Enlightenment of the Individual - Essay Example

Enlightenment According to Immanuel Kant, “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity” (Immanuel Kant). It is a fact that people may get more mature as time goes on because of the various life experiences they may get during their life span. In fact, experience is the best teacher for a person. Some people may attain maturity without any help from others whereas others need help from others for attaining maturity. In other words, maturity can be self-developed or self-imposed as well as developed with the help of others.

When a person shows courage to demonstrate his understanding in front of others, he can be labeled as an enlightened person. In other words, a person will become enlightened when he was able to segregate between good and evil and demonstrate his knowledge or learning in front of others. There are many cases, in which people remain unresponsive when they see an evil act. Such people cannot be labeled as enlightened ones. Enlightened people will provide their knowledge to the world. There is no point in keeping a lighted candle inside an opaque box.

A lighted candle will give light to others only when it is fixed in an open space. Enlightenment helps both the individual and society. For example, suppose a terrorist got enlightenment during a particular period of time and as a result of that he decides to stay away from terrorist activities. In this case, apart from the person, society will also be benefitted. Take the cases of abortion or divorce. In both cases, the individual and society will be benefitted if a person decides to stay away from such activities.

Even though we are living in the most civilized world at present, I cannot say that we are living in an enlightened age. The clashes between cultures, religions, countries, and communities are increasing day by day. An enlightened world will never engage in such activities. An enlightened world will give equal opportunities to all. It will never measure human rights based on religious beliefs. It should be noted that thousands of people are being killed every day in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the name of a war on terror or clashes between communities.

An enlightened civilization will never engage in such activities in the name of religion or belief. It should be noted that Lord Buddha after his enlightenment asked his disciples, not to kill any creature in this world. In other words, he has asked the public to stay away from killing humans, animals, birds, insects, etc. Life is the most precious thing in this world and it should be preserved at any cost. An enlightened world will never think of destroying any life forms. Destruction of the environment is taking place virtually every second.

The majority of environmental problems are caused by human activities alone. In one way, we speak volumes about environmental protection and in the other way engage in activities that destroy our environment. An enlightened community will never destroy the environment which provides shelter to them. To conclude, enlightenment is the process of getting making a person aware of the good and evil in this world. Nobody can say that the current world is an enlightened world based on the activities going on across the world.