April 8, 2016

Not the Sword or the Pen but the Heart of Man

A lesson I remember from my elementary school was about the battle between the Pen and the Sword.  Which is stronger?” asked the teacher.  “The sword” was the unison reply of my 3rd grade classmates.  But the teacher said, “you all are wrong, the pen is mightier than the sword”.  Slow in learning, I could not make any sense of the question.  How can there even be a war between a pen and a sword?  And, even if people want to fight with such weaponry; who idiot will think of picking a pen to fight against a man wielding a sword?  Maybe this is what we call an elementary level of thinking.  But war between these two objects seems to know no bound; decades, centuries and even millennia have seen them fight tirelessly and the sword eventually surrenders to pen but only for a time to regain its valor.

People and civilizations under the the reign of pen seem to flourish in all their forms and fashions; art and literature appear to enjoy the most as they become the channels for human expressions of creativity and ingenuity inspiring the human imagination to go further into the discovery of the natural world of science and technology.  Ideas are freely expressed and disputes are settled by debating the merits and the demerits of both the sides; no wonder the people of Athens still bear the testimony for such a life. 

As good as it is to live under the reign of pen; the pen is also very naive and vulnerable that it begins to believe it can sleep at night without locking the door; in its ideal world are no thieves.  When the dogs bark in the neighborhood at night, it assumes that a cat must have been running after a rat only to realize in the morning that the whole town was robbed and ransacked by some barbarians wielding the sword from beyond the yonder.  Realizing the gravity of the situation, it rushes to the city square, calls on the scribes to come to Areopagus to discuss the tragedy.  Alas, no one comes!  There is no sign of life in any of the houses of the scribes.  Hurriedly it rushes to Areopagus, only to see the sword waiting for its arrival.  The loyal politicians of the city were now standing to testify against the pen; crowd was solemn and silent.  The pen could not believe its ears what the politicians were spewing out of their lying mouths.  The sword gave the verdict; pen must be executed.  Climbing to the gallows, pen tried to see if there were any scribes in the crowd down below; in the far corner with heads covered like women were a few of them secretly wiping their tears.  With sadness but no regret, the pen put its head across the beam with neck sitting on it and the axe fell.  As if something divine had happened, darkness covered the land for a long long time.


One of the surviving scribes by the name of Plato went to look for an Ideal Republic in which the pen and the sword would unite in peace and serve the people with the best of their ability.  The other by the name of Confucius went to look for an Ideal Prince who would listen to him in creating a perfect nation where justice and freedom would rule for the prosperity of the people.  But neither of them could achieve their dreams; they both failed miserably.  And there came another scribe by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, warning the rest of them that the problem was not with the pen or the sword, the problem was with the heart of man.  Unless a man be born again and become like a child, he will always be a victim either under the brutality of the sword who thinks that all those who disagree are guilty deserving death or the naivety of the pen who thinks that those who disagree also belong to universal brotherhood and should be allowed to express their disagreement in anyway they feel like doing it; even at the point of wielding the sword.    

No comments:

Post a Comment