Desicritics Category: Culture: Philosophy

Poem: Only The Light

Kashkin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:42:31 EDT

Absent and not in view
The golden words of our past
Still there, an old craving to explore
Only in view, the shackles of time
The separation of days from its demise
As I write, to form a soul
Of once that was, now a dream

As I labor to turn,
The old wheels of fortune
In the land of my ancestors and poets
Only the words I have
At my disposal and at my service
As I rotate with the earth and its burdens
Through labyrinth of time and space
Not guilty my conscience and my soul
Of all my crimes, still there some peace
Always in debt to serve, in tattered clothes
The land up in smoke and in fury of hatred

When will you awake, from this slumber?
Of mayhem and of shames,
What will you do to these traditions of past
The murderous routines and ghastly crimes
The future is yours, belongs it to you
Only the steps, you need to take
Silence is a crime if you chose to remain
In surrender to the desires of the world
The glory will come, only if you refrain
From these acts of crime, to your land
Plenty of enemies in view but it's within
Distinguish it well, as there it remains
The clues to your success and dreams

Hold it well and keep it close
The memories of your past
The promise of the future
Shine, my friends, shine
As it is in there you will find
The story of your being and its land
Do not wait or hope for others to come
Summon your souls and bodies to perform
The miracles of change, the miracle of unity
It's time for you to form a soul
Still there, an old craving to explore
In shackles of time and despair of days
Only the light, only the light, in your fate

If the World Becomes Colour Blind...

Hardik Ruparel — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:53:19 EDT

As the day passes by, the spirit of Holi seems more and more distant from me. Even more distant than the sun itself. I can see the sun and I can feel it. But I really cannot feel the spirit of Holi today.

Maybe Liverpool thrashed Real Madrid, and India did the same to New Zealand, but still today seems so gloomy. The colors on my face just seem to be another symbol. And I hate symbolism. I hate it when we wear headgear as a display of symbolism. I wear a cap because I protect myself from the sun.

Nothing seems to alienate me from the thought (or fact ? ) that the world is spiraling downwards. My friends here in college play around with water and colors as they know nothing. But it's hard to believe they're so ignorant. It's becoming harder to find a reason to smile. It's so hard to believe the world has come to this.

The (so-called?) God we pray to has become the basis of hatred amongst each other. In the common room next to my room, some students do their Namaaz 5 times a day diligently. I don't understand what they're saying. It sounds beautiful. I stand in awe, listening hard, wishing I could understand them, their message, and tell the world how great they are. But then these students walk past the common room. They scoff and they laugh "Terrorists. "

I fail to believe what just happened. Have my ears defied me ? Should I trust my ears or should I trust the people ? I do not know. I fear to think what's the truth.

We haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages. We just don't execute and kill people the way they used to. We're not any more humane than they were. We're just some generations below them. Do we really think we're civilized enough ? We still think, imagine, in our hearts, how we could punish people that we don't like. We hate to admit it. But it's true.

It's true and the world has only gotten worse. Technology has done it's part. Before we could love each other and eradicate diseases like communal hatred, we've found myriad ways to destroy each other.

On such complicated days, nothing seems to cheer me up. Not even good jokes. They only bring a smile. Or probably two. I go back to my magic, and my deck of cards refuse to vanish like they should when I wave my hands ( I don't yet have a magic wand...)

I look around and see how colors have made a difference in the world. Skin colors from white to brown to black to yellow. The colors of things around us influence us. Thanks to The Discovery Channel, I know that colors play a major part in our personality, society, development and hence communalism : Orange, Green, Yellow, Blue and the Red.

That brings me to imagine a day we all woke up to be colorblind. Would we still discriminate against each other ? On religion, color, race, sex, minorities, political parties and other interests ? What if all our lives lost color ? Would we be distressed enough to forget our differences ? Or would we get further enraged and kill each other with nuke bombs ? Would we realize that color actually had no importance and meaning in our lives ? Would the European countries be able to distinguish one flag from the other ? Or would we use our memory to record which object was of which color and continue living pretending that we still saw colors ?

Pretense has been one of the most important factors for survival in this world. I'm sure someone would've said this :

"Shit happens. Just pretend it didn't and get on with life."

If nobody has said it before, well it was just too general and accepted a fact to be even stated explicitly.

Today literally has no significance to today. All we can do is go back to our lives and look at the simple things in life. That brings me to the age old question asked by so many wise men and women:

"Why are we here?"

And I say we are here to enjoy the simple things in life that delight us. For me it's chocolate. Chocolate has helped me resolve many a strife, and many internal disturbances. Chocolate is one of the biggest motivation factors for me. I'm off for a bar of Cadbury's. Happy Holi.

Ramakrishna: A Lover of God

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 1 Mar 2009 10:22:23 EST

The Ramakrishna Mission has been an integral part of my growing up. My grand parents, uncles and aunts, my parents, my wider family all have been associated with this mission. And singing in front of Ma Kali and slipping into a near trance was quite common back then. While I was growing up, two things happened which are pertinent. The first related to the regular visits to the Mission in Bhopal. At that time, it was in the middle of a vast stony rocky field. A temple of calmness in the midst of a very stark landscape. And you would get a sense of peace as soon as you entered the temple grounds. The teachers over there were wonderful, they wore simple clothes and their laughter was so wonderful. A childlike wonder at the world all the time and infinite patience to deal with zillions of questions. I regret to say that I do not remember their names. Singing the bhajans and the trance like state one would enter while singing to Ma Kali, just wonderful. Even now, it brings a strange sort of peace to myself and tears to the eyes.

The second related aspect was my visit to Vivekananda Rock. If somebody asks me if I have met God, I say in the affirmative and that is one of the places I met him face to face. Strange no? So when I read this paper: Kali's child and Krishna's lover: An anatomy of Ramakrishna's Caritas Divina by Narasingha P Sil of Western Oregon University, published in Journal of Religion, 2008, I felt the tug of memories so badly. I quote the abstract:

The famous 19th-century Bengali saint Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa has almost universally been regarded as a Shakta (sometimes confused with Tantrika) devotee of the Mother Goddess Kali. His association with the Kali temple at Daksineshvar, in the northern suburb of Calcutta, has no doubt been a powerful argument behind his Shakta/Tantrika affiliation. This paper argues that Ramakrishna was essentially a bhakta (devotee) in the Vaisnava tradition and his cultural and family inheritance. His idea of the divine and his career and logia as a priest and a saint provide ample justification to consider him essentially a Vaisnava whose spiritual battle-cry was to demand to have dalliance with God.

The paper tries to decompose his feelings and his religious leanings by a variety of references, ranging from references to tantrik aspects to Vedanta to you name it. After reading the rather bewildering variety of references and attempts to decompose his faith, I was lost. But in the middle, the author hits on the precise nature of this wonderful man and I quote:

Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that Bengali folk culture essentializes simple fiducia and that Ramakrishna, an untrained and unread temple priest (although initiated into Shakti or Kali mantra by a professional priest named Kenaram Bhattacharya) cannot be pigeonholed neatly in any one sect formally. In other words, he was basically a lover of god

That is it. You really do not need a full fledged scholarly paper to know what he was, he was a lover of God. He investigated Islam and Christianity, delved into Buddhism and found that at end of the day, all paths lead to the same God. Sometimes, I think we make our relationship with God far too complicated. It is not, it is very simple. She loves us and we just need to love her back. Be like a Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, just love her.

It is very difficult to explain this feeling of wanting to be one with God or personally speaking, one with Ma (whether it be Kali or Shakti or Durga, or what have you, they are all the same) but it is an indescribable feeling and I tear up every time I experience it. But still, the article is good, if nothing else for the good discussion on tantric scriptures and practises, Vedanta and Ramakrishna’s life.

Oh!, the references are good as well.

Technorati Tags: Hinduism

Self and Society

Ruchi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:02:02 EST

Is it just me or have things taken a decided turn towards alice in wonderland-esque surrealism. Like a kaleidoscope, the events of one's life are seemingly determined by external movements, people like bits of colored glass significant only in the patterns formed by their repeating mirror reflections. The force of events that upturn people's lives is breathtaking, and completely beyond the scope of most to foresee, let alone control/alter. There is both absolutism and arbitrariness, and the individual is left with a galling sense of powerlessness. How do the apparent odds of absolutism and arbitrariness coexist? The answer can be traced to an ever tighter black hole of power: the capriciousness of the egocentric, yet an all encompassing influence. We see both at work in the global meltdown, and the mass hysteria that is Slumdog.

The complete disregard for reasonable risk and ethics concentrated in a few square mile area in Manhattan has wreaked havoc around the world, leading to collapse in the economies of entire countries (Iceland, Latvia) and an anticipated 50M lost jobs. No one will be spared from the aftershocks, even those who've never heard of CDOs. Blips on the computer screen representing ridiculous financial engineering and 30-1 leverage ratios by a bunch of men in dark suits has led to a global recession, and the leading threat to stability around the world. Slumdog vaulted its cast and crew unknowns into premier league, after narrowly escaping its own Direct to DVD demise. Everyone looks suitably overcome, esp the three slumkids on the improbable journey from tinroof to Oscar red carpet, courtesy "Danny uncle". But what about the other thousands still under the tinroofs, yet now with hungry hearts? Quite possibly the only way for them to escape the hopelessness of their life was/is this fairytale. And fairytales by definition are for the chosen few. Off with their heads!

Given the complete lack of control that one has over one's life, what then is the meaning of life? I could delude myself with notion of control: of the apparent freedoms that I exercise in my academic/professional pursuits, the discernment I fancy in my consumption, the passion with which I guard my recreation, the number of people whose life I control. But all of these are afforded to me by birth, a function of family, citizenship and local zeitgeist. The trajectory is defined by birth; individual effort merely determines which end of the range is reached. Even if one overlooks the "default by birth" theory, a fatal blow to the delusion is dealt when one attempts to change the system/framework.

Maybe then life's meaning is not defined by individual control, but by living itself. Every single act that defines humanity has been done before, the attendant feelings felt, the thoughts thought. Joy, sorrow, anger, pain, fear, love, running, eating, thinking, working, dancing, etc. So the value of the experience must reside not in its novelty for humankind, but for each person. In fact it is in the commonality of the experiences that we feel connected. And sometimes it feels great just to be alive - steeped in the experience, liquid in the moment. However, most experiences fall prey to diminishing returns with repetition and there is need to broaden/deepen the experience base either through novelty or complexity. Moreover, innate in human race is the need/ability to assert individuality, and seek long-ranging pursuits which connect our past, present and future. Longer the pursuit, more limited the range of options at any point of time. Coupled with the highly centralized society that we live in, the past becomes an even greater determinant of present and future possibilities.

Given the longitudinal nature of pursuits, and the increasingly constrained choices along the continuum, is it acceptable for each person to maximize only one's own experiences and pleasure? Maybe. The underlying tenet of all societies, its social contract, is the expectation that each individual gives up small personal liberties to maximize freedom/opportunity for everyone in the society. Hence within the periphery of minimal socially acceptable behavior, self-interest is justification enough for any action since in a functional (tending to equilibrium) society, my pursuits wouldn't impinge on someone else's pursuits, and to the extent they do, it would lead to competition, innovation, and "creative destruction".

But this answer doesn't satisfy. Implicit in the "self-interest" theory is the determination of equal benefit, that the gain of one is comparable in importance to the loss of another. We need only to look around to *know* that this is not true. The marginal gain of each added luxury is laughable against the minimal bar of a human being able to exercise the faculties of her humanness. In a country like India, one is assaulted daily, hourly with people reduced to bestiality. Having once seen and understood this inequity, how can one overlook it? Is it okay to ignore hardship because it's not mine? While instinctively inaction seems wrong, often good intentions have little meaning beyond personal gratification. Each act terminates in itself, maybe even causing harm. On my way back from work one day, a street kid was at my window peddling some cheap "made in china" toy. Loathe to turn him away or give him money, I gave him my pack of gum. Another kid was at window the same instant. I didn't have any more gum to give him, and as we drove away, I turned around to see the second child trailing the first. My act was cruel in its randomness, and had the unintended effect of depriving the second child. Considered judiciousness too does not permeate the system, remaining instead like a little oasis amid a desert, necessitating either detachment or frustration in engagement outside.

What is the balance between self and surroundings? Should one optimize for the former or attempt to change the latter?

Poetry: Roadkill On Memory Lane

IdeaSmith — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:55:50 EST

Did you ever hear the call of memory
that screeching wail of nostalgia
like tires on tar
and you couldn't help looking back,
wondering if anybody died
and realising it wasn't you?

Did you turn back to proceed
and gape at the unfamiliarity of now
the past and its accidents seem so much real
and feel yourself lose footing on the road of reality
while even the blood stains from yesterday's carnage
fade away before you can grasp them?

Did you ever walk back into your past
and then find yourself lost,
not knowing how to come back
- Nostalgia is so disorienting -
and while you're frozen in your own mind
you get hit by a flood of something you never saw coming?

Maybe forgetfulness is just a way of ensuring we don't become roadkill.

Human Cloning - The Clone Wars

Ashoka Chakra — Sun, 8 Feb 2009 08:30:29 EST

Seeing double seems to have acquired a new meaning lately, thanks to the controversy over cloning. After all, cloning is an issue that tests our very sense of identity and therefore it is critical that this be looked at carefully. There seem to be two aspects to this controversy: animal cloning and human cloning.

There appears to be a consensus that animal cloning is acceptable so long as it satisfies the need for human medical and scientific advancement. The present purpose of cloning animals is for animals to serve as modern organ factories -- a combination of Orwell's Animal Farm (in reverse) and Chaplin's Modern Times. The mental image is of a factory with grunting cloned pigs rolling on the conveyor belt to be slaughtered, and their organs harvested to be sent to hospitals for transplantation. To many, this is the price that animals pay for not being at the top of the evolutionary scale. The rationale is that if we can kill them to eat them, surely we can clone them and harvest them. Except for the animal right activists, unfortunately very few seem to be bothered by this.

The issue of human cloning seems to be a different matter altogether. It is an issue that pits scientists and medics against religious leaders and politicians (with plenty of crossover between the groups). The subliminal question appears to be -- if God creates an individual human (however indirectly) can there be more than one of that individual at the same time? Would that second individual have a soul? If not, do we want soul-less beings amongst us? If the duplicate had a soul, where did that soul come from? Certainly it would not come from the traditional route assumed in most, if not all, religions of the world. If two identical beings did exist at the same time, it implies that the first one is not unique, with attendant implications on life and creation as a whole. No wonder the strongest opposition to human cloning comes from the creationists amongst us.

As can be expected, there are many counter arguments. Some say that human cloning is justified for scientific progress. Others would say that cloning is justified for the medical benefits it could provide -- stem cells, haplo-identical organs, etc. Finally, there are some that seek immortality, through cloning. After all, if one can buy a stairway to heaven, cloning is certainly a step in the right direction.

Like many complex issues (such as abortion), there are many points to consider. These considerations need time. However, when science moves faster than our hearts and minds do, the luxury of time is absent where we can cogitate and ponder over these issues. It is unlikely that there ever will be a consensus on human cloning, but whatever the decision made, at least all sides would have had their say and the issue thoroughly explored.

Maybe we could learn from Dolly, the world's first mammal cloned by the Roslin Institute in Scotland on Feb. 23, 1997. She was euthanized on February 14th, 2003 (Valentines Day), well short of her normal lifespan after being diagnosed with progressive lung disease. The premature death of the famous clone raises the issue of over whether animal cloned from adults inevitably produces flawed copies. There are now hundreds of animal clones around the world, including cows, pigs, mice and goats, many of them appearing robust and healthy. But many attempts to clone animals have ended in failure. Deformed fetuses have died in the womb with oversized organs, while others were born dead. Still others died days after birth, some twice as large as they should have been.

Dolly's body has been promised to the National Museum of Scotland and will eventually be put on display in Edinburgh. Will a similar fate befall cloned humans?

So, to go back to the question - to clone or not to clone, I’d say wait. Till we figure out the science, the morality, and the ethics. It is too important an issue to rush into.

Poornamadah Poornamidam - You Can't Give Love Away

Blokesablogin — Sat, 7 Feb 2009 00:58:16 EST

This ancient Sanskrit verse from the Vedas speaks of something complete and when given away, remains complete and the part that is given away also is complete or whole!

As a child when I had learned that verse, I wondered at its mathematical impossibility until I realized love. Be it joy or love, when given or received, there is a sense of completion to it. The very process of loving makes us feel complete and the "object" of our love, complete, too! Like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar reminds us, Love is not an emotion, it is our very nature. So true.

Way back in college, we had to read the book by Umberto Eco, titled, The Name of the Rose. The book deals with the interdiction of laughter in religious life and a monk who researches a manuscript on humor. Today, we have an interesting case of love being denied owing to its crass commercialization.

Too often, the word love conjures up images of carnal pleasures rather than the warming of our hearts owing to the excessive material campaigning via mass media. Red roses, chocolates, cards with cheesy verses and sometimes jewellery, make up the "offerings" of this "Day for lovers".

The story of Kama, the god of desire, in the Bhagavatham is interesting. It is said that Kama aids Parvati in winning Shiva and in the process gets burned himself. On her supplication, Shiva "resurrects" Kama, but making him invisible to human eyes with whom he continues to play his games.

The story is layered with symbols. Firstly, the word associated with kama is NOT LOVE, but desires. Another name for Kama is Manmatha, one who churns one's mind! In a spiritual context, desires cause the churning of one's mind causing the restlessness within that demands actions in the physical plane to fulfill them.

The word Prem alludes to the divine. Premswaroop, love being the self-image of the divine, is one of the attributed names of the divine. In this context, the ideal "Valentine" would be one who is in deep meditation.

Bhakti, is the ultimate experience of this love. Pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do ise koi naam na do (let love be love, do not give it a name) is the ultimate exultation of this experience. This is borne of wisdom, not of hormones.

I would like to see Valentine's Day celebrated with people keeping a Mouna vrat (vow of silence) and recognizing their very nature of peace, love and beauty. We always have Holi to compensate for in March!

A Limitation Of The Scientific Method

Ravi Kulkarni — Mon, 2 Feb 2009 01:42:36 EST

The Scientific method (from wikipedia)

"Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses."

I often hear from scientists and wanna-be scientists (like me) that the scientific method is the only way possible forward in understanding the universe. Logical reasoning and the scientific method have their place in the scheme of things. But to say that they are primarily responsible for all progress is putting the cart before the horse. In the definition above, formulation of a hypothesis is taken as a part of the scientific method. However, this formulation is often mysterious, and no one can really explain how a "productive" hypothesis is arrived at. Most of the times logic and reasoning have nothing to do with it.

The anonymous Indian genius that conceived zero, Kepler, Newton, Kekulé, Marie Curie and Einstein all have one thing in common: they created a paradigm shift in our understanding of nature. The paradigm shift was not in the proof they offered but the hypothesis itself. While proof is important, it is secondary to the hypothesis. I doubt if anyone of these giants have explained how they came up with the hypotheses. Given a "productive" and viable hypothesis, someone can and will come up with a proof eventually just as Fermat's last theorem demonstrated.

The modern scientists spend their lifetimes perfecting the scientific method. But they probably do not spend enough time understanding how the hypotheses are made. It is assumed that a good scientist "knows" how to arrive at one. There is no process, no class (that I know of) and no "formal" guidelines to come up with a good hypothesis. No good hypothesis no significant progress. That's a limitation of the scientific method.

The ancient Indian sages approached the process in a different manner. Many of them were true yogis and attained samadhi by meditation. The claim is that when one attains samadhi, the knowledge about the true nature of the universe arises spontaneously. Perhaps this is the source of all hypotheses. They made seemingly amazing leaps in understanding the nature. Often they didn't explain how they arrived at that knowledge, but only stated it with authority. Frequently one hears the phrase "self evident" with such statements. It is left for the later commentators to comment on that statement and expound it. Some commentaries on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras say this: if all the books are burnt and all knowledge is lost save the Yoga Sutras, then rest of the knowledge can still be developed by accomplished yogis.

I know that there will be some scientist types on DC who will grill me on this one (where is Commonsense?), but I will make this claim: scientists will do much better in their disciplines if they include meditation in their curriculum. Have you noticed how often multiple scientists come up with the same new idea that miraculously solves a difficult problem that mankind has grappled with for ages? In my opinion this phenomenon is not magic or coincidence, but it can be explained by our spiritual nature. We are all connected by an underlying thread and that manifests itself in these mysterious ways. In fact someone even conducted a maze running experiment on rats that showed that once a particular maze is solved by one rat, other rats find it easy to solve.

Political Systems And Success

K. M. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:04:28 EST

In a comment on my previous post “History is not the case against collectivism”, Mark asked

I also just realized, that a system/ideal can be judged from a moral standpoint separately from a history: then is it possible for an ideology that is inferior from a moral standpoint to actually succeed in history?

The question is important enough to deserve a post of its own, so here goes.

[ADBLOCKHERE\A judgement based on history(and nothing else) is a consequentialist judgement. It is based on a consideration and evaluation of the consequences. It is of the form “X is good (or bad) because what followed X was good (or bad)”. The problem with such a judgement is that consequences do not necessarily indicate causality. To arrive at causality, one needs a theory that explains why X led to the consequences. Consider an example: Dictatorship is bad because the Soviet Union collapsed after several dictatorships. To which someone might say: Dictatorship is good because Singapore (or China) is doing well under one. An appropriate theory of market behavior and the difficulty of determining prices without markets can be invoked to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what if a ‘wise’ dictator is able to replace (if only partially) the market with his commands? Would his dictatorship ’succeed’?

A political ideal is a moral ideal, not an economic one. A political system is an economic/organisational structure that attempts to realize political ideals. A political ideal of economic equality leads to a political system of communism (example: The Soviet Union). A political ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’ or ’social justice’ leads to a political system of socialism (example: India until the 90s). A political ideal of national superiority leads to a political system of fascism (example: China). A political ideal of liberty leads to a political system of capitalism (example: the early USA).

Only political ideals can be judged morally. The construction of a political system is a matter of science (political, legal etc…), not of morality. For example, whether to have a presidential system, or a parliamentary system; whether the tenure of elected representatives should be 4 years or 10 years; whether copyrights should be granted for 20 years or 50 years; whether the minimum voting age should be 18 years or 21 years; etc.. are not moral questions.

The success of a political system is the extent to which it achieves its ideals. Just as the construction of a political system is a scientific matter, the evaluation of its success is a scientific matter. It involves analyzing the relevant historical facts with an appropriate theory of causality. It is like measuring the efficiency of an equipment.

There is no such thing as the success or failure of a political ideal.Ideals do not succeed or fail. They are accepted or rejected. While the failure of a political system might cause some people to reject (or at least question) their ideals, the failure does not prove that the ideals are wrong. As long as one still holds the same ideals, the failure of a particular political system is simply useful empirical data for constructing a better political system.

Now coming to the question “Is it possible for an ideology that is inferior from a moral standpoint to actually succeed in history?”

Consider some concrete cases:

The political ideal of economic equality is an impossible ideal. Men are not equal in their abilities or their experience and nothing can make them equal. No political system that holds economic equality as an ideal can ever succeed and none ever has.

The political ideal of equality of opportunity is also an impossible ideal for the same reason. No political system can ever achieve it. But since, equality of opportunity is a less extreme ideal than economic equality, systems which attempt to realize it merely cause economic stagnation and not collapse.

The political ideal of national superiority is a fuzzy ideal (like all collectivist ideals). Because of its collectivist nature, it can never be defined or understood precisely. Depending on how it is defined, political systems that attempt it may or may not succeed. If winning the maximum number of gold medals in an Olympics is a measure of national superiority, then China’s political system succeeded. If achieving a high economic growth rate is a measure of national superiority, then China’s system has succeeded.

So my answer to Mark’s question is:

As long as its political ideals are not impossible to attain, a political system can succeed even if it is not moral. Of course, that raises the question “How does one decide what ideals are moral and what are not?” My upcoming post on my case against collectivism should answer a part of that question.

China's Emergence and the Case Against Collectivism

K. M. — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:44:42 EST

In an analysis of a newspaper article by David Brooks on China and collectivism, Mark writes

When we consider criticisms of Collectivism, we almost automatically associate it with the past experiences of Communism, Socialism, and Fascism, and how the societies based on these collectivist systems we’ve seen have either failed or stagnated.…Taleb calls history a fallacy and history is the only case against Collectivism.…In my previous post I mentioned that the critics of Collectivism and Individualism seem to have a common fear: that of society degenerating to serve the interests of a minority. This suggests that both lines of thought are capable of creating that horror.…Thankfully, what David’s article shows is that just as importantly: both lines of thought are just as possibly capable of creating a better world instead.(Empasis mine, links added)

I will write on collectivism later. This post is about the role of history in evaluating it.

Consider my knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union. I learnt a little about Lenin and the 1917 revolution in school. I read a few Russian stories in my childhood. I read some references to the Soviet Union in some American novels. I picked up information about its political collapse and disintegration in newspapers and by hearing my parents talk about it (I was far too young to understand much of it at the time). I read a few entries in Wikipedia during my college years. I also must have picked up some information from several assorted sources which I do not remember now. Note that none of this knowledge is first hand. I believe that most of it is true because any given concrete fact is “verifiable” in principle. More importantly, however, most (almost all) of my knowledge involves written records made by someone else. Even if I do not doubt the veracity of these records, the records are selective - selected by someone’s judgement of what is significant and what is not. Any historical knowledge (especially about events that occurred long ago) is at best a selective record created by several peoples’ perception and judgement. And history in itelf does not help me to reach any firm conclusions. For that, I have to integrate the historical record with a relevant theory of cause and effect. At best history can serve as part of the empirical observations that lead to a such a theory.

Consider an evaluation of communism. To reach a conclusion about whether communism is a proper political system, I first need a vision of what a proper political system should look like - what sort of relationships between men it should enable and what sort it should prohibit. Note that any such vision necessarily has a moral aspect to it. What sort of relationships between men I regard as proper depends on the moral values I want to achieve. My political vision of liberty is inextricably tied to my moral values of rationality and independence. And moral values are not derived from history. Given that my political vision is liberty, I don’t need any knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union to decide if communism “works”. Even if the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating an economically egalitarian system at gunpoint, it wouldn’t “work” for me. I remember David Brooks writing something to the effect that “Communism failed because people stopped believing in it.” While there is much that I disagree with in that statement, it has an important element of truth. The mass poverty, the Gulags, the brutal suppression of all dissent, the famines, the economic failures don’t count as failure. If they did, communism probably failed in its first five years. The Soviet Union dictators and the communists who helped them stay in power were not deterred by these. They considered these things as necessities to achieve their ideals. As long as a sufficient number of people still held these ideals as absolute, the Soviet Union didn’t “fail”. The element of truth in Brooks statement is: Moral ideals shape history - not the other way round. What the statement does not acknowledge is: Moral ideals are not arbitrary. Some are impossible to achieve, no matter how strongly one believes in them. Communism would fail irrespective of what anyone believed about it.

The point is that political ideals are based not on history but on morality. A choice of political ideals cannot be made by some kind of a cost-benefit analysis of historical records. Consider an analogy in software. The industry has reached a consensus that there are great benefits to creating web-enabled software and spends a lot of resources in achieving it. Making complex software web-enabled is no easy task but the costs do not deter anyone since the end is desirable. The desirability of the end is independent of the costs. It is the same with politics. If the end (say egalitarianism) is seen as desirable, all the costs (in human life and liberty) can be easily shrugged off. But David Brooks and Mark seem to have no clear political vision. They have probably inherited the values of rights and privacy from the Western culture. And they have also inherited the altruist and egalitarian ideals that are ubiquitous today without realizing that these values are mutually exclusive. And that is where the emergence of China gives rise to cognitive dissonance. All this while they have been secure in the knowledge that a nominally capitalist and confused individualist political system (such as the ones in the West) is the best way to achieve their mixed bag of ideals. After all they have seen that consistent collectivist political systems do not “work”. They had history behind them. Now that China with a nominally communist and confused collectivist political system has achieved some economic success, their sense of security is lost. History now gives them no guidance. Their acknowledgement of cognitive dissonance is a confession of collectivism. Why do I call it a confession? Because they don’t like it themselves. Note the last line in Brooke’s article “It’s [Collectivism] certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats.”

The struggle between collectivism and individualism is primarily a moral one. The case against collectivism (atleast my case) is not based on history. What is it based on? I will present that in my next post.