Why Barkha Dutt hates Hindus ?

Of course here Barkha Dutt is just a stand in for the whole sec-lib establishment, so the question really is why sec-lib establishment hates Hindus. Essentially this question is answered by my previous post, but I would still like to expand on this. To understand the Hinduphobia of the sec-lib establishment, it is important to understand its psychology (hey I am all about the big ‘M’).


Regarding any political establishment four factors come to play. First, it is formed for some noble (as perceived by its members) purpose. Second, no matter how noble the purpose is in reality sooner or later preservation and expansion becomes its one of the main focus, if not the primary focus. This dismaying fact is just inevitable result of human psychology. Third, the assumption behind formation of any such organization, which is the members of organization are better (whether in matter of faith, chivalry, or intellect) than the common populace. Fourth, as the establishment favors the conformity, the unstated assumption to judge any member is zealousness with which he adheres to the specific dogma of the establishment. These four factors, assumption of nobility, assumption of superiority, will to power and pressure to conform profoundly affect the self identification of the individual members of the establishment, essentially engendering what I like to call "second foundation complex", sort of vanguard to shepherd the unwashed masses, the only force standing between barbarism and civilization, and the engine to carry out the great commission. 


To add to these general characteristic, we have the circumstances peculiar to sec-lib establishment. Basically sec-lib establishment is an alien organism within the host body. The establishment predominantly constitutes of the deracinated Indians, intellectually and spiritually Macaulay's children. Historically they self identify not with their Indian brethren, but with the British colonizers. Brought up in an environment where the western and the modern is appreciated, and Indian and the traditional is sneered upon, they develop a western and irreligious outlook which outside the immediate circle of the peers is at odds with the a deeply spiritual and traditional country.


This contradiction presents an existential dilemma to the establishment, much like Islamic rulers of Delhi, they feel besieged by the surrounding Indic civilization. Subconsciously they realize that Hinduism is the core of Indic civilization. They also realize that it is our traditions with all their quirks and follies which are an obstacle to their vision of a irreligious and westernized future. This threat of being subsumed by something which they consider far inferior to themselves, and the frustration at being unable to convert unwashed heathen masses to their superior and enlightened outlook are what ultimately drives their hostility to the Hinduism.


It is important to realize their game plan. All their self righteous outrage about Gujarat riots, or Mumbai riots, or Shri Rama Sena, or Discrimination against Muslims is just smokescreen. Their aim ultimately is to annihilate the Indic civilization.




And they will not stop.


Unless we finish off them first.

The Wave-Particle Theory Of Politics - I

(Or why Youngistan is bad news)

Good evening (or a bad one, I don't care either way). Those of you who visit this blog to actually read it (instead of looking for Tanushree Datta's photos) might have noticed one theme, among many, of the political posts, viz. while Indian entrepreneurs have succeeded, Indian state has been a massive colossal failure. Now while this observation, call it contradiction or paradox or whatever you like, has its epigrammatic moment, it has kind of bothered me, but it's only been recently that I understood why. The way it is put, it gives the impression that Indian state and the Indian entrepreneur are distinct, an obviously misleading impression, as the Indian state represents (or is supposed to represent, at any rate) Indian people! Taking this to conclusion it's the failure of state is actually that of Indians.

This raises further question, viz. why have Indians failed to establish functional democracy (as opposed to what exists which can be best characterized as cargo cult democracy). There is no single factor to explain this. Yet one factor, significant enough, has been the inability (and as a consequence failure to frame specific institutions of state to address it) to understand the dual role of an individual in a democracy.

Before that a minor digression to explain the title. In classical physics matter and energy are considered to be distinct phenomena with particle a characteristic of matter and wave a characteristic of energy. Quantum physics shattered this picture, tuned out matter and energy are different aspects of the same phenomena, with wave actually representing probability distribtuion of locating particle in space.

In the same way a man has two roles in all forms of democratic society, one as an individual, the other as citizen.

It is expected that man as individual will work for himself, if we want to be retentive about it, the technical description for such behavior is optimization of self defined utility function. Now entrepreneur as an individual seeks to maximize his well being,  the way he does this is by creating value, which ultimately benefits others, however the main objective remains self interest.

This can be contrasted with man's role as citizen. Citizen is better understood as a part of the social experiment, and therefore it is his responsibility to ensure that all the social institutions, ( including state) function to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the society as whole. Again if one wishes to be retentive about it, this roughly means the optimization of aggregated utility functions.

One more digression is required here. The use of "self defined" may suggest that the utility functions are arbitrary, and that is true if one goes by logic alone. However historical evidence and our experience suggest otherwise. Not being a credentialed expert I can only speculate that for a healthy society the utility function somewhat resemble the Maslow's hierarchy*.   Here healthy society means any society which, in addition to the previous qualification, is fit enough to survive in present and also in future, the time scale being civilizational. This then suggests aggregation of individual utility function must be combined with an utility function which applies to the society as a whole. Again this is just my speculation, but this will mean addition of religion and philosophy to Maslow's hierarchy.

It is not difficult to see that there is inherent contradiction between these two roles, with Individual being a self centric role and Citizen an altruistic one. The resolution of the tension between these two roles is the key to a functioning democratic society.


(To Be Continued ...)


* Yes I am hooked on  Maslow's hierarchy. Hey don't judge me at least I don't snort Data unlike Data Nazi.

The 'M' argument *

Here is a confession. I find the level of political discourse in Indian blogospehre quite underwhelming. The problem is that the interlocutors tend to be tunnel visioned, missing out the big picture in their argument. Consequently the arguments tend to be limited to exercise in logical correct, an examination of X follows Y follows Z. And yet the chain of causation, no matter however long or however convoluted, must end up somewhere. This beginning is the first principle. Now people talk about first principles all the time, but what no one realizes is that first principles by very definition are not established by reasoning. In fact if we strictly adhere to logic, the very notion of first principles seem quite arbitrary, the chain of cause and effect being turtles all the way down. A prime example of such an argument being this post (though someday I intend to rebut it, that day is not today) As it happens though first principles are not arbitrary, anchored as they are in human psyche, his instincts and belief system. To give an example, my first principles, for lack of any better words, are traditionalism and cultural nationalism. Now I didn't  happen to stumble upon these principles by accident, but because identification with tradition and culture is an aspect of human instinct. Same must go for liberals and libertarians. Identifying what motivates the politics is therefore as important as the actual politics. Any investment in such an endeavor will be worth its while for we will be better placed to appreciate why people think the way they do, and why it is futile sometimes to engage in debate.

* Argument from motivation

Paradigm Shift

Related posts 1,2,3

This is related to the previous post, and something about which I have thought now and then. That governance in India leaves much to be desired is quite an understatement. This reason this happened is accident of history depending about how we define the initial state. However while it is an interesting and relevant discussion, let's restrict our focus to what we can do about it. A short answer to this is in democracy we get the government we deserve (and before people object that it is a cliche, understand that cliches are nothing but truth made tedious by familiarity). A more detailed explanation follows. Our political system as it exists today, can be best understood in terms of  patron - client model with government acting as a patron, dispensing favors to interest groups who are its client  at the expense of others, the ending is similar to that in the parable of the monkey and the cats. If Indians wish to prosper that present arrangement must be superseded by a better one. Now I have not yet arrived at precise details of such an arrangement but broadly speaking it should be an ownership model, where the accepted political culture observes the right of ownership, it means by and large citizens understand that the proper, or dharmic, way for prosperity is by  their own ingenuity and entrepreneurship, and not by extorting wealth from fellow citizens. How to reach from present condition to desirable condition should inform our politics as well as policy decisions.

B Raman: Secular Apologist For Islam

I say, why B Raman had to spoil the whole thing! Well, if you must know, TOI came with a brainwave for peace in our lifetime, alliteratively titled “Aman Ki Asha”.  They hope to realize this by, wait for it, people to people contact, which have been tried for, let’s see, some gazillion times. It is difficult to see why this reenactment of cosmopolitan self preening will be different from previous ones unless the goal of this charade is to sell the copies.

It is then B Raman enters and in few paragraphs deftly demolishes the argument, or rather thought, behind the whole charade viz. it is just mutual misunderstanding which is the root cause behind the tension. He states, correctly, that Pakistan is one of the most mistrusted nations as far as terrorism is concerned.

This is the perfect point from which B Raman could have entered and explained the pathology of Pakistan, at this point however he is gripped by a fear that he will cross Laxman Rekha of secularism. As a result he does what all secularists do when they find themselves in this situation, start issuing apology for Islam, such as the problem with Pakistan is its distorted interpretation of Islam not found anywhere else in Ummah.

Really! This is quite surprising because I can think of quite a few countries (read all the countries) which have this “distorted interpretation” of Islam.

In the same manner, as far as cruelty and barbarity go, Pakistan is the norm rather than the exception in the universal Islamic brotherhood. Also, while Pakistan may headquarters of jihadi terrorism, its outlets are everywhere in Ummah through franchise, so even in that Pakistan is hardly the exception that Raman makes it out to be.

But most ridiculous is the presumption by kaffir such as B Raman that they can instruct LOP (Land of Pure) on the soundness of their doctrine. This is as absurd as me suggesting Tamizhans not to sneakily put DAMNED black peppers in the vadai.

There is a relatively straightforward simple explanation for this phenomenon. So imprisoned are secularists to the notion the all religions are equal (whether equally good or equally bad), they simply ignore any evidence to the contrary. This is one more indicator how secularism has morphed from an ideology to article of faith, a pernicious one at that.

PS. It is unlikely, but one might give it a benign twist. Secularists realize that Islam is the problem, but realize that admitting it publicly will make matters worse. Hence the noble lie of distorted Islam. Problem with this is their actions do not suggest that they realize the problem.

PPS. B Raman is right in a way. As far as India is concerned Pakistan is different from Ummah, but that is not a matter of doctrine but rather that of origin. Existence of a kaffir (even if dhimmi) India is a testimony of, first failure of Pakistan to obliterate shirk  from Indian subcontinent and second thriving while even as Pakistan self destructs thus invalidating the premise of superiority of  the deen.

Fear and loathing in Switzerland

We will be talking about 3 idiots but first let's see what is my problem with Swiss minaret ban. Now all crypto Hindu fascists are more or less gloating over the ban and I think that's wrong. Before I state my problem though I think it should not be controversial to admit that this ban is motivated by an apprehension of Islam. This is not to accuse Swiss people of Islamophobia.


Islamophobia is a term frequently deployed by our Sec-Lib overlords to browbeat anyone critical of Islam, which is ridiculous as strictly speaking phobia is irrational fear of something, whereas there are at the least more than a few reasons for Swiss (or for that matter anyone, including Muslims) to be wary of Islam. The only purpose for terming any criticism of Islam as Islamophobia is to frame the criticism as a psychological affliction and therefore not worthy of reasoned response. This is a typical example of the how Sec-Lib establishment frames the narrative.


So apprehension of Islam is not my problem. My problem rather is this ban is just a reflexive response which doesn’t actually do anything to address the concern. Present situation in Europe has arisen because of their asinine immigration policy. Almost all European countries have a minority population which is ethnically distinct, socially depressed and culturally disconnected from the rest of population. These differences, hard to reconcile over in any case, turn to impossible hurdles in case of Europe due to two factors. One, specific to Europe nation states, is the gradual erosion of common culture first as a result of secularism and later socialism. In absence of any foundation, European nations are losing their relevance as political or social unit, only surviving owing to the fact that they are mostly mono ethnic, and Pax Americana. However this state of inertia is challenged by the second factor which is supremacist nature of Islam. 


These two factors combined are the origins behind tensions in Europe, and to address the European problem these factors must be addressed boldly. The ban on Minarets in no way addresses these factors. In fact, it makes the situation worse because it deludes Europeans into believing that they are confronting the problem as the situation becomes increasingly precarious. 

Positioning Hindutva

I would write in detail on "Secularism vs Hindutva" later, meanwhile reposting my comment on Swapan Da's post .

I believe what Oldtimer wrote by Oldtimer is certainly one of the the most articulate and coherent rebuttal not only of the article as well as the clique of centre- right.

I will just like to add a bit of my thoughts on this. I believe the first point (i.e. of Hindu identity) is what many secularists advocate discarding in favor of a vague adherence to secularism. This would be a mistake.

Even though both Hindutva and Secularism are vague terms, to me the essential argument behind Hindutva is that Hinduism* forms the core of Indian identity and which is why it must be treated uniquely of all the other religions as far as civilizational perspective is concerned.

I would note here that civilization is different from state. Further I do not advocate any discrimination among citizens on basis of religion, only an imperative to recognize distinction between different traditions (how to apply this recognition in matters not abstract is admittedly not an easy task).

Secularism, on the other hand, shorn of all flowery platitude and saccharine rhetoric is a refusal to recognize Hinduism ** as the mainstay of Indic civilization, which leads first to disavowal of our history and civilization and ultimately de-recognition of group identity and tradition as the prime mover behind social instincts and responses.

This is as impoverishing and emasculating of society spiritually, intellectually and morally, as other Utopian ideologies such as Islam, Christianity, Marxism and Objectivism (or even its lesser cousin libertarianism).

* Perhaps using Dharmic tradition instead of Hinduism would be less contentious and more palatable, however I use Hinduism because a. it is the most prevalent tradition at present (and to a lesser extent historically) b. Once the other traditions detach themselves from Hinduism they lose their vigour and enlightenment (The unpleasant business in Vienna being a recent example)

When the worlds collide : The Mangalore Incident

Some thoughts, mostly disjointed, provoked by Mangalore incident.

Playing fast and loose: Now I realize as a Hindutva Fascist, I should be loathing "pink chaddi campaign" as nonsensical, frivolous, and indicative of moral turpitude. Well, I don't. To be clear, I do not completely endorse the campaign, and I am not enthused by the idea that this campaign just ratchet ups the hysteria of the chattering classes or that it feeds the  narcissism (people must be getting bored of this by now -ed, who cares, they don't pay me, screw them) of self righteous class.

Nevertheless, I reluctantly find my self on the same side of fast, forward and loose womyn for the simple reason that a line must be drawn somewhere. And the simple condition is this, it is absolutely unacceptable  to inflict physical injury on a woman*, no matter how earnest or sincere perpetrators are about their objectives.

Beyond this there is not much that I have to say on the merits of this campaign. Sending underwear may be ridiculous, but often ridicule is a effective weapon. Nor do I really fault whoever behind this campaign for diverting the attention from whatever great debate that India is supposed to be engaged at presently (If anything Messrs Pramod Muthalik and Raj Thackeray are more worthy of this distinction), or enthusiastically aligning with liberal-secular establishment to caricature the debate between traditionalism and modernity  ("traditionalists" usually seem to be hell bent on discrediting tradition ) to continue to undermine and stigmatize traditionalism.

The end of illusion (of civil society): Now our secular liberal establishment is utilizing this to the hilt in order to  "secularize" terrorism, however the issue is more troublesome. Yes what Pramod Muthalik and his sena did was indeed outrageous, but before people start ringing alarm bells for "Hindoo peril", it should be pointed out that in tactics what Sri Ram Sene did is no different from what Dravidians frequently do in TamilNadu , or what Gujjars did in Rajasthan or Marathas did in Maharashtra or what MNS is doing in Mumbai or what Kannadigas have done in Karnataka, Sri Ram Sene is guilty of nothing more than employing the tactics guaranteed to be most effective in our political system of mobocracy (or extreme democracy ).

Now comes the tricky part, I concede Indian experience of democracy has never been one of dispassionate deliberations by epistemological modest intellectuals but an uneasy concoction of multitude of identities jostling for material and social rewards, a million mutinies if you will, but even then there was a tradition of arguments, a willingness to talk and listen. I am afraid that tradition is being lost, we are not willing to talk or listen. 

How it came to pass. Even accounting for demagoguery there still remain agents who have aided in this degradation, one is the culture of grievance that has been encouraged by our secular-liberal establishment, where the claims to victimhood has become not only the standard modus operandi for political patronage, but also an ideal for society organized on secularism, second, which pertains specifically to simmering cultural tensions, is the incessant demonization of Indian tradition so as to achieve a state of social tabula rasa for purpose of secular indoctrination.

Our intellectual, all of them dyed in wool secularists liberals stress the importance of a civil society, where it is possible to hold conversation for common welfare. However it is impossible if one side is always denigrated and slandered, if it is declared to be out of bounds.

* Or for that matter on a man, or property. I will confess however, the very idea of anyone hurting woman makes my blood boil, I am MCP that way.

After all, if one cries wolf long enough, wolf obliges. (To be continued ...)

Man

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.* 

Warm body democracy

"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'

"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Leadership

Update: This post is prompted by Arun Shourie's latest book : The Parliamentary System


Ten days ago (The incoherent soliloquy)

For some time I have been thinking about leadership, and I thought up of something.
However it is time to sleep, so may tomorrow, or may be not, anyway bonne nuit.

The present day (The post continues ... )

1. I play rather footloose with economics and genetics, if I am incorrect don't hurt me.

2. I believe that leadership can not be a profession. I also believe that there can not be a satisfactory monetary compensation for leadership (based on Adam Smith's 4 criteria for compensation for work).

First some background is in order.The success of a polity and by extension society is dependant on nature of its leadership.Now even a fleeting pursual of Indian story should convince that India has been hampered by a want of effective leadership. Here I should clarify that by effective leadership I just do not mean the control it wields on polity, but also its direction.

From above importance of leadership is obvious, which raises the question whether there are ways to ensure a competent Indian leadership.


Most of the proposals have monetary incentive as the solution. I don't find it persuasive, for the reasons stated here and here, however I do think that compensation (or to be precise lack of it) may act as disincentive.

Which is the reason I thought that perhaps an understanding of evolution of leadership as a social trait may help us gain insight into the problem.

Now almost all animal societies are organized hierarchy with the individual at top having the control over the group, the nature of control and hierarchy ultimately decided by how various instincts,broadly categorized as selfish or altruist for social animals, are resolved. Here it must be kept into mind that ultimately these instincts are controlled by genetic makeup. The key point here is almost all societies involves some or other form of reciprocal altruism or co-operation.

Seen from point of view described above, authority or leadership has a social utility. Authority has two aspects. First is by exerting control, stability and order is maintained in a hierarchical society. This can be more or less observed in all societies. Here it should be kept in mind that authority may depend on various criteria, for example while in Elephant society it is the experience which counts, for Lion it is the strength.

Of more interest to us, is the second aspect of the leadership, usually observed in pack hunters , directing the actions of group to achieve a particular objective. In other words, leader is the motive force behind the group.Since human has evolved as a pack hunter, therefore we can evaluate the leadership in human society in terms of pack behaviour.
Now here it is crucial to understand while authority has a social utility, it also benefits the individual and this is the initiative for leadership for animal hierarchy.

However taken with premises of the earlier posts , it turns out there is no individual incentive in a democratic system for leadership, what is worse there is a strong incentive for misuse of authority and subversion of system for own profit. In effect leadership becomes act of altruism.
That there is no incentive for leadership, is a rather depressing conclusion.

This is not to say that voluntary altruism is absent, far from it. However altruism is a potent force only in emergency situations. Which is why India was enslaved, we witnessed supreme sacrifice of Mahatama Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose. However we can not depend on extraordinary altruism in ordinary day to day life, and therefore can not expect robust political or social institutions on altruism.

Neither is discarding democracy any solution. It is true that a hierarchical polity may be a more natural state of things, it is certainly not a desirable one. First, such polities with the power struggle among different groups will be inherently weaker and anarchic than democratic ones.

Second, an asymmetry of power means abuse and exploitation of weaker groups both in the sense of economic as well as social, in fact it will be worse than the asymmetry in animal societies because our social institutions vest the authority with monopoly of power, which is not the case in animal societies.

Here it should also be understood that it is instinctive for humans to respond to leadership and authority. While it is desirable that individuals are informed to participate in social arbitration, the incentives for such a behavior are weaker, a case of rational ignorance. In contrast, humans response to leadership is much stronger. In other words, there are stars and there are groupies and both need each other.

The unpalatable conclusion that I can draw is the problem of leadership doesn't have any perfect solution. However we can take measures which do affect the leadership in long term.

One is to establish concept of civic virtue as a cornerstone of society, related also promote ownership of society through concept of citizen, and hook up allegiance to community with individual identity.
Second is to ensure that magnitude of altruism that is required remains minimal, which implies that power must be as decentralized as particular circumstances permit.

Most important is to recognize that leaders are highly ambitious and motivated individuals, therefore the best way to improve the quality of leadership is to create a culture of excellence, re-orient the world view of society and its polity such that success is valued, and where ambition is a virtue not a vice. Where strength and drive is something which is cherished and not shirked.

We have, through a combination of lacunae and erroneous beliefs lead us into a state where the hallmark of prevalent culture is mediocrity and unabashed imitation, and a society which has morbid reverence bordering on cult-worship for emasculated.

This also means we have to put an end to the "politicians are our servants" tripe. No they are not. They are leaders, they wield the authority because of their ambition and drive. I find such delusion most annoying.

As this country, which is a political union of eternal conscious, strives towards a better the only entity which can stop her is her people. We can not fail our quest for which divine has appointed us.

Remembering stuff - concluding post

(Previous posts [1], [2], [2.5], [3], [4] & [5])

Having attempted to analyze the factors that influence civilization and its evolution, this last post(hopefully) examines the mechanism behind "resurrection" of civilization.
Here "resurrection" is used intentionally. Basically "resurrection" is a different and difficult process from "advent".

The reason is not very difficult to understand.
During advent, the instinct that drive civilizations are still primal and unconditioned, and the network arising out of interactions is only beginning to form.

On the other hand decline is a symptom of imbalance of instincts, thus "resurrection" implies restoring the balance, which means "rewiring" the connections to make social network functional.

Like the previous posts, this post too is concerned with how memories can be utilized for revival of civilization.
I make a distinction between memories dependant on their utility to the civilization.

One set of memories represent the decline and atrophy of civilization. These must be eliminated from the psyche. The other set represent the evolution and ascendancy, these should be promoted. Here I will emphasize that value system to which evolution aspires to, changes from stage to stage, hence memories do get reclassified during the evolution, resulting in rejection or assimilation. Also all the modes of memories can be classified as belonging to the either set.

One last point is about importing "value system". It is fashion of the modern times to proclaim certain values as universal. This is nothing but self-deception and unfortunate result of intellectual triumphalism of modern age. A more accurate statement would be that there are certain values which are "almost" universal.

Now before someone starts thinking that I am just rambling, let me emphasize, this "almost" is important, because it denotes the context in which value system evolved. Now much like evolutionary biology, development of civilization also ends up exhibiting convergent evolution, and as in biology while the basics remain same the details may vary. Hence attempting to impose a value system, evolved in a different environment,"in Toto" upon a different civilization is recipe for chaos and disorder, much like what is happening in India.

Instead, the preferable course should be to imbibe the vigour and contemplation which drove the development of value systems underpinning a vibrant and advanced civilization, to internalize the essence of such values.

Remembering stuff - V

(Previous posts [1], [2], [2.5],[3] & [4] )

Extending analogy between biological and social memories, it is possible to draw parallel between the situations when both the faculties do not function as desired.

But first, there is one more deviation that can be added to the abnormality of memory (as discussed in one of the previous posts). This is false memory, this is memories of events which never happened, this is again indication of some trauma or shock.

Coming back to civilization, there are times when memories atrophy. Before that a note of caution memories stabilize civilization, they do not make it impervious or eternal. However vigorous the civilization might be, it is bound to decline at some point, the best the memories can do is to act as seed of rejuvenation.

Now the memories atrophy when the process whereby new memories are created ceases. This happens when the intellect, the creative constituency of civilization declines. This may be due to,

a) The material decline of the civilization, when the production and trade declines due to geopolitical factors, dependant societies wither. I assume something like this happened to Harappan civilization (more accurate description may be Saraswati Civilization).

b) The intellect and the creative accomplish the task when they have a well defined (and respectable) position in the hierarchy which sustains them. However if this position or the whole hierarchy is undermined, these decline.

c) When rituals and traditions restrict restrict mobility and society becomes stagnant.

Now the first cause is beyond domain of human influence and hence outside the scope of this discussion.

Second cause deserves a more detailed analysis.

The social fabric can be riven from outside by foreign invasions. Again there can be a foe so overwhelming and resolute against which mightiest effort are futile, at that point one can surrender or take a last stand depending on what are the conditions. But many the times the foe is comparable in military power and it is the lack of political unity and presence of infighting and intrigues, which does the society in. These conditions indicate both decline of moral virtues among the ruling elite (Kshatriya) and the inherent flaw of political institutions.

The social fabric can also be sundered by internal uprisings and revolution. This has less to do with elite than with discontent of masses. This implies either the inherent injustice in the system, or a mismatch between ethos of elite and masses. Most of communist revolution point to the former, while religious persecution in Europe points to the latter.

Third point is more complicated

There is another aspect with the memories, the most persistent mode of memory is as rituals and tradition. These are formed by the most potent action of the instincts and hence survive for the longest duration. A big drawback of this is that they remain even when they are outdated.
I stated earlier that intellect drives the creation of memory, but here intellect was used in the sense the instinct to think, even this instinct is conditioned by social norms. It is necessary that it be distinguished from the ability to reason. Reason is more than a instinct, it is a system of thinking.

The second problem is that any shift in the configuration of forces implies disadvantage to the group(s), usually the predominant or the elites, it is but natural then these groups will seek to resist any change, a very effective way to eliminate any challenge to hegemony is to prescribe rituals and rites which in effect restrict any potential challenge and at the same time amplifies the actual power wielded by status-quoits. This results in proliferation of rites and inflexibility of system.
This, I believe, can explain in part, the rigid caste system, this I believe also explains a gargantuan bureaucracy.


Associated with the atrophy are closely related phenomena, loss of memory, denial and manufacturing of false memory.

These again are analogous to the phenomena manifested in individual humans.

First two tendencies are usually the result when a society or civilization is re-ordered on basis of a new set of ethos and ideas, which is a radical departure from the traditional values.
This might happen when either an external conqueror imposes his values over the vanquished population. Other possibility is when a radical social movement (usually alien to the traditions of host civilization) supersedes over the prevailing social norms. The time this process takes depends on the robustness of the host civilization. Islamic conquests for the large part are examples of the former and spread of Christianity in Europe of later.

Denial on the other hand occurs when the old civilization even though vanquished still maintain their presence, the new order unable to eliminate old memories, ignores or actively suppresses them. In this it is somewhat similar to case of false memories. A typical example of this is Pakistan. Basically what we have here is a society in dilemma, caught in between two conflicting identities, the urge to belong to one identity is the driver behind this suppression. Usually this suppression is society wide. But there is other case which should be discussed in the end.

False memory on the other hand is a device to protect the collective ego and self-identity (again much like as in case of individuals). It has two forms, one to shift the blame, or to boost the esteem. One example of former is how one major component of Islamic identity is victimization with blame shared by US/Israel/loss of Andalusia/unrighteous caliphs. Example of later is how Muslims who are non-Arabs invent lineage originating from Arab.

Last is the case for denial which applies in case of India, this time too there is active suppression of memories, but this is not driven by conflict between civilizations. This happens when some pernicious, where pernicious implies that it harms evolution and leads to decline of society, ideal
infects the psyche, as is not hard to see that the very first section which is infected by this is of intellectuals. Which will explain why seduced by the ideologies of universalism of 20Th century our intellectuals on one hand actively create a false picture of Indo-Pak bonhomie and on the other hand pine for a socialist utopia.

It is this disease of the intellect, and obfuscation of civilization's memory, which is hardest to counter, because this malaise is internal.

Remembering stuff - IV

(Previous Posts [1], [2], [2.5] & [3])

Before proceeding, one point must be (re) emphasized, neither the evolution, or the value system or the conscience should be taken to mean as presence of central intelligence, but nor does it mean creation is automatic and foregone conclusion, rather the creation is made possible by intellect of very few individuals, who more often than not, have no co-ordination.

Now coming to the main point, how exactly this "collective memory" forms and persists. I can only speculate but there are two aspects of it.

One there is always a distinction between creation of memory. There is elite "memory", this includes philosophy, classical art, religion etc. As opposed to this is "folk" memory which persists as folk arts, music. The "elite" term is used it's creation is only possible due to support of the elites (in political as well as economical sense) of the civilization. On the other hand, "folk" memory is created by the "common" masses.

The other distinction (again it is just speculation) that can be made is nature of memory.

First and foremost comes the literature, it may be religious, epic, oral, text etc. Second arts especially the performing arts, (plastic arts usually being much more subtle and fragile for creating impressions). Third are the rituals, rites, traditions of the society. Usually as one moves from to rituals there is a gradual transformation from elite to folk.

There are few general rules,

1. As a general it is the elitist impressions which encapsulate the value system most precisely.

2. However the trade-off is the reach of these impressions is narrow, and it is the "folk" impressions which more or less decide the broad contours of memories.

3. Further just like memories of individual, some impressions are much more permanent compared to others. The permanency of impressions arises from their compatibility with instincts they arise from.

4 . The agents who create these memories are philosophers, artists, priests etc.

Now, a society which is evolving, will be preserve its memories, what is more the memories will be modified by the agents who are all the time creating new impression based on the phase of society. These altered memories will decide the next phase of evolution.

However if due to some changes, it turns out that the society becomes unsuitable for evolution and/or for some reasons the creation of new impression ceases, the memories become outdated, with time they atrophy, and in their absence the civilization begins to wither. This occurs due to a drastic event, of historical magnitude.

Civilization which has reached such state only be revived when somehow the atrophied impressions have been erased and new more vigorous impressions created. As with the decline it is usually some drastic event which initiates this revival. Here it must be pointed that "atrophied" has a specific meaning. Simply put, any memory which impedes evolution is deadwood and must be eliminated, however memories which facilitate evolution should be preserved, and even utilized to revive civilization, further attempt to erase or discard such memories, will defeat any attempt to re energize civilization.

Remembering Stuff - III

(Previous Posts [1],[2],[2.5])

The previous post was a digression so as to prepare the background for this post.
The evolution of civilization, although faster than that of genes is still a slow process compared to the life span of humans and as such the scope of evolution is beyond endeavor of single man. Further the instincts may be the driver, it is the participating individual who is the agent.

However there is no blueprint or road map of the evolution available to the him. Combine the two conditions and it turns out that evolution is incremental process, present building on the accomplishments of the past, a bequeathing to the future.

But the problem in this is two fold, one the instincts as such remain in fragile equilibrium, which may not holdup, the other is as already pointed out the evolution of civilization is not reversible, specifically its tendency to decline is much stronger than its tendency to evolve to next stage (it can be called as entropy of civilization). I think, there is a convincing case to prevent backslide of civilization.

Question then arises how can we prevent that, the modern answer would be, "by creating appropriate institutions " or "by democracy" or "by enacting laws" or "by writing a nice constitution".

They are all correct, but only partially. Because the simple truth, that advocates of these measures do not realize, that institutions are just nice building, constitution is just a big fat book, passive, inactive, inert.
Of course these do "moderate" the effect of opposing forces and instincts, but in themselves they can not prevent the backslide of civilization, and while they do facilitate enlightenment, in themselves they can not drive evolution to next phase, finally, in themselves they are superficial.

What gives life to institutions and to constitutions, is the "conscience" of civilization, which is just another word for value system (as explained in previous post). So a more accurate answer is to create value system.
But this is back to square. It turns out that in order to have a value system, we need a value system! What an absurdity !

As it is science rescues us. To continue with analogy that I have alluded to in more than one place, civilization is a dynamic system, and our aim is its optimization, this optimization is possible only for certain specific configurations of its participant forces, these configurations change with time depending on the optimization level.
These configurations are fragile, our aim is to decrease probability (it is impossible to eliminate it) of chaos (or entropy) that this system can fall into.
Now this system manifests adaptability, this system is also capable of learning and biggest of all this system has feedback going for it.

This means the output arising from specific configurations can act as feedback (both positive and negative) to the system, control being the collective conscience.

Here another problem arises, unlike electronic circuits where feedback is almost instantaneous and can be directly used in control , civilization has slower response hence it means that feedback can not be directly routed to control.

Instead the feedback has to be stored as an impression to account for time delay factory, which acts as proxy between control and feedback.

I call this impression as "memory of civilization".

Degrees of dhimmitude

Dhimmitude essentially is a relationship between two groups. One is the victor, the superior, the other vanquished, the subservient. The power dynamics is thus defined, the victor has the mandate to rule over the vanquished, but it is not merely about power, under dhimmutude the ruler is automatically vested with moral superiority. In effect it is not merely force but some supposedly exalted principle which manifests in the present situation, that is which explains the dominance of one and servility of others.

India has been attacked countless times since the the dawn of civilizations, from Parthian to Scythian, however after a period of unrest, the invaders assimilated themselves, transforming the original milieu.

This changed with invasions of Muslims, for while acquiring wealth and expansion of empire remained important reasons, they were necessarily the manifest ones. For the ostensible reason now was to propagate the faith, which was revealed to the Prophet by the Archangel, the mandate was a divine one and hence pay off promised was also greater than a purely territorial one. The booty was not just silver and gold, but also an eternity in paradise. Hence, for an invader,a more potent force than the force of mere weapons justified the invasions. The excesses were condoned even celebrated for spreading the word of God.

However even then there was familiarity. Islam arose from a bleak landscape, a product of harsh climate, infertile land and a tribal society. Hence there was never a hesitation or embarrassment against using violence. While it was not necessarily the first measure, it was by no means something which was to be eschewed. Hence there was no coyness about sword, on the contrary it was approved, massacres of infidels celebrated in epics. The downside of this was that the victim was always aware of subjugation and given a chance will strike back.

The next change was English colonialism, however there was a difference, British came for wealth and they very well knew it.
But because the English middle class was a product of enlightenment, it could not admit subjugation of natives for selfish reasons, because it went against ideals of the age.
Therefore, a elaborate fiction was manufactured, that of white man's burden, where colonialism existed not because of greed of masters, but for the savage natives improvement.
Where the oppression was inflicted with a heavy heart in order to bring light of true civilization (and true God) to the unwashed barbarian.
The right to rule based on superiority of race.

This project succeeded beyond wildest dreams, the intellectual of India lost his ability to think, now no original insights were to be gained, instead what passed for ideas, a rehashing of Europe. Divested of pride and consciousness, the Indian was doomed to view the world in terms of masters, the context to problem was borrowed without discrimination, even the problems were copied with the result an intellectual who was just a poor imitation of Europe.
It is thus that even after half a century we still have debates on whether colonialism was good for India.

The dhimmification did not stop at this, after British came the tyranny of socialist / communist.
However there was no power, at least not one which was obvious, neither electoral, nor muscular.
What they had instead was intellectual capital. A generation of intellectual uprooted from its history by the colonialism, unable now to make any sense of India, and deprived of its masters and benefactors. These resident non Indians, appropriated the moral high ground, and started subjugation of India, this time intellectual.

For this they turned man's kindness against himself, using his nobler disposition to bind him. As Maugham said in entirely different context, it was tyranny of weak over the strong. Poverty was turned into a moral virtue and wealth a cardinal sin, by this inversion of natural order of things, the negation of instincts which provide the vigour for human enterprise, the intention was to stultify the Indian spirit, thus establish unquestioned monopoly. Also the creed of minority-ism whereby, the Muslims were accorded a moral high ground, an unquestioned relief from criticism just on the status of their religion. Hence the principle of equality was subverted from within.

It is this which has perverted India, corrupted her soul. India suffers from poverty of idea, for no new idea is to be found, because the fount of intellect has been destroyed by the barbarians.
If India is to forge ahead it is this shackles of guilt, of moral slavery which must be thrown away,
and yet it seems most unlikely.

Draft for India ?

Talking of "Great Satan", the latest excitement in a rather politically charged season (what with democrats gaining the control of both houses after a long time) is the proposal to reinstate draft by Charles Rangel. The reaction to this proposal are less than overwhelming.

The venerable congressman has stated as a justification that such a move will make government more circumspect against waging wars. Of course his commitment for his own proposal is rather doubtful concerning last time he voted against his own proposal.

However what I find interesting is, the contrast between the justification given by him and the philosophy (of a sort) as expounded in Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, one of his more controversial (where using both Heinlein and controversy in same sentence is sort of redundant) work.

The basic plot line of his book was that in future citizenship is restricted to those who had served in the military. The citizens had more rights than non-citizens including right to vote and contest elections. For that decade the work was sensational, and Heinlein was accused of militarism and even fascism.

However what Heinlein suggested was not a novelty. As far as the history goes, there always has been distinction between those bearing arms and those who did not.

In India as well as Japan, there was a separate class of warriors, in general having more rights than those who had not. However it did not reflected on status of citizenship, rather the distinction was captured as a part of social hierarchy and notion of duty associated with it.
In the same fashion medieval Europe had a code of chivalry for the knights.

City-states belonging to Greek civilization had a different concept altogether, while Greek society also had sort of social hierarchy, the military had altogether more fundamental relation in the Greek culture.

Broadly speaking it was obligation of citizen to defend his city from attacks, he was expected to sacrifice his life if situation demanded so. This notion found resonance in the cultures, with Sparta being an extreme case and even Athens encouraging virtue of militarism, though in moderation. The objective of this was to always at disposal of state sufficient number of well trained and able bodied citizens in case of aggression.
The military was largely voluntary, but sometimes there could be a conscription.

Machiavelli assigned greater value to an army of citizens, than to mercenaries. According to him, the reason Greek states were so resilient were because of the nature of defence forces, he also blamed increasing reliance on mercenaries for decline of city-states of Italy.

Heinlein's idea developed on this theme, however he reversed the Greek concept. In Greece all citizens were obligated to defend the nation, while in Starship Troopers only those who were willing to defend the nation were eligible to be citizen.

This reversal was crucial to Heinlein's belief system. He was against draft, but more than that he strongly believed that rights (of a citizen) can not be divorced from responsibilities, this was extension of his commitment for capitalism (TINSTAAFL). Coupled with his distaste and fury at prevailing pacifism in intellectual circles, in light of threat of communism, prompted him to take such a radical stand.

I have come to believe that the problem with India is that the one's demand for rights is not matched by the sense of duties to the nation and fellow Indians. To instill this sense of duty, to develop character and to forge a identity and solidarity based on common destiny, there is a case for introducing mandatory service in India.
I will prefer this only as last option though, sort of a desperate measure, because of economic cost involved.

Victimhood, from camaouflage to moral overlordship

Evolution has many interesting aspects, but none of them greater than Survival of fittest, at once astonishingly intuitive and frustratingly recondite, a defining test for organisms.

This marvelous phenomenon has given birth to many amazing spectacles in living world.
One such is camouflage, the capability of being to deceive its opponents, as a mechanism of defense and sometimes also as an aggressive strategy.

I think organisms manifests increasing complexity in the deception. At the simplest level is ability to merge itself in the background, this is also the most popular conception of camouflage.
But I would like to think that there are levels to this.
One of the significant adaption is to "play the dead", this is used to throw the predator off balance and it is successful to a limited extent.

The next level to this deception is witnessed in higher animals. Life under constant violence is difficult, with the winner at as much risk to lose in long term as the loser in short term.
Hence there is a trade-off between short term payoffs and long term consequences.
The resolution results in a wide range of final configuration.

The upshot of this is, it is a common ritual in animals to be spared the bleak future that violence beholds by surrendering to stronger. The weak, the defeated are spared the life, though with a decreased probability of long term survival. It is in this simple mechanism that victim hood has roots.

Going even higher and to consider society in mammals and birds, not only weak is spared, but also they happen to have a place howsoever low in society, entrusted with care of offspring of alpha couple. This holds as long as the hierarchy is maintained . In a subtle way this behaviour of submission to stronger is a survival strategy where probability of survival is directly proportional to utility to group in its survival and propagation.

The most complex is human society. There is a additional factor, for while other animals are totally defined by their instincts, humans posses the ability to reason, to delve into abstract.
It is primarily for this reason that only humans happen to have "culture".

As a rule of thumb evolved cultures are marked by compassion to unfortunate. There is variation on this, I doubt that Greeks and Romans were remarkably compassionate, again as a matter of speculation I believe that their culture was marked by heroism and immortality.
Indian culture had various strains which covered the whole range from high altruism to strict (and some will say dogmatic) adherence to duty. The extreme is of course Christianity with assertion that "meek shall inherit the earth".

The important point to note is that usually compassion in degree is balanced by other religious dictates. This is crucial because for society unbalanced altruism is an invitation for free riding and therefore disaster.

This has been the usual course throughout the history, yet 19th century marked a departure.
In Europe the battle between reason and Christian dogma was won by reason.
Principle of equality and justice were established. Freedom to pursue happiness was proclaimed a right. Having vanquished dogma of Christianity, the 19th century liberals went on to make God of weak.

By degrees, under the constant push from progressivism a role reversal occurred, now it is not a matter of shame to be weak, on the contrary in our emasculated age it is a badge of honour.
Today socialists do not beseech for charity, they demand it as a right.

Then also the cult of victim hood, how people are too eager to label themselves as victims, the wronged, the oppressed. Because not only because it is a sign of weakness which evokes compassion, but also it is a testimony that justice has been denied to them, which is of course an indictment of society and sword of guilt over us. The self-proclaimed victim is moral authority then, the raison-dieter of modern society and the strong, "da man", so to speak is the archetypal villain, he is branded evil due to his strength and it is he,who must be confronted

If progressives has to be stopped, we have to seek destruction of this morbid cult, to vehemently refuse its cynical priests. The civilization suffers from malaise of guilt, to reinvigorate it this guilt needed to be removed.

Road to nowhere

(Background:
This post has two motives. First to prepare a background for next part of this post.
Second I have reasons to believe that this bastard person of unknown parentage was intending to write a post on this subject. Since he made me eat crow, this is my humble attempt to exact revenge*.
Also for what is worth, here are the posts on related subjects [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8],[9])

One of the dominant fashions in intellectual circles (where word intellectual is used very loosely) is to ascribe “self-interest” as ideal and self-sufficient condition to hold the society, the polity and everything in between. In short, GUT of social theories. This is an interesting premise; this is also a flawed one.

At the beginning, let me state that self-interest is one of most basic animal (thereby human) instincts, even the dominating one during major periods of evolutionary history.

This is where proponents of “self-interest” err. It is touted as logical because (I suppose) it is more in accordance with our instincts, however the controlling condition of self-interest is that a person while pursuing course of self-interest will not harm some one else or obstruct his pursuit of (his) self interest.

Where I differ is to refuse to embellish that instinct. For if truth be told, that instinct should be rightly called selfishness that is, tendency to act for self advantage without regards to position of others, indeed most of the times acting to determinant of others.
(From point of view of social studies) selfishness is hardwired with survival of individual*. Under the influence of this instinct, organism will try to adapt a course of action, which to his knowledge will maximize his chances of survival.

The problem with the self-interest then is

Its espousal of something (selfish behaviour) as it is ostensibly based on instinct (which is valid enough).
Describing a controlling condition (not interfering with other’s rights), which at best is a much weaker instinct.

There is ground to contest the assertion. For example, 2 can be contested with the assertion that concept of self interest is not dependant on good will of one towards another; instead the controlling condition can be achieved through effective implementation of law and order. However strictly from self-interest this is self-defeating, for every time a law is sought to be enforced, the biggest incentive for subversion of law is to the enforcer himself (as posed neatly in the old quandary).
From this point of view, a typical traffic policeman in India is the epitome of virtuosity!

Another ground (excuse for going Meta) may be the example of America (as was upheld by Ayn Rand) as example of practical application of self-interest; this however again is modern revisionism. The reason behind America is “American”. Consider everywhere; it is “American dream” or “American way” or “American life”. It is a country powered by another extinct, an innocent fascination, even enthrallment at human capability. America is a curious amalgam of Greek vitality with protestant ethics.

There is still a deeper issue; life operates at multiple and more often than not, conflicting levels. The way to resolve dilemma posed by polity or society (which is a subset of human civilization) is to resolve the conflict. Blind faith in reason, while appealing to pedants and sophists can at best lead to deadlock of society, at worst even unraveling. This is no idle boast.

* The story behind crow is that the he challenged me to post the picture, in response to this post. I could not and rest is, as they say, a story.

A quick one on objectivism

Previous Post

Owing to time constraints and hard keyboard this is just a short speculative post.
I am also biased against indiviualism, which shows.

Writings of Ayn Rand exert a tremenous influence on popular discourse. One of USP that is advertised by the adherents of objectivism is that it resolves the dilemma behind ethics and morality without invoking the God, yet is that the case ?

The main premise or assumption behind objectivism is phenomenan of existence as self-evident.
Yet existence is closely related with awareness. Therefore as far as objectivism, faculty of self awarness is given and any inquiry on it as unnecessary. This is in contradiction of reason deduction and hence it completely bypasses the first requirement for philosophy. At this point I am convinced that objectivism lacks the merit.
However as Ayn Rand wrote

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute"

Considering reason to be a folly, is it possible that objectivism to be source of civilization.

There are two primary assertions of objectivism.
1. The noblest goal of a man is creation.
2. The advancement of civilization is marked by its commitment to indiviualism.

Problem with thiese assertions is that for Ayn Rand creation had any meaning in context of capitalism, that is material production. And yet it is far from obvious (infact it is in direct contradiction of history), that the pursuit of wealth is the sole underlying motive behind civilization. Similarly it is far from clear that self interest can alone account for transactions in a stable society.

Therefore objectivism as a system firmly belonging to atheism doesn't provide the sufficient answers.