there is hardly any evidence so far that they would retain their personality or memories. All those big and powerful humans 'would return to dust' as they were 'made from the dust'.

Why then these insignificant dust-like humans bloat up themselves in arrogant pride and waste no opportunities to acquire the position of 'god of all things' and all others?

Incredible. Is n't it?

Yet, human beings in general are a divinely gifted species.  

The Supreme Intelligence of the Universe who caused them to get created as humans on earth by the controlled evolutionary process has a great purpose in creating these creatures, uniquely different from all other species of material life forms.

They are provided with certain superior abilities and guidance systems to live in goodness, recognizing their own brotherhood. There exists a universal bond of brotherhood among human species through the fatherly bond of their Supreme creator. All humans possess great potentials of progress and advancement inherited from their divine Creators.

The fundamental requirement for that potential to become a reality is acknowledging the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of their sole divine creator. 

But they are also inherently created as free-willed personalities. They are at liberty to decide to live and inherit the goodness of their father or to destroy that inheritance with self destructive thoughts and acts.

Whatever be the good, some are suicidal and they would chose the path of destruction. While they proceed that way, they get sadistic pleasure in dragging others too with them to destruction.

Rationality and logic do not work for those who decided to destroy themselves by adopting evil!

If you are rational in mind, try to find out some humane approaches that could possibly correct these erroneous humans who find pleasures in existing as sadistic savages even after living in a modern civilized world!

But remember this. Evil can never stop evil. An eye-for-an-eye attitude is essentially evil and it only perpetuates evil.

Evil can only be subdued  by the divine strength of goodness!

Understand the Enormousness of Your Universe ; Discard the Futile Human Egos!

 The universe as created and under creation by the First Source and Centre of all things and beings (or what we prefer to call as the Universal Father God) is so immense and vast that it would be difficult for finite beings such as you, the mortals of this small planet earth, to comprehend.

The Outline of the Structure of the Master Universe

Not only for you, but it is difficult for even several orders of us too, the superior immortal beings who exist in non material energy realms of the Universe. The enormousness of the master universe staggers the concept of even me who has ventured to reveal some truths about it to you, the lowly mortals of earth. No doubt, some of your intelligent scientists with their advanced space exploration devices have already finding more and more evidences to prove the incomprehensive vastness of the created universe of time and space.

But the mortal mind can be taught much about the plan and arrangement of the universes; you can know something of their physical organization and marvelous administration; you may learn much about the various groups of intelligent beings who inhabit the seven super universes of time and the central universe of eternity.

In principle, we conceive of material creation as being infinite because the Universal Father is actually infinite, but as we study and observe the total material creation, we know that at any given moment in time it is limited, although to your finite minds it is comparatively limitless, virtually boundless.

To created beings the master universe might appear to be almost infinite, but it is far from finished; there are still physical limits to the material creation!

The universe of universes is not an infinite plane, a boundless cube, nor a limitless circle; it certainly has dimensions.

The laws of physical organization and administration prove conclusively that the whole vast aggregation of force-energy and matter-power functions ultimately as a space unit, as an organized and co-ordinated whole.

The observable behavior of the material creation constitutes evidence of a physical universe of definite limits. 

The successive space levels of the master universe constitute the major divisions of pervaded space of total creation, organized and partially inhabited or yet to be organized and inhabited.

The centre of the whole of the universe is the stationary universe island of enormous size which existed right from eternity as is the case of the Universal Father God. This is the matter-energy-gravity concentration of the entire universe and it is the nucleus of the master universe. Let us call this nucleus as the Paradise- because it is the unique material existence of the universe which is the residence of the Universal Father God. Remember, some of you have been calling the residence of God as Paradise for many centuries!

And Paradise is not an imagination, but it is real. It is the first existential non-living reality of the universe! It is also the only non-moving and non-spherical living space for the immortal beings of the highest orders.

Proceeding outward from Paradise through the horizontal extension of pervaded space, the master universe is existent in six concentric ellipses, the space levels encircling the central Isle:

1. The Central Universe — called the Havona

2. The Seven Super-universes- The Seven Sectors of the Grand Universe

3. The First Outer Space Level.

4. The Second Outer Space Level.

5. The Third Outer Space Level.

6. The Fourth and Outermost Space Level.

Havona, the central universe, is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. This never-beginning, never-ending universe consists of one billion spheres of sublime perfection and is surrounded by the enormous dark gravity bodies.

At the center of Havona is the stationary and absolutely stabilized Isle of Paradise, surrounded by its twenty-one satellites. Owing to the enormous encircling masses of the dark gravity bodies about the fringe of the central universe, the mass content of this central creation is far in excess of the total known mass of all seven sectors of the grand universe. 

The Stationary Paradise together with the one billion perfected worlds of Havona that encircles Paradise constitute the perfect and eternal nucleus of the master universe.

The seven sectors of the grand universe (which we call as the seven super-universes) and all four regions of outer space revolve in established orbits around the gigantic central aggregation of the Paradise - Havona System.

The Seven Super-universes are not primary physical organizations; nowhere do their boundaries divide a nebular family, neither do they cross a local universe, a prime creative unit.

Each super-universe is simply a geographic space clustering of approximately one seventh of the organized and partially inhabited post-Havona creation, and each is about equal in the number of local universes that constitute them and in the space encompassed. 

Your earth is a life sustaining planet which is one among the 3.8 million such planetary worlds of your local universe which we prefer to introduce to you as Nebadon.

Nebadon is one of the local universes of the seventh super-universe which we would like you to identify as Orvonton.  Being the last in the evolutionary process, both Orvonton and Nebadon are still contituing with their creative processes and are not yet fully finished creations.

The Grand Universe is the present organized and inhabited creation. It consists of the seven super-universes, with an aggregate evolutionary potential of around seven trillion inhabited planets, not to mention the eternal spheres of the central creation.

But this tentative estimate takes no account of architectural administrative spheres, neither does it include the outlying groups of unorganized universes. The present irregular edge of the grand universe, its uneven and unfinished periphery, together with the tremendously unsettled condition of the whole astronomical space, is an indication that even the seven super-universes are not yet fully completed. All the seven super-universe sectors of the grand universe are in varying degrees of creation even now.

As we move from within, from the divine center outward in any one direction, we do, eventually, come to the outer limits of the organized and inhabited creation; we come to the outer limits of the grand universe. And it is near this outer border, in a far-off corner of such a magnificent creation, that your local universe, Nebadon, has its eventful existence.

Far out in space, at an enormous distance from the seven inhabited super-universes, there are assembling vast and unbelievably stupendous circuits of force and materializing energies.

Between the energy circuits of the seven super-universes and this gigantic outer belt of force activity, there is a space zone of comparative quiet, which varies in width but averages about four hundred thousand light-years. These space zones are free from star dust, the cosmic fog.

But about one-half million light-years beyond the periphery of the present grand universe we observe the beginnings of a zone of an unbelievable energy action which increases in volume and intensity for over twenty-five million light-years. These tremendous wheels of energizing forces are situated in the first outer space level, a continuous belt of cosmic activity encircling the whole of the known, organized, and inhabited creation.

Still greater activities are taking place beyond these regions. We have detected early evidence of force manifestations more than fifty million light-years beyond the outermost ranges of the phenomena in the first outer space level. These activities undoubtedly indicate the signs of the organization of the material creations of the second outer space level of the master universe.

The central universe is the creation of eternity; the seven super-universes are the creations of time; the four outer space levels are undoubtedly destined to eventuate-evolve the ultimacy of creation.

And there are those among us who maintain that the Infinite can never attain full expression short of infinity; and therefore they postulate an additional and unrevealed creation beyond the fourth and outermost space level, a possible ever-expanding, never-ending universe of infinity.

In theory we do not know how to limit either the infinity of the Creator or the potential infinity of creation, but as it exists and is administered, we regard the master universe as having limitations, as being definitely delimited and bounded on its outer margins by open space.

But remember this. You are not alone in this universe. You are one among the many orders of intelligent living beings that are created under definite plans of the Universal Father God. You may be mortals now in the physical sense. You may not be immortals like us as of now.

But I assure you, you are not destined to be mortals. There exists a definite plan for each and every one of you. If you live your short lives on your first world of experiential existence fulfilling the basic requirements of divine mandate, you would survive your physical death and progress to become mighty immortals like us or perhaps even greater ones! So try to live according to the divine plans when you struggle with your intelligence and wisdom on your evolutionary planet!

Think about the futility of living with your human egos, greed and other such progress inhibiting qualities which could alienate you from the divine plans . 

Think of the possibilities of the future immortality and an ever expanding life of immortal adventure!

[*As told by one of the immortal authors of the Urantia Book; language simplified/adapted for better understanding] 

Why I prefer ICICI bank for Online Banking rather than the SBI ?

For the last few years, I seldom need to go to the bank as an individual retail banking customer. My salary comes to one bank and I spend or save it using bank transactions. 

Some years ago, visiting the bank and making personal rapport with the bank officials was some thing which people like us could not have avoided. If the bank officials who manned the front desks were annoyed with your face for some reason, you were bound to have some tensions due to the problems some of them could have created for you.

Not that all banking officials were bad. Some of the officials used to be friendly and helping. But there always existed a few who took some occasional sadistic pleasure in creating problems for their customers.

At times they used to come up with rules that you never knew as existing only to enhance your tensions and headache. No doubt, banks had become a necessary evil of the society and it was the era of the nationalized banks!

I remember a case where I deposited a cheque from one outstation bank branch to my account in another bank. It was equivalent to a bank transfer. The money got debited from one bank but never reached the destination branch. I remember visiting the branch and meeting the officials for nearly half an year for getting my money that got 'lost' in the banking procedures!

All such banking nightmares are forgotten things of the past. Thanks to the internet technology and the advent of the private banks which got out of the ridiculous procedures and customer unfriendly culture of the public sector banks.

It was the ICICI bank, if I remember correctly, which brought innovative banking culture to India for the first time. They brought advanced computerization and air conditioned bank branches in all nooks and corners of India for the first time. 

The visionary leaders of this bank also realized the risks of customers losing faith in banking. So they incorporated 'the six sigma' practices of quality mandatory in their banking system practices. It was not an eye wash. As far as I know, the management of this bank was serious and honest about it.

That means the compulsory evolution of a banking process where errors are not acceptable. Customer complaints are taken up seriously and settled within a short time. The bank employees were not allowed to be complacent with customer complaints as used to be the practice elsewhere in other banks.

For maintaining the computerized banking, this new private bank also went in for the best available banking software and also went in for the best available manpower to handle the complex situations efficiently. More importantly, they ensured to have a more or less efficient work force who were homogeneously competent to handle the work systems at all levels. The efforts paid. Soon ICICI bank became the No.1 private bank in India and also the No.2 among all banks. Nothing surprising that its first CMD Mr. K.V.Kamath and its second CMD Mrs Chanda Kochhar have become world icons in banking! It is noteworthy that no other private bank in India could grow to the extent of this bank though all of them started almost at the same time with same rules.

I have been an Individual customer of the State Bank of India for the last over three decades. I have seen the culture of this bank earlier and the somewhat changed culture of this biggest nationalized bank of India in the later years after the emergence of the private bank culture. 

 

Now I am a customer of both SBI and the ICICI. The new banking game has almost reduced the need of me going personally to the banks. I am almost relieved of the tensions of the past.

If I make a comparison of these two banks from my personal experiences, I would say ICICI bank is better as far as internet banking is concerned. Of late SBI has also improved their systems, but I am not so confident about their ability to sort out any difficulties that one might encounter. If you do not land into trouble, well and good. But if you face some problems, ICICI would be in a better position to solve it because of their Six Sigma quality policy. The ability of SBI to solve the problem actually depends on the individual officer or staff with whom you have to interact.

The security aspects of the internet banking might be more or less similar in most of the banks now due to the intervention of the mandatory supervisory systems. Yet, the internal systems that one may have to encounter while doing internet banking is different from bank to bank.

Fortunately, I have not faced any problems with internet banking so far from either of these two big banks. Yet, I think, the ICICI system is superior and more reliable. That is due to the following:

In the ICICI bank, it is not essential to keep changing your password quite often, a botheration for people who cannot remember many passwords. Instead they rely on advanced systems like the use of the debit card with random grid numbers. Their systems also take note of the usual IP addresses of the computers which you normally use. Their system use one time password (OTP) send through your registered mobile phone occasionally when there is a change in your normal use pattern. In case of some transaction errors, they set it right without you going after them within a few days. If you lodge a complaint online, it is invariably addressed.

But with the SBI internet banking system you cannot be so sure. Their systems appear vulnerable and prone to mistakes or errors. While transacting, they always rely on OTP send to your mobile. To make the OTP delivery by SMS doubly sure, they send it from two central servers. But, I have faced problems when the OTP never reaching me for more than half an hour only to compel me to abort the transaction. When you attempt a transaction at a later time, you might get OTP SMS pertaining to your aborted attempt, making your transaction failing for entering a wrong password. You get totally confused. To add up the complications, the SBI staff in most branches are mostly ignorant or incompetent fellows who would be of no use to solve your problems. 

It is a wise decision to avoid SBI when it comes to online banking transactions. Of course, you may view your account and other such mundane things. 

A final word about mobile internet banking using android phones. I have not yet got the courage to do it. I have preferred to avoid it. Perhaps it is a good technology. Perhaps your mobile set and the banking app that you have downloaded in it from your bank could be of advanced features. But mobile phone and android systems are prone to physical thefts coupled with digital hacking attacks. As I am not a person who would use money transactions on the move, it is not for me any way. At least for the time being!

To sum up, this is my opinion. ICICI bank is more of a system oriented bank while SBI is more of a staff oriented bank. In the former, the systems make it perform better while in the latter the performance depends on their persons. For those who do not want to make banking a complicated part of life, the former is the best choice. 

A last word of caution. If possible avoid taking loans or using the credit cards. If at all these are to be used, use them after knowing all the rules of the game and following the rules. If you are sure of not becoming a defaulter and like to do things fully as per the rules, ICICI would be a better option because they provide the better banking service in that case. Better banking service does not mean that they will help you to come out of your insolvency or your defaults!