The Greatest Trick

By: Mehmet Ozan

Charles Baudelaire – the French poet and art critic,once wrote, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” As the master of scheming and deception, passing from shadow to shadow, the Devil is believed to be the supreme manipulator of human beings. But if we were to allow ourselves to be really solemn for a moment, the very obscurity of the Devil has always been the product of a social form. One perceives in the belief of the shapelessness of the Devil the social alibi of a cunning and evil order that has more to do with humanity than with some supernatural entity. If in a moment of clarity we were to stand up to the Devil and drag him back into a world of physical reality and concrete terms, it would be seen that the very characteristic that we have long attributed to his evil is actually representative of the condition of society and the ideological structure beneath it. Here the political or social ideals are not being referred to, but rather the ideological structure on which these ideals are based. The precise formlessness of ideology, which is the pretext of most social evil, is similar to the myth of the Devil.

Wisdom Corner - Points To Ponder

• With the devil, human soul is hell of the nature that commands unto evil through seven gates typifying vices that lead to perdition. (Rumi on Human Soul)
• “Yet, I do not absolve myself of my sins, as the human soul is incited by evil. Only those who are graced by Allah’s mercy are saved [from their sins]. And he is surely Oft-Forgiving and Most Merciful.” Quran(12:53)
• If I have a choice to do the expedient thing and win the day’s battle, or do the principled thing and lose, I will do the principled thing because in the long run it will affect other things and come back to me in different ways. (General Schwarztkopf)
• Culture essentially means the truthful, faithful and honest representation of shared vision and values (principle based) into the mission statement fully and deeply understood and committed for sincere implementation at all levels of community or society. (Modified version Stephen R. Covey’s views)

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