God & Human

People announce death of God too often nowadays. What worries me is the question, how long will man survive without God?

Meeting a non celebrity

Dear visitor to this blog,

Please go and tell rediff that you have met me, on the outside chance that if I become a hot shot tomorrow, you can claim that you were ahead of news cycle

When the good is bad

See ! I specifically warned against do-gooders. Atanu makes the same point.

To repeat what Atanu already said, child labour is an economic problem (as is poverty), legislation can not solve it.

In fact I would like to go further and argue even social problems can not be solved with legislation. People who clamour for legislation against dowry, or sex-selection tend to assume that state which is going to enforce legislation is something distinct from society. This is erroneous to say the least. Bureaucracy is not isolated from society and the rot in society will find its way in any institution meant for administration, pious intentions notwithstanding.
The problem in fact becomes worse because any such legislation will vest the state and bureaucracy with more power with increasing prospect of corruption.

Here I concede there is a major weakness in my argument, because there are very few problems which are not social in nature. The state can not be done away with, and it is a problem when watchdogs are themselves stealing hens.
A tentative solution is, in addition to restricting the power of state, we must ensure that
1. No part of society is powerful enough to oppress other.
2. No part of society is powerless enough to resist oppression.

This demands multiplicity of strategies from economic prosperity and independence to social movements which unify the victims, giving them voice (and may be in some rare cases even legislation).

Not just a cocktail - brew not blend

To summarise the previous posts on this subject,

1. There is a disconnect between instinct for survival and faculty of self awareness*
2. Humans do not have sufficient data for problem.
3. Hence different system evolve which seek to fill this gap, to do this they propose different framework or models.

And it is these considerations that "let's get the best of all religion" crowd miss by a huge margin, for the particular model or framework (of which all religions are a subset) comes much later, it is preceded by awareness of self and then inquiry of the phenomenon. Any discussion over religion without grasping the underlying causes is a self-defeating exercise. The discussion may satisfy our need for superficial, but will invariably fail to achieve anything substantial.
Discard/reject religion, or for that matter any established hierarchy with pleasure, but do recognize what lies beneath it, human inquisitiveness !

Concluded (hopefully)

* It is this conflict which makes establishment of a value system of morals and ethics solely based on instincts impossible, in sharp contrast to other social species, which are able to reach some sort of equilibrium under influence of environmental constraints and animal instincts.

A different ride...

Free rider is a very interesting concept in Economics, which at some level connects with market failure. To cut a long story short, free rider is a person who is having a free lunch, this happens due to the nature of economic activity and frequently involved public good or its variants.

This is an area which has deserved much attention from economists who have studied and modelled the problem in detail.However free riders are not limited to economics.

I think free riding is more or less a technical term for cheating and selfishness, examples of which can be found anywhere a group is concerned. This problem is bad in itself, it is made even worse when it disguises itself as high morality with rhetoric and sophistry, it is a bad news when traitors pose as martyrs, and selfishness makes the excuse of idealism

Spine, where art thou ?

Please ! Get a spine for our gentle doctor, before he folds up completely.

In good news, our prime Muppet has been awarded a degree from Cambridge, which upgrades his status from "incompetent sycophant stooge" to "incompetent sycophant stooge with a Cambridge degree".

Not just a cocktail - The road ahead

Previous posts,

Continuing from where I left, since the data that mankind posses is not sufficient enough for analysis of problem of existence, the field is left wide open for speculation.

To put it simply, religion, philosophy or metaphysics are various attempt to arrive at an solution of the mystery of dilemma.However even though there is no data, it shouldn't mean that speculation can be arbitrary, for if that were so, it will be as meaningless for solution as evolution is.

I am not an expert in matters of religion, philosophy or logic, so what my suggestion are tentative, keeping this in mind following should be criteria or methodology for the speculation.

One, the system of thought that we evolve should provide a possible answer to dilemma of existence in a manner, which is logically consistent , relies on minimal number of assumptions and is complete. This is the concerned with theoretical soundness.

Second is the way the system relates to real world. Which means whether it can be a basis for continuity and progress of civilization. If it does not or it it leads to decline, stagnation and eventual extinction the system of thought is not desirable even though it may be fulfilling the first condition. Such systems while superficially appealing to sense of right, are in essence some variation of nihilism, any systems of ethics or morality based on such falsehoods liable to failure.

Note 1# This second proposition may seem troublesome to many, to whom religion and philosophy have meaning independent of reality, or who,in the manner of western tradition suppose there exist watertight boundaries between what is temporal and what is spiritual.
I do not think such dichotomy is feasible, at some level everything connects, for the convenience termed as Theory of everything.
I think that this was what Bhagwan Krishna meant when he defined Dharma (yat dharyati iti tat dharma)

Note 2# In the discussion above I have not argued for presence or absence of God. It was merely to reinforce the idea that strict observance of empiricism is not the answer for our dilemma. It is possible that some form of atheism may satisfy the above two conditions. In the same vein, it is not correct to think that all religions are equal, all approach the problem in their own ways, some which meet the criteria, some do not. Another thing that I want to add is although atheism may be able to meet the criteria, it will be theism which is more elegant.

Note 3# It is necessary to note that dilemma of existence doesn't act at individual level. This essentially means that an individual life is not affected by the fact that whether he is theist or atheist (or an ignoramus).

As a very rough measure the extent to which society or civilization is engaged with question of existence should be dependant on level of prosperity (which means excess of produce and availability of leisure time), it is reasonable to assume that society finds itself engaged with these questions.
In this respect this is somewhat akin to sex (in sexual species), which is critical for species but not for an individual.
One might say that empty mind is devil's workshop. Ironically this will also mean religion far from being opium of masses, was interest pursued by relatively well off.