:Exclusivism & Secularism

Insights on the Political and Socio-Cultural Cornerstones of Truth

Exclusivism is the backbone of secularism. It is the tendency, which stamps not

only the secular attitudes towards the involvement of religion in the
management of the public affairs (politics), but also the ongoing disputes on
the intellectual scene between even non-religious participants. It is the very
meaning of narrow-mindedness, and it manifests a sort of bias and prejudice at
.different levels of thought and behaviour

At the political level, for instance, Exclusivism means simply dictatorship; it is

the rejection of power sharring against the majority of people within the same
community. Truth under a dictatorship-based political system is dictated not
discovered, imposed, but not proposed. Truth within such a system is the one
which is mediated through mass-media (the forth power), advertised and
popularised among the community of clients (the laymen). The process through
which it is constructed is conscious, but it is overshadowed by the greed of an
.elite gearing to meet certain pragmatic interests by whatever means and costs

Likewise, dictatorship can have roots at the socio-cultural level: every

community, without exception, has got a system of interconnected beliefs,
values, and behaviour. This system, which imposes implicit or explicit habits
over the individuals, constitutes the deep structure of the word “Culture”. The
impact of this system over the individuals varies in degree, but it is more and
more exciting wherein homogenous societies. The reason can be attributed to
the fact that, within homogeneous societies, diversity, which is crucial to truth
discovery as well as self-recognition, is lessened to a lower degree. As a result,
truth within such context becomes a matter of habit formation and taken-by-
.granted speculations

These, needless to say, pave the way for more imitation of varied socio-cultural
products. The only victim along these quantities of accumulated habits is
truth; or rather the process of creativity along which truth is discovered or
constructed. Yet, again, these socio-cultural nets are, from a certain angle of
view, worthy in the sense that they serve for social belonging, identity
construction, and solidarity reinforcement. It is at this point of view wherein
truth has got a social function and gives the sense of what it means to be a part
.of a whole social existence

Exclusivism, be it at the political or socio-cultural level, has got a very limited

scope of cognition, and it therefore, hinders our understanding of the whole
truth and forces us, along the perpetual debates between physics and meta-
physics, to put aside religion though it has a got a considerable and challenging
say in whatever branch of knowledge, including the empirical sciences, art and
.humanities