Epiphany

The human race or most of it has always considered growth necessary. Yeah the argument for it is not difficult to make. After all why wouldn’t we want our lives to be supposedly easier and lengthier? But how do we encourage growth?

To ease out the issues of barter system money based market was created. With growing population and desire to stay in comfort zone with family and friends we had to find ways to grow more food in limited area of land. We had to improve transportation mode and also invest in health care to find ways to elongate our lives. For all this we had to create supporting infrastructure and it had to be sponsored by the market which had to grow not by number of consumers but more consumption. Also the person who achieved highest possible lifestyle in society we had to keep giving them more goals to achieve. Hence luxury market was created. If we did not support greed people might not have the want to make more money. Hence we had to continuously encourage creation of new wants with the increase in amount of wealth. If everyone became comfortable with one maximum level of things achievable how we would have supported growth of science, technology, infrastructure and other allied things with it. But while growing wealth individuals did not have the whole picture in mind. They still do not. They keep increasing wealth for the incentives society keeps providing. Those who are at the top of things achievable in society become role models for those below. Those who did not achieve this top level always strive for it for the importance and perceived benefits that are advertised and encouraged by society. Hence the means of making money could not stay limited to particular number of products or services. If there is market for luxury we had to exploit it because making money became a goal rather than process. When means become ends in themselves the pursuer of such ends gets stuck in a loop. Hence we kept on making money without any idea about why we are making it. This loop is what we can term greed in traditional sense. Even though Buffet does not need the amount of money he has he enjoys the status he has because of it and he wants to live up to it. May be I should ask him if he has any other motive to keep making money. Anyhow thus I argue that to grow human race chose to encourage greed.

What would have life been if we stuck to a simple life and did not encourage greed. Simply growth would have stalled. For increasing population newer groups would have abandoned older ones and scattered around. Considering the resources limited wars would have kept going on. Age up to which people lived would have been less. But yes we would have had simple lives. Yes wishing for growth would have been possible if we could accept death easily and could move on with simple life.

But the question is the extreme conditions argued need not be the only options available to choose and follow. In Sanskrit there is a verse saying excess is always dangerous (Ati sarvatra garhitam). Hence (ati sarvatra varjayet) wishing for excess should be abandoned. We could have grown wealth with controlled amount of greed. However such control over the expectations of the society would have needed some sort of communist rule throughout the world. We learnt about is peril from Russia and China already. Yes controlled capitalism as supposedly practiced in democracies like India or USA could have been the solution. But the problem is, tools of evil aka sins always bring their friends together. With ambition for more wealth there is power and thus corruption involved. Hence those who reach the top try to make ways to make it easier for them to reach the sky being deluded that it is an roof at an achievable height. Hence the designed system of controlled capitalism actually skewed itself to reduce the control over itself. Yes regulations need to evolve as the aspirations and need of the society evolves. But deregulation means leaving the evil to takeover.

What’s the solution then? Difficult to think of and once conceptualized it is difficult to even think that it can be implemented well. We can make people introspect and make them understand the reason behind the design. Encouraging a question and reason attitude could help. But as usual our society will have people who will rebel against such design and will decide actively that they refuse to think. After all having our system called human race completely stable and stuck to a design will make it appear mechanical. Hence we should just wait and hope that we adapt and evolve to betterment holistically. Even if a better world could be designed we cannot break the ambitions and dreams of people. It is like Neo not being able to choose the option of destroying the matrix to bring people to real world. Instead we should choose the way he chose to just improve the existing design :)

Getting past the greed is something I wanted for quite some time. My quest for the best is gone now. But that does not mean I just satisfice. But the cost of achieving best becomes more costly when compared to its benefits sometimes. The need for achieving the best may be lost in that case. Do I need the hottest person on earth as my partner? Do I want to make maximum money anyone can make on earth? Do I need to be the best at a particular trait? People might remember me for a longer time if I do. But do I need that? Won’t my life be awesome with such fantasies coming true? It certainly will. But come to think of the purpose then. Why do I need a very desirable partner, lot of wealth? For living a good life something lesser than best may do! But by this I don’t advocate mediocrity. How is that? An individual may try to define its individuality and mediocrity is opposite of that. But how do we define individuality is what matters. Do I consider my choices made out passionately with that much thinking? If making money is my goal I must be passionate about it. How good I am at it is all that matters. But acknowledgement at certain level achieves that? Founder of Flipkart proved his skill of entrepreneurship already. Does he need to be Warren Buffet 2.0 to prove to he himself further, depend on him? People really don’t evaluate if you can make Flipkart beat Apple or Google. Your shareholders care about their own money growing, not about your ambition. It is only the Flipkart founder who needs to evaluate and make that choice. Behind that choice it is important for him to remember why he found Flipkart and also important are his other desires. He would have gone for satisficing if he just wanted a venture which runs for given number of years or made a particular amount of money at a particular rate. But again why he decided such a measure he should be aware of that. Yes, reasoning own intentions for setting such goals won’t stop with just one level.

The purpose of human life and meaning of action has been a long thought of and well debated question. To the one who did not think of what he really wanted in life and never knew how his goals and choices changed accepting mediocrity is easy. But he does not care much about it. Society, religion and conformity to peer pressure ensure that most of the population isn’t bothered about living such a life. Their goals are socially defined and give them immense pride in achieving those. They thus live a good life with ups and downs based on outcomes of such goals achieved just like those who define their own path with lesser conformity to the regular. But there are people who try to define themselves differently not based how others acknowledge their individuality but they themselves do. They set their own goals, consider their passions and decide on their choices. Again human beings are social creatures who cannot be isolated completely even on their own. But again we have our own individual knowledge acting as intuition and what is taught to us as tuition. Over time our intuition is enriched with tuition too. And our interpretation of tuition is also based on our intuition and intention. Hence those who set their own path as I am mentioning in this essay confirm less to societal and other such institutional expectations. But following your intuition may not always mean that you need to defer from such expectations. I just wanted to show that even though I argue for individualism here, it is not absolute. Even a hermit befriends with nature and his surroundings including the animals, plants and inanimate objects. Emotion does it to us. Human beings are not closed thermodynamic system to go to chaos according to second law. We are open systems and hence we form complex patterns in our action and thinking.

Going back to our earlier discussion, knowing what our passions are difficult to define. But the quest to define our individuality to ourselves makes the process of defining our goals easier. Making most amount of money in such case will be a difficult goal if reasoned well. Because after making certain amount of money my expected lifestyle of drinking Dom or Moet frequently may very well be satisfied. But why I set such a goal is just known to me. If it was just Dom then just buying Dom should have been the goal and the desire for Dom is personal one. But will a person make more money to just make more money? Surrendering to institutional pressure make any person less individual and less human. I say less human because then we could have replaced such a person could be replaced with an algorithm based robot if one could be made. Again this leads us to ask if the person always has one goal in life. People have multiple goals for sure, just that they prioritize. When the priorities change, depends on the purpose of our goals being achieved. This is not satisficing because it is not that you settled for less when you could have it more optimized, instead you settled for less than what others expected to be the best for you. Yes I can go further to make the goal of achieving the best sound pathetic when taking the example of China achieving the growth it has. Yes now you will question my definition of best. But who defines best? Is it China or the individuals there or just you or me?

Greed is not good according to several religions and other institutions at least the way I learnt it in my childhood. But once I grew up, it is advocated that greed is good and I am not just repeating the line from movie Wall Street here. You know that since your parents want you to have a good lifestyle and so do your partners. But a good lifestyle is defined either by the unfulfilled desires or just peer pressure. Why the broker on wall-street, a banker, an entrepreneur or a manager needs to make a lot of money? It is definitely not the desire to serve society or shareholders. It is to make money for self which happens to be dependent on how much money we make for others. And the purpose for making a lot of money may simply be vacation from lifestyle disease inducing job at a virgin island. In a country like India such question may be asked to politicians/ bureaucrats and other corrupters who make crores of money but do not get to use it much. In a third world country people save for future generations such that the next generation does not toil for sustaining the same lifestyle and they grow. Thus does the society. Anthropologically this may sound logical. But there these parents sometime forget to define how much is enough. Do they teach their offspring the purpose of providing them with wealth enough to sustain a good life style is for them to grow as an individual and thus help the whole human race grow? Yes for achieving one purpose as best possible few more responsibilities and goals are sacrificed. Mediocrity will not need you to think about it. But being more than mediocre will make you think and reason your choices well. Achieving best without well-reasoned choice of scale of measure for defining best will fail the purpose. Coming back to the question of good lifestyle that one should expect for oneself and descendants can be answered with the help of defining needs vs. wants and understanding how many wants we really need to fulfil beyond the necessary.

The ‘occupy wall-street’ movement in a way should be considered a wake up point for the wall-street brokers and bankers to reflect on why they invented complex and add-other-attributes type financial instruments which later failed. They need to think if making money at the rate they wanted was any good. The shareholders investing in such a good financial market need to think if their greed is justified. When justified it won’t remain greed. Expecting growth is good for individuals and the human race but excess will ruin things just like recent recessions have proved. The whole western thinking needs thus to go for introspection. They need not go to some Eastern Guru for the same. Reflect on the catholic values and understand why the seven sins are considered sins. Reinterpret self-reliance essay by Emerson to decide what is good for you and the society. Even Dexter understood what is good for the society and him and put his murderous intentions to good use. I do not encourage vigilantism and mercy killings by that example though ;)

Commenting on this from Indian (rather Hindu) perspective I shall repeat what one of the Upanishads advises i.e. we (the teachers) only offer you teachings but it is for you to interpret and understand what is good and how these teachings should be followed by you. I sometimes laughed at such an advice since a criminal defined by society as criminal may very well reason his need to commit the crime, but again an individual needs to understand how his choices affect the society and thus may affect him in return i.e. If all criminals could justify their actions free riding will be encouraged leading to peril of the society and thus the individual. Yes hence defining good or bad and deciding on making choices hence should be dependent on both how the choice affects the person himself and the society at large.

What I advised for western society affects the eastern one too. The country where Kamasutra was conceptualised, considers the text merely as a sex guide. The teachings about society and the guidelines about maintaining a healthy lifestyle mentioned in it are ignored. Many other ancient such teachings have been forgotten. The goal of achieving good lifestyle defined in own skewed ways marred introspection and became social expectation. Yes the goal is not achieved for many but of those for whom the goal was achieved very few understood and explained the purpose and the way forward to their descendants. Yes my argument is that we need to change our thinking as an society and it is needed to be done at least by this part of population which achieved expected lifestyle and can go on to define personal growth. This does not mean that Indians need to change their ways of valuing family and society a lot more than western counter parts. But even Buddha went on to find his purpose, define his own goal and to achieve it. He had the support of his family too or at least he could convince them later :)

Just like argument for understanding purpose behind individuals’ action argument can be extended for collective action of a group by considering the group as a whole and as an individual in its surrounding society. In fact for the society setting goal like growth can be analysed and answered by asking how much growth is needed and in what aspects. Just because we can formulate complex systems complicating life is not necessary.

Also coming to think of ancient teachings which are ignored now-a-days in India, it is majorly because the lack of encouragement of debate and argument in our society. If you taught your child Socraterian method to reason and grasp knowledge he would make you explain the purpose of actions and understand it even if you forget that as your duty. Our society could have grown a little better with politicians being not able to take the voters for a ride with their offerings. Proper reasoning and thus estimations would have even improved city planning. Yes idealistic thinking like this can promise to achieve many things convincing you of logical soundness. You may not have looked at the loopholes in such logic because of framing of arguments.

Hence the last nail here is dependence on logic while arguing all this. Like Wittgenstein I too doubt the success of such an ideal to come true because logic is not all persistent. It certainly satisfies the thinkers but the cost of thinking and using logic many a times overwhelming. The philosophers who laughed at it should consider why white collars get paid lot more than blue collars. Introspection and understanding the purpose of our imminent actions should at least be foundations of the society and taught in every family and school when we haven’t found a way to discover the purpose of life at large yet. In my middle class family even though I get to read Socrates pretty early in life arguing was not something much encouraged. May be it is difficult to argue with children but my persistent effort brought fruit later where we get to argue much of our action in the family. How much of the argument is actually followed and how much of regular social norms at the end of the day is a different story though. :P

PS: Please let me know of grammatical errors, logical loopholes and other remarks.

Two philosophers I consider important in shaping my way of thinking are Buddha and Socrates. Recently, Wittgenstein too impressed me, but his influence will be a little lower than that of these two in my life.

In primary school, I learnt about the Socratic Method from a three-page essay on life and teaching of Socrates. Summing up in one line what I understood: “one should ask in order to know and understand any concept thoroughly”. This Kierkegaard later popularized as “De Omnibus Dubitandum Est”. I may discuss more about it some other time.

Reading about Buddha, his sayings and his Jataka Katha (tales) from various story books I understood and remembered one thing. Putting it in one line: “End of expectations is end of sorrow”. କାମନାର ବିନାଶରେ ହିଁ ଦୁଃଖର ବିନାଶ (Odia).

While I was in school I once discussed with my father about different religions. My father liked Jesus Christ because of the compassion and non-violent preaching. His preference was obvious when cited against the Hindu Gods, who killed sinners to clear away sin. I told him why not prefer Buddha. He replied that Buddha left his family for his quest! It felt as if Buddha ran away from his prime responsibilities because of his quest to find the answer for his fear ‘human sorrow and ultimately death’. The rest of the discussion I had with my father is not relevant here.

Though at first I did not want to accept such criticism of Buddha because of my good impression of him, later with my partial knowledge about Buddha, I deduced and accepted that yes he ran away from primary social responsibilities to find answers for his fears. He sounded very selfish really. But, was he really this selfish? It was like criticizing the Hindi movie lovers who realize how much they love another person on their wedding day and then run away leaving all relatives in pain. At least, some of those movie-based relatives might be happy because of the right decision having been finally made by the protagonist ensuring his hopefully long-term happiness. Buddha came in bad light by leaving a wife along with a newly born baby. Divorce and single parent issues are difficult and seen negatively in the society I grew up in. I understand how badly such actions can affect people involved. Could not Buddha leave any earlier? Why punish a woman and a child for one’s own fancy? Buddha stayed until then because of his father. Buddha’s father first got him married thinking that his madness will reduce after it (so typical Hindi movie like :p). Since Buddha did not leave his mad desire to leave, his father allowed him to leave the palace only after Buddha became a father. He hoped that the lure of the child could have kept him home. Whatever… Though I got all this about Buddha from Osamu Tezuka, I am not sure if such intentions and conversations really took place in Buddha’s life. However, the doubt on Buddha’s intentions is cleared, and he is established as a reasonable man with this. It is important to find a preacher’s action as reasonable in order to follow him. Yes, one may choose to pardon Buddha for his early decisions as being immature and follow his sayings after enlightenment as appropriate. Alternatively, one may even consider that leaving the family was a collateral damage in the process of achieving the greater goal of enlightenment and spreading the knowledge obtained in society.

Buddha’s family could pardon him, but I am not yet fully convinced about what takes precedence. Maybe I am still not mature enough for it. Yes, when he was unhappy living with his fear, he could not have given his best to his family, and hence he chose to take up the quest. Maybe his family understood it and let him be. Can a son really pardon a father who left him immediately after his birth? Can the son accept the father again in the form he returns after years? The feeling/ experience that the departure of his father was the reason behind many miseries he had to face, can make the action of pardoning more difficult. However, the problem here is with ascribing reason and ex-post theorizing, which is like Schrödinger’s cat. When the box is opened the cat is dead, which in this case means that the son faced misery. And once the box is opened, we cannot ever clearly tell what was the state of the cat when the box was closed i.e. can we really pin everything on the father’s departure. Maybe it was in the son’s fate, and he would have suffered whether or not his father stayed with him! Even so, he definitely lacked his father’s love and guidance. For which the father is to be blamed for sure. Hence Buddha should be pronounced guilty. Again, nobody can guarantee that he would have got his father’s attention and love, when his father chose to stay with him. What if his father died instead of leaving him for a greater cause? Furthermore, pinning it on fate erases the distinction between good and bad. The father in this case need not feel guilty for his son’s miseries since it was after all the son’s fate! Hence, I guess good and bad are socially defined.

When the discussion went towards fate in the discussion above, it did not mean rejection of reason. Instead, it is a limitation of reasoning here. I strongly believe that human beings keep looking for reasons and try to be reasonable. Our emotions make us strive to be responsible and accountable. These make the social sense of good & bad and thus legitimacy be established through reason. However, in case of unavailability of information scope of reasoning is limited. At best one can assign probability/chance value to reason behind an action rather than be sure about a particular reason behind an action.

Yeah, It is enough analysis of this action by young Buddha! Maybe I can just accept what he preached and the line I remember from his sayings, rather than being stuck with this analysis. Still, the analysis cleared few cobwebs on my ideas about fate, action, good/bad and reason. I am not sure about you.

PS: As usual, please let me know about my grammatical mistakes. Do let me know of factual mistakes too if you find any. Feel free to comment on any opinion provided here.

I don’t understand why.

Obviously for the same I am writing the first part of “how many more parts are coming I don’t know” series.

The easiest approach I guess is objectification to make women go for self-loathing always. As I understand, women collectively over time decided to go for accepting objectification. Men contribute to this effort generously. Sure patriarchal family system and other things might be primary settings but I follow one line without doubt i.e. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” told by Eleanor Roosevelt. I never believed that one has to be the first lady of USA to actually believe in it and see it happen in real life.

Obviously it is outrageous to think that women invited it upon themselves. It has been built into our collective psyche over ages through religious practices which were mostly governed by men. Later reinforcements were provided by both men and women in various ways with or without realizing the way and by what amount it contributes to the objectification. I understand my allegations are without basis and unscientific for the way they are made till now in this article. However you got to see this infographic to understand why I feel women are more responsible for this state. And you need to watch the documentary to understand how we are reinforcing objectification. Who are the actual perpetrators and who are the accomplices is not the question, issue is can you stop it from affecting you? May be you can! And yeah, you are open to make your own interpretations from what I wrote and the links I provided to! I think the question will too change for many of you. You can tell me a lot about it. Yeah I guess both ladies and gentlemen have opinion about this. However I am busy with my compree exams for now. Hence I might not respond immediately.

PS: Please let me know of grammatical mistakes in the write-up above and also about other improvements that can be made to my style of writing.

I have been thinking about writing several stories/prose on these ideas for quite some time now. Listing them down such that I may come and check this some time later and write on some of these.

1. If there is a God and he invented everything and destiny of everything is in his hands, he might be the creator of Satan too. Satan must be crying with pain for having been destined to be hated by most of the people. It in turn might have prompted him/her to rage war against the God and thus good.

2. People control their fate not God or someone else. Wishing that someone knew the pattern of happenings around us and designed it is wrong and if someone did he/she never followed any rule book for us to complaint about. He/she just made it as random or irrational he/she wanted things to be. May be we are just moving dolls in a big doll-house.

3. What is it with women and self-loathing? Is self-loathing taught women by society and their mothers from childhood? I am a man, hence not able to understand the cause for it and the feeling. I should think and write about it to find possible correlation of social trend and events inspiring this.

4. Sex. Yeah teen sex, pre-teen sexual advances, child abuse, molestation, homosexuality, incest. I have theories about all varieties in sex. Okay, I haven’t tried bondage yet. I have seen movies on it and read books/comics on it. Otherwise I have my opinion on most of the sex related topics. One of the things I enjoy thinking about.

5. Nirvana. Sex was normal before achieving Nirvana and it became fascination after achieving Nirvana. Nirvana is the state I attained during my intermediate i.e. 2 years of course after matriculation. I did not want anything in life or from life. I could have went to mountains to meditate and be a sage. However logic failed me. I guess a social life needs a person to have wants and work towards that to have a pseudo-logically fulfilling life. Do I need Nirvana?

6. Logic & rationale: Why we need to have a reason behind everything?

7. Buddha through my lens.

This is it for now.. will list out some more topics later.

— Yeah I would like to write about being chatted up by strangers on very interesting topics.

Signing off now.