Isn’t it Amazing We Survived? Or It’s Not Over Yet

The Europeans had the dream, and they had the determination to achieve it.  We had the courage to survive it.  Till now that is.  The European dream is not over yet.  Nor is our resilience nearing exhaustion.  Both have a way to go.  The dream (or nightmare) plays on.

One could write endless pages on this dream-nightmare/ thrust-parry/ genocide-population overload.  Where does one begin?  Did the whole thing start with the rise of Judaism?  Was Moses the original sin?  Or should one blame Jesus and the Christians?  We could also blame the Romans, for their hedonistic excesses, which resulted in their downfall at the hands of the barbarians from the north.  Maybe the Christians would not have got so firm a hold on Europe had it not been for the backlash against Roman excesses. 

Perhaps both the Romans and the Germanic tribes who overthrew the Western Roman Empire are to blame.  After all, a direct cause of the cancer of modernity was the feudal-medieval past of Europe.  A past born of a curious (to say the least) mix of Roman and Northern barbarities.  A past steeped in rigidities, absurdities, heresies, slaveries, persecutions, inquisitions, and witch hunts.  A dark and dank past, which was the best, most powerful incentive imaginable for the bloody, though brilliant, slash that followed.

Allowing one’s imagination to fly a little more, maybe we can just about include Islam, the last of the three Abrahamic faiths to emerge from the dry wastes of Palestine-Arabia, in the blame game.  It seems reasonable to assume that rising Islam had a most powerful impact on Catholic-Christian Europe.  Any takers?  Would the European-Christian civilisation like to shove the responsibility of its worst excesses on the pernicious influence of fundamentalist Islam?  Aren’t they doing it already with respect to much that they perpetrate today?

But what was the most immediate cause of the madness?  I pose this question specifically for the sake of our Cartesian minds, trained to linear fine-ness in casuistry.  What if we can’t identify one?  Does that mean no one is to blame?  Or, that everyone is to blame?  Like the Europeans would like to think with respect to global warming?  Should the rise of Europe be viewed as part of the larger scheme of things?  Not in a religious, theistic sense but in the way Buddha described it: a phenomenon in the realm of dependent co-arising.  This is because that is.  That is because this is.  Europe was because Africa, America, Australia and Asia were?  If Buddha was around today he would have probably said, yes to this question.  But I am not Buddha.  Not yet.  So I will continue with my thought stream.   

Moving on, I am wonderstruck at several phenomena.  I am amazed at the power of the European thrust.  It has spread its tentacles into the remotest nook and cranny of the world.  No conqueror, no conquest was so comprehensive, so complete, so continuing.  What it could not conquer by brute force and unprecedented barbarity it conquered by deceit, duplicity and diplomacy.  By fine words and finer sentiments.  And it continues to conquer in these manners: simultaneously using murder and conciliation to subdue and subjugate.  To serve the purposes of its compulsions, which purposes it itself does not know.  Truly, a magnificent achievement by any standards.  A benchmark for all future conquests.  God (if there is one) forbid that there is another conqueror, or another conquest.

I am also struck by the ongoing nature of this conquest.  Starting with physical occupation, displacing and exterminating tens of millions and, subjugating hundreds of millions more, the conquest evolved to what is called indirect rule: perfected by the British in India and applied by Europe worldwide.  Thereafter, in a brilliant application of the philosophical implications of indirect rule, the conquest set its colonies free.  Of course, before granting freedom, the structure of subjugation – external and internal – was firmly in place.  The European world view was the only alternative.  Not only were the Europeanised elites of the former colonies thoroughly convinced (with few exceptions) of this fact, the system for perpetuating this world view was also irrevocably entrenched. 

That non-Europeanism has survived despite such a systematic onslaught is also a marvel.  As is it marvelous that people subjected to intensive genocide, the original inhabitants of the Americas and Australia, have survived.  This tells us something about the resilience of life; of human nature.  It also tells us that there is a miscalculation in the European game.  Busy discovering manifest destiny, and the individual self, the European conquerors forgot that all processes, including the process of conquest, proceed dialectically.  As an aside it is important to mention here that dialectics was neither discovered nor invented by the Europeans.  Non-European thought has recognised dialectics as an operating principle of the universe for millennia.  Buddha’s thesis of dependant co-arising is one expression of it: this is because that is; that is because this is.  And the dialectics of conquest dictates that the tables be turned: the conquerors be conquered, the fires be quenched, and the leaves grow again in all their plethoric diversity.    

Be that as it may, battered, bruised, truncated, dystopic-ised, the world has survived this conquest till now.  The Europeans, however, have one more ace up their sleeve.  This is the ace of irreversible destruction of the global habitat, with (European) technology being the only genie capable of saving us, and the world.  Given that the realm of world views is firmly under European control, it is likely that this ace will carry the conquest through: till the tables turn, or the world is destroyed, whatever you may wish to call it.         

PARANOIA

Sometimes I am in a state of flux, with insights happening all the time. Almost anything- a glass of water, the sight of a tree, a few words on a page – are enough to trigger off an insight. It is as if light bulbs are going on all the time, illuminating something afresh or casting something familiar in a new light. To some extent the insights do help in improving perspective also but the larger picture is still not seen.

The question arises, how large is the picture. What if the picture keeps getting larger and larger without end?

Why do I ask this question? Is it a problem if this happens?

The answer is yes. The reason is that I want to acquire the larger picture for a collateral purpose and, not for its own sake. And, I can’t go on waiting for the picture expansion to end because I want to be able to announce that I have seen the whole picture. In this sense, no one has seen the picture, perhaps, because it is a picture without end.

Today, I felt a bulb lighting up while reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: the world is a construct. We talk about various aspects of this construct quite frequently but without understanding its implications fully. For example, the ‘construct’ of manhood or, of feminity. What do we mean when we call them ‘constructs’? Does it mean there is no such thing as manhood or feminity, except in our minds; except in the minds of the human race.

Does it mean that manhood is a notion in our heads? It was not born there and, nor did it enter full grown. Its entry was an osmotic process that happened over time and, which is still happening. Its entry is proof of the existence of a dimension in space-time where we are all linked. Like the world wide web, which comes into existence by the linking of thousands of computers all over the world. One could perhaps call the space where these ‘constructs’ live and travel the life space. Is it the same as what people call the spirit world? Or, some variation of it: like the magic-realities that are so popular today. If yes, then the implications for “modern” realists are quite drastic. Mythology may turn out to be more real than history!

Theoretically, we can kill this dimension in the same way as computer cyber space; by destroying the linkage between people. But how does go about destroying something that has no wires, no power source, no ‘waves’ by which it communicates? Something that can be transmitted by a sidelong glance, a look in the eye, a grunt or, even, silence. Something that need not be transmitted in toto or full grown but is yet shared in complex detail. Which is not static but lives and grows, and evolves. Is there a switch inside us that we can turn? A plug that we can pull, isolating us from the rest?

If ‘manhood’ is a construct then so is everything else that together makes up what we call the “world”. If this is so, then who are we? Human beings? What is a human being? She/ he are just a construct. Layer upon layer of it. For, the process commences virtually the moment we are conceived and continues till we die. The construct appropriate for an embryo is different from that for an infant, for a child, for an adolescent, for and adult. At each stage of the life of a human being, layers of “reality” gets applied in the shape of sets of constructs; over which fresh layers gets applied in the next stage.

What happens when we strip off a layer or two of the construct? Do we remain human? Is there a way to deconstruct human beings? Are psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts on the right track? We all know that people deconstruct. Personalities break down. The layers, which are connected with each other in a complex hierarchy of connections, get short circuited. New dimensions to self emerge as a result. Many, if not most, of them are called “mad”.
What if madness is just a different layering (manner of layering) of constructs? What if schizophrenia is just one such manner? Or, paranoia?

Entropy

The second law of thermodynamics, says that in the material world energy of all kinds disperses or dissipates from higher concentrations to lower ones, if it is not hindered from doing so. The dispersal occurs at a predictable rate. The measurement of this rate of dispersal is called entropy.

The implications of this law are profound. It encompasses both life and death. On the one hand, life as we know it would not be possible without a stable and predictable rate of dispersal of energy from higher to lower concentrations. On the other, the inevitability of such a flow makes it certain that the world as we know it will one day come to an end. To give an example, the sun, the most concentrated form of energy in our solar system will continue to radiate its energy to lower concentrations at a steady rate till its concentration is "equalised".[1] The steady dispersal of the sun's energy gives rise to life on earth. The fact that this dispersal will cease once the concentrations are equalised means that life sustained by this dispersal must end some day.

To the scientist, entropy is a means for measuring this law and, consequently, for describing the processes that sustain life. To a lay person like me entropy can also be viewed as the rate at which order turns to chaos, assuming that "life" is order and "death" (or, the end of life) is chaos. In other words, entropy is chaos. Or, entropy is the potential for chaos that inherent in all "order".

In a paper titled Entropy Is Simple -- If We Avoid The Briar Patches!, Professor Frank L. Lambert, Professor Emeritus (Chemistry) Occidental College, Los Angeles has severely criticised all those who use entropy in the manner described above. He complains bitterly about the simplistic and inaccurate use of both, the second law and of the concept of entropy to create what he calls falsehoods about entropy as "disorder" or, as a measure of chaos. He gives myriad examples from everyday life, illustrating chemical (or thermodynamic) entropy, to justify his critique of philosophical entropy. To quote " entropy change has to do with energy spreading out, not with pretty patterns." This sentence encapsulates the professor's scorn for the non-scientific use of the term: to describe a descent from "order" to "disorder".

While the professor is quite right to distinguish between scientific entropy as a measure of the rate at which heat is dispersed in a given process (or, thermo-dynamics) and, entropy as weltanschauung, his refusal to recognise the philosophical implications of the second law is in keeping with the short sightedness of modern science (and scientists). In fact, the professor's approach is perfectly consistent with why the world is in the parlous state that it is in; with the worst aspect being the outright refusal of those who run the world to recognise the existence of philosophical entropy or, its implications for their actions.

[1] Though not used in the strict scientific sense, the expression is nevertheless accurate since it is predicated that as the sun cools its matter will spread (the sun will expand), thereby heating up the solar system till the entire solar system is encompassed within the sun's ambit, resulting in an equalisation of temperatures.

Post Bourgeois Dreams

Axiomatically, illusions are elusive. Then why should it come as a surprise that peace between India and Pakistan is elusive. Underlying this elusive quest for peace are other illusions. For example, that we are a democracy.

Peace is a human desire. Its wish cannot, ipso facto, be attributed to a State. Therefore, a State's desire (or lack of it) for peace is a function of the desires of its people, or, at least, the people who run it. It is axiomatic that a country where the people desire peace while the State wages war, is not a democracy. In such a State peace is bound to elude since, while the desire for peace is rooted in the people, the processes of peace are in the hands of the State, which is not in the hands of the people. In a State where democracy is an illusion, peace is frequently an instrument of State policy. To paraphrase Clauswitz, in such States— peace is the continuation of war by other means.

Thus, assuming that Indians desire peace, its elusiveness can be said to be a function of the illusion of democracy that belabours us. But what if the assumption is not true. And, if it is not true, why is it not true, given that the only reasonable desire is (or can be) for peace. War is insanity except in the rarest of rare circumstances where its sole alternative is not peace but a pervasive injustice, more corroding and destructive than war. Yet, we have all heard many Indians rooting for an all out war with Pakistan. We are also witness to significant expressions of “public” support for a hard line on contentious issues between the two countries. It is easy to dismiss these as being manipulated. True as this fact may be, that is not all there is to the support for the State’s militant designs.

It is a fact that there is very little support in India for most ‘progressive, liberal, humanist, etc’ issues. While you can get millions out on the streets on the Ram Mandir you will not get even a thousand out against the devastation of the environment or against an endemic culture of custodial torture and killing. Thousands of brides (daughters) are killed every year by their husbands and in laws. Yet the issue does not grip the nation’s fathers, many of whom have daughters of their own. A ‘why’ to these and other phenomena has almost as many answers as ‘answerers’. Here is one.

Peace is a post-bourgeois dream. Trapped within our bourgeois angsts, we dream of peace even as our hands are busy grabbing as much as possible of the pie, nervous in our crumbling edifices of security, like the tin sheds that slum dwellers call home. Every “other” is a rival to our quest, our five century old history proof of its destructive power.

Is it enough that the Prime Minister is honest?

How dire is the Indian situation? I find it difficult to gauge the truth.

On the one hand we have the "numbers" coming out every day. Infosys, Wipro, Reliance Energy, Biocon, ....... On the other, the Prime Minister announces "packages" for suicide riven Vidarbha. Where lies the truth? Is India making rapid progress towards the economic well being of its billion plus or is it down-sliding into desperate poverty?

Look at it another way: On the one hand, the ruling establishment, which, by the way, includes us, flaunts its billion plus demography as THE ASSEST of the nation; one that has catapulted us into the ranks of the great nations of the world and, virtually, into the UN Security Council. On the other, we allow the very people who make us such a great nation to die unnecessary deaths by the millions every year: female foeticide and infanticide, high infant mortality in general, high maternal mortality, starvation deaths, disease epidemics, one of the highest accident rates in the world, et al.

Do we imagine that it is only the Lakshmi Mittals and the Amartaya Sens and the Indira Nooyis that enable us to hold our heads high when we says we are Indians? No doubt they and many other "successful" Indians have helped erase the ubiquitous image of the naked, starving Indian: going around the world with a begging bowl. Perhaps that is all that we care about; how the world paints us. After all, it is only Maya.

Do we imagine that we will actually become a great nation on the strength of the handful of corporate czars, Nobel laureates, missiles and, atomic weapons? Are we labouring under the illusion that China is on the verge of becoming a great and powerful nation, whose voice is impossible to ignore because of its nuclear arsenal? Its unprecedented economic boom? A "booming economy" is only so much hot air unless it translates into a modicum of dignity for all: food in every thaali, a shirt on every back, a roof over every head.

Rule of Law: A Raison d' etre


Law is not neutral. It never was. It is backed by force and, it commands it, also. Thus, rule of law is a misnomer -deliberate or inadvertent- to the extent that it connotes an absence of force. Besides, in the 21st Century it would be the height of naiveté to subscribe to the original view about rule of law: that it is exclusively based upon reason.

Let us examine the manner in which law and/ or rule of law comes into being:

India was conquered by the British by force, not law. British made law was subsequently applied, by force. Once the law was in place, it was enforced. Reason had very little role to play. One might argue that the law was reasonable but that begs the question of: by whose lights and, even assuming this was so, what gave the British the right to force us to follow their reason. Further, it is patent that howsoever hard they had tried to convince, the British would never have managed to persuade the Indians obey their laws. Thus, rule of law was backed by force, not reason.

Look at the same thing another way: all people who are free must necessarily have the freedom to choose, for example, to obey or not to obey another’s precepts. However, the ‘freedom of choice’ argument fails in the face of the need to regulate human behaviour in the social context. A solitary human being can do what he or she wishes, without constraint or fetter. The moment there are two people, they both feel the need for norms to regulate each other’s conduct. The conventional argument champions the 'law-rule of law' paradigm by claiming that there are two possible ways in which this need can be resolved: by force, the stronger prevailing over the weaker of the two and enforcing his/ her will; or, by law, when norms would get formulated to ensure that both persons get to enjoy an equal degree of ‘freedom of choice’ with neither encroaching upon the area of the other’s choices. This argument, however, fails to recognize a third possibility, which is often the way it goes in the real world. The stronger of the two (whether physically, intellectually or emotionally) establishes an ascendancy and, using that, lays down a set of rules as being “reasonable”. Thus, not only is the other, weaker person deprived of his/ her fair share of choice-space but he/ she is also forced to acknowledge that the rules imposed are “fair”. The next time he/ she infringes any of these, so called, fair rules, she is brought to book for violating the “law”. Since the person who imposed the law in the first place was able to do so because of his/ her superior strength, it is obvious that this person would also be able to enforce a penalty for the infringement of the law. Even worse, it is obvious that the situation would be untenable if one were to hypothise a situation where the weaker of the two were allowed to stipulate the rule (or law) to be followed, since this person would not be able to enforce the law unless the stronger person allowed that to happen. In such case 'law' or 'rule of law' would remain a concession by the stronger person. It is axiomatic that a concession can be withdrawn at the will (or the whim) of the giver. In other words, the concession can never be law.

Now, why would a concept that is premised on force and, the ability of the strong to compel the weak be touted as the panacea for freedom, equality and fair play? The only reason can be that it serves the purpose of the strong, by minimizing the resistance of the weak, lessening the need to remain perpetually on guard and, reducing the task of enforcing the law. What can be better for the master than when the slave (or the subject) willingly accepts the limits upon his her freedom?