The Laws of Manu-> Laws of Modern Society

The laws of Manu state that it is a crime to cause any damage or harm to any kind of living thing, be it an animal or a plant. As we learned, the Hindus respected these laws for a long time but it is only recently that some have come to ignore their rules set by The Laws of Manu. Why is it that this happens? It might have something to do with the mentality that new modern generations are now developing. As a modernized society, we have slowly moved away from believing/ having faith in deities and have come to rely more on scientific research and proof, but there are others who also have alternative beliefs. In the past, deities were absolute powers that set laws to follow. People followed those laws because they adored them or feared them to a certain extent. Although deities had the most power of a civilization through the influence of religion but legendary figures also had influence due to the admiration they had of the people. Now, we follow what we believe to be “common sense” and scientific ideology that is based on research and facts, we follow it because we want to survive, we have come to fear unbalance in our environments and our lives that is caused by bad decisions, lack of knowledge, and breakage of rules or suggestions set by our common sense and scientific ideology. Our laws are set by governments and are mostly based on these two; common sense and scientific ideology, but there are also a few other things on which our laws are based off of. Of course though, the civilizations before us, along with their religion and laws have had a huge impact on forming our present day morality and in general, our way of life.

Although we don’t rely on deities to know what to do and what not to do, we have overtime come to the realization that some of the things that were said by some religions actually make a lot of sense and impact us a lot. The Laws of Manu are a great example of this. Environmentalist seek to achieve the kind of society that the Hindus had achieved through the followment of the Laws of Manu and the knowledge of need for balance and having to make a conscious effort to sustain our environment. If only other societies/ civilizations would have decided to follow laws similar to those of the Hindus, not necessarily to the extent of not eating meat, but the overall idea of taking care of our local environment, a lot less damage would be made to the earth.