Destiny of Choice, Causality Paradigm & Irrelevance
Part One: Destiny of Choice
1. Illusion of Independent Choice
G: We are meeting after a long time.
S: Yes, after a long time. That was as per the Stochastic Dynamic Destiny Principle. There was no way we could have exercised a choice to meet yesterday. However I feel fortunate that I have chance to have another session with you.
G: Well, that’s how you say always. But, today was a bad day with a train accident
in the morning and bomb blasts in the evening, both causing loss of life and limb and damage to property. Hope good senses come some day.
S: We are an integral part of Nature. Nature operates as part of the Divine Destiny Principle and makes us feel happy or sad. Yet, on this Diwali day we wish each other better days ahead. By nature most of us feel happy, when others become happy. Maybe tomorrow may well be better and the day after not so good.
G: Yes, in one state of mind: I agree with your idea. The following lines from T.S. Eliot’s Poem I of Choruses from "The Rock", appeals to me: " The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”
S: I am not that well read. I did not know that Eliot wrote this. I was only repeating the age-old observation that good and evil repeat in turn following each other. I also believe that this happens as part of the Natural process. We cannot prevent earthquakes and hurricanes. I believe that rail accidents and terrorist blasts/ massacres will continue to happen despite all our desire that they do not happen and despite all our efforts to prevent them.
G: As usual, you are saying that they are pre-ordained. But it is the eternal conflict about the importance of "daiba" and "purushakar". I believe both are important and one should not view them as in conflict. One should put one's best efforts and then let daibya take its course.
S: Some persons believe that there is no daiba events controlled by something divine. They think if someone really wishes he/ she can choose his/her destiny. However, you are not so sure: you continue to feel that you are in charge of destiny in some way and letting daibya events over which you have no control some role. I say that everyone and everything in this universe chooses the destiny it is destined to choose. I continue to say that every thing in this creation / universe happen only as per the same natural law / dynamic process that gives rise to gravitation force, the earth's movement around the Sun and the Sun's continuous burning. I am responding to your words that were prompted by my previous set of words and so on - all this is due to the operation of the same natural dynamic process. It is the operation of the same law or process that makes me believe in what I believe in and makes you believe in what you believe in. There are, I believe, no Daibya and no Purushakar.
G: If there is no Daibya and no Purushakar, what explains my life? I make choices of my free volition and that is my Purushakar.
S: Simple the operation of Nature explains everything.
G: Do you mean Prakriti?
S: All that happens is natural. Natural events are natural
events. No body does anything here: only the Nature plays out in
different ways as per its own immutable law. So when we make efforts to do
our best we are forced to do it as per natural law. Similarly, when we do
not take efforts, we are forced that way as per the same law. No choice
exists for any one, even for the Nature. The thief steals because of the law. The
Sadhu worships and spreads the message of love and sacrifice also because of
the same law. They did not have any choice. Neither Ravana nor Ram had any choice other than what they actually did. Same thing applies to Ramkrishna, Chaityana, Hitler, Buddha, Bush, Saddam, Bin Laden, Jesus, you and I.
G: I am still in dialogue with you because I seem to be somewhat spiritually inclined. I only found your ideas interesting but not entirely acceptable. You are emphasizing on the all-pervasive role of destiny – to the extent that one becomes fatalistic.
S: You are partly right. You can say that my ideas are not almost, but completely fatalistic from your point of view. For me, Nature is both Purush and Prakriti. Nature seems to act independently, so we say Nature is Independent Purusha. But we all agree that every element in Nature has some properties or tendencies. So we call Nature as Prakriti. However when it comes to an individual’s behaviour we often assume that at least some times an individual takes independent decision and that is his Purushakar. But we fail to notice that an individual takes only such decisions as are natural to him under the given circumstances at any point of time. In other words, it is the individual’s nature or prakriti that drives the individual to take certain decisions and act in certain way.
G: So, everything is Nature ultimately. Even what happens in what we call in the environment external to an individual, is part of Nature and often called Daibya?
S: You are right. Everything that happens and does not happen at any point of time is explained by Nature or what I call the Divine Destiny Process or, from the perspective of any individual or group, the Stochastic Destiny Principle.
G: Assuming that what you say is correct, what would you prescribe me or any other individual or group to do to be happy and progress in the path of peace, prosperity, technological advancement and establishment of just order?
S: Since everything is explained by Destiny Principle, I can prescribe what I am destined to prescribe. But in theory no particular prescription follows from the Destiny principle. This tautological theory does not give rise to any prescription or sermons or advice. I have therefore nothing to prescribe. To me the implications of Destiny process as I have understood and tried to explain does not lead to the prescription that ‘one should depend on destiny and do not work as per his choice’. The theory says that one has to do and does what he believed he would be doing. He has no choice except that he may be destined to believe that he has choice and is working as per his choice. One is making only those choices all the time as one was destined to choose as per the Dynamics of the Destiny Principle.
G: I think ultimately a man is what he believes in. You are what you believe – nothing else matters – for you are viewing the world through all the virtues / sins pride / prejudice that define ‘you’ and its your own experience which you are labeling as your life – things are happy / sad, not important / important solely based on your judgment. You can be passive / involved. All this is your choice.
S: I may agree with you that that “you are what you believe in”. I do not, however, believe that one has any control over your actions or ‘reactions’ in the movie / play going on the theatre of life. I believe that there is virtually nothing over which one has no control and therefore really no choice. It only seems that one has and does make choices. This attitude is natural in you and me: each one of us thinks that he thinks and does such work as he chooses to think and do. This attitude helps continue the game all of us have to play! Something beyond us actually forces us to make our choices: we do not choose but made to choose the way we do. It is like the way the coins play in caroms, the balls and bats play in cricket. The human players in these games are also like coins and balls/ bats.
Equality of Diverse Forms
G: I do not accept all that you say. But being spiritual-minded, I tend to believe in ‘Adaita’. You and the world are the same – the world, as you know it now exists only as long you ‘exist’. There is no sense, for e.g., in ‘planning’ for your near and dear’s lives after you exit! So much for life insurance!!
S: Most Indians are likely to be spiritual and, if they are analytically oriented, they are likely to be believers of ‘adaita’. However, it is the operation of the Stochastic Dynamic Destiny Principle that forces one to plan and take insurance, while forcing another not to exercise the choice to plan or take insurance.
G: It seems that you have moved in this direction of thought after years of worldly experience and your thoughts are still evolving: I wish that there was some way of skipping the learning curve and directly become a sanyaasi!!
S: You are right: earlier experiences must have caused me to think in a particular direction. I did not have any choice. And, I believe that for most of us there is no way of skipping the learning curve. Only a few may have been destined to become sanyaasi with out having to go through the experiential learning curve.
G: I also think that ‘realization’ cannot be through only reading or listening to discourses from tomes or religious texts. It can only be through experience – which is what life is.
S: I agree with you that ‘Realisation’ may not in most cases be possible without learning from experience. Maybe, reading, listening to discourses and participation in relevant discussions also helps progress towards realisation. However, I believe one can reach the state of realisation only if one is destined to realize.
G: It seems today, you have been mostly agreeing with me.
S: I have agreed with you only to the extent I am destined to do so.
G: Can I continue to ask assorted questions to find out your understanding on what others quote from Hindu scriptures?
S: Please do.
G: You agreed that desires motivate us into work or action. Then, what do you understand of the preaching that “one should work without any attachment”? Unless one is attached, how would one work?
S: You are right. But the preaching is not a prescription for others to follow. To my mind, the preaching means that while one is in action, the action gets better done if the actor remains independent of, and not attached, to his action or the goal of the action or the uncertainty of the consequences of actions.
G: What is attachment?
S: Attachment is the absence of Independence. One may feel that his or her very existence and happiness dependent on the actions one is doing and desired outcome of those actions. He becomes tired with worries doing that action. That is normal. But the one who does not have this feeling may not act at all or may neglect in performing the actions. This is also normal.
G: But can there be persons who work without attachment?
S: Many persons work without attachment sometimes or other. Everyone cannot do this all the time. There are persons who concentrate on their actions and never worry about not being in action or being in action. They never worry about the result of action/ inaction while they are in action/ inaction. They live as if they are independent of their status of being in action (includes thinking as an action). It does not matter to them even if they are not busy in actions. Such people are truly independent. Such persons work without attachment. They are a rare tribe. They work like machines, say an automatic air-conditioner, when they are switched on mode and keep quite when in off mode. The hypothetical tree I talked about earlier works without any attachment.
G: Is it possible to develop such detachment in a human being?
S: Yes, if that is the destiny of a particular person. You preached certain good behavior to all people through religion. But very few people are able to follow and practice such advice. Even if you had given training to all people to steal, rob and kill others, only a few would be able to absorb or use that training.
G: If people are so different, how can you treat them equally?
S: You cannot treat them equally in your response behavior. You will not treat the thief who was trying to steal from your house in the same way as your friend. You cannot pay the same salary to your car driver and your aircraft pilot. But in your heart you know all these persons are manifestations of God and therefore they are nothing but you. This knowledge makes a difference.
G: What difference does this make?
S: You do not get upset that there are thieves or rogues in the society. You do not get angry with the thief or with the police for failing to prevent the thief from entering your locality at night. You catch the thief if you can with the help of your neighbors who rushed in when you raised the alarm. You defend yourself from his attack to hurt or kill you. You call the police to report the incident, handover the thief or its dead body if you killed him in self-defense. Yet, you are not angry with the thief. You see him as another manifestation of God.
G: How can you be not angry with someone who tried to hurt your interest? How can you think of your enemy as a manifestation of your God?
S: I am not suggesting that you do that. I also do not believe that people in general will do that. I am merely saying that there is no real cause of being angry with the thief or the enemy. You always knew that there are going to be thieves and enemies. Being in an angry state only hurts oneself rather than the enemy or the thief. I am merely saying that we cannot escape the Truth that the thief and the enemy and also you are the manifestation of the same God. When we accept this Truth, it makes a difference.
G: Only difference this will make is that the thieves and enemies will be further encouraged to hurt me more?
S: I am not sure that this will indeed be the case. A person, who maintained his family by robbing others on the roads through dense forests, suddenly went into meditation and later became a pious sage and wrote a classic Epic of the Hindus. He was as much a manifestation of God when he was a robber as when he transformed into a pious sage named Valmiki. The fact that I am not angry or that I admit the Truth about manifestation of God, cannot be a cause to encourage the thieves and enemies. Even if I pardon the thief, the police will not automatically let the thief go if it is once caught. The enemy will continue to be my enemy if he so wishes out of jealousy or a feeling that I have hurt his or society’s interest whether or not there is any real justification for his feeling against me.
G: Your God seems to be very unfair in suggesting that you forgive your enemy and the thief.
S: My God suggests all types of actions: getting angry and not getting angry or accepting the Truth about manifestation of God or not accepting that. I will be doing as per one of the opposite or alternative suggestions. Which one I actually do is the one I am destined to do. I have no real choice as the thief and the enemy.
G: You always end up using your Destiny Principle to justify what you say. But most people in the World will not accept your Destiny Principle. Even the few who might accept your Principle, will not accept that individuals have absolutely no choice.
S: I agree. What you are saying about the rejection of and reservations about the Destiny Principle is also consistent with that Principle. If all human beings were to accept the Destiny Principle and believe in it, God’s manifestation in human form will at least temporarily end.
G: Better we move over to some other questions about cultivating this thought about everything being manifestation of the same. Why is it that we find impossible to accept this so-called Truth you are talking about? We are unable to consider a thief as a manifestation of God.
S: Because as per the destiny principle, human beings have adopted the practice of giving identification on the basis of differences in forms and relating behavior with forms. Consider a situation that all human beings look exactly alike and wear identical dresses. . Ignore sex differences for the present. However, different humans have different kind of emotions, capabilities and preferences. So differently persons will behave differently. Some may have a tendency to steal while others may not. It would be impossible then to relate the behavior of one human being with his form. You would not know who the thief was and whose house raided. You cannot even enforce relationships between two different human beings. Because all look so identical, you cannot make out who did what to whom. Getting robbed becomes a risk similar to getting into a road accident or getting hit by hurricanes in a hurricane-prone area. You then do not identify the act of stealing with a particular identified person. You accept the incidence of theft in your house as a natural calamity or accident due to human error. No one will have difficulty in accepting others as manifestations of God.
G: But this hypothetical situation of all looking identical is not true of the World. Very few human beings are identical in form.
S: I also happen to know what the real world is. But, for a while consider hypothetical situations for analytical purposes. Let us consider another hypothetical situation where humans have different forms but all behave similarly because they have identical emotions, capabilities and preferences. Let us assume all try to steal from others. Then, the society accepts stealing as normal behavior. No one will have objection to accepting others as manifestation of God.
G: The problem arises because different persons not only look different but also behave differently in the real World.
S: You are right. That is the source of the problem. Now let us make you as the God to design a system, by which you impart the stealing tendency among some of the people, say, one-sixth of the population, so that you have a real World, rather than hypothetical worlds. You are a great mind and also fair. So you decide to throw a dice before each child is conceived as your manifestation and decide that whenever six comes up, the child will be imparted with stealing tendency. Now, the probability of each child born with stealing tendency is same (one-sixth). It is you as God designed this system to manifest yourself to make a real world. So, we cannot say that the thief is not a manifestation of God. The thief is the same as other manifestations of God. It is only the throws of dice that caused the differences in behavior among human beings. There was nothing intrinsically bad or evil with the human who turns out to a thief. Why then should others not accept the thieves as manifestation of God if they knew that it is only throws of dice that made the behavior difference and helped create the real world?
G: I agree if what you say about what God throwing dice is true, logically it would be necessary to accept thieves as manifestations of God in the same way as others are. But how can a throw of dice explain so many types of differences among human beings? We just do not have only six categories of human being.
S: You are right. There are numerous types of attributes among human beings. There are numerous types of tendencies, preferences and capabilities. Also, the strength of attributes also varies from very weak to very strong. If God has to be fair then He must resort to a large series of throw of dice for child being conceived to cover so many attributes with varying strengths. Maybe, He must drawing cards from a pack of 52 cards a number of times for each child conceived. Maybe He has to play games of Carom or Ludo and relate each coin cleared into the holes to each attribute to be imparted. Will He have all this time?
G: But how do we know what game of fair chances does God play to impart different behavior, emotions, capabilities and preferences to different persons?
S: God need play these Games at all. Only the process in which children are conceived, born, brought up, grow, age and die, can these probabilities be assigned. The process itself becomes a stochastic process. Once the probabilities are automatically and randomly generated, God does not have to play any game of chances like throwing dice again and again. Human beings are only a small part of the Universe. There are other living beings, the physical materials, the energy flows, the vast space separated by billion light years, the numerous terrestrial bodies and cosmological forces and matters, the billions of Stars and black holes. The destiny process covers the emergence, continuation, transformation and disappearance of each such entity. You can recall that I referred to Stochastic Dynamic Destiny Process or Principle.
S: Yes, I do. If the material used to create, sustain and destroy any form or formless entity is drawn from something already in existence and the probabilities of the emergence, transformation and disappearance of all entities are the result of an unbiased, fair, stochastic process, each form can be regarded as the manifestation of God. We can easily appreciate the unity among diverse forms. Everything is God.
S: Yes, each entity goes through a process not under its control. Whatever it does and meets/ transacts/ interacts with is nothing but a part of that process. So every entity is essentially the same.
G: It is difficult to practice this in life.
S: Certainly, it is so. And, this is so because the destiny process itself is so designed. Human beings are but a small fraction of the Universe. The destiny principle covers the entire Universe including the destiny principle itself. Even if every one wishes to practice the thought that everything is nothing but the manifestation of the same God or Destiny Principle, the probability of everyone’s wish becoming true at the same time is so very negligible that we can say that this will never happen.
Destiny of Actions or Action of Destiny
G: But is this stochastic destiny process in consistent with the concepts of Karma-falla- (Fruits of Actions) and Rebirth? Do you believe in rebirth?
S: Rebirth of what? Rebirth of body takes place through a process of corpses degenerating into other materials, then some such materials getting into some human bodies as water, food, etc and then living bodies through procreation give birth to new bodies. It is not the rebirth of a particular body that once stopped functioning. To the extent the mind and the ego are intrinsically related to a part of body, that is the brain, we cannot talk of rebirth of a particular mind or a particular ego. Something independent of the body, mind and ego and yet a part of the living being does not die when the body dies, can probably get attached to a new body. But what is that something. Is it an experience of a body when it was alive?
G: Let us assume it is an experience.
S: If it is an experience, I do not know as yet how it could get attached to a new body. Maybe, such past experience can get attached to a new body by some mechanism through the stochastic destiny process. But a new body can always retrieve this past experience from books where the experience is recorded or by accessing an invisible experience store space provided the body has such a capability.
G: But does destiny link from birth to birth? For example, if I have done good deeds this birth I will have good life next birth.
S: The cause and effect or Karmafalla relationships are definitely a part of the stochastic destiny process. If the past experience carries into a new body, the experience itself may have an impact on what the new body or form does or the way it behaves. This is a kind of cause and effect relationship. But I am not sure this has anything to do with what you call good deeds leading to good life in a new body, called rebirth. In any case, the existence of cause and effect relationships between a previous body and a new body emerging after the extinction of the former, does not necessarily give rise to the possibility of rebirth of the particular entity of the past. All these aspects I am yet to explore. But all this possibilities cannot be called as rebirth of a particular thing of the past. In a continuous stochastic process of transformation, it is possible to that history may partially or fully repeat but that does not mean rebirth.
G: But rebirth is an integral part of Hindu philosophy.
S: Maybe, but it may not mean rebirth of the particular entity of the past. In the water cycle from vapors to clouds to rainfall to river water to ocean or melting of ice to formation of ice, we can see forms being recreated again and again. But is there any separate identity of the particular ice or particular water atom from one cycle to another? I don’t think so. The attachment to the continuity of the existence of the particular is the illusion created in the human mind by the destiny principle for its own smooth functioning.
G: Can you elaborate on this aspect of the illusion a little more?
S: Look when you play a game of carom or ludo, you use coins of different colors. How they move on the board depends on the chances emanating from how you arrange the coins on the board and the throw of the dice or your strike at the coins. Whether you succeed or fail and win or lose, you do not identify each coin as an entity of permanence for the game. In fact, you do not even distinguish between any two white coins or one blue coin with another. But if you had marked the coins with separate numbers you could have tracked how lucky or unlucky each coin is over repeated throw of dice or strike-hits or in their movements across the board over successive games. You do not do that. You play the game. Win or lose but do not get attached to or angry fall in love with a particular coin of a particular color. This illusion is not there in these games including the game of cards, except occasionally when the losing party overturns the board in disgust or throws away the complete pack of cards.
G: But this illusion remains when human beings deal with themselves.
S: Yes, they do not see themselves as undistinguishable white or black coins, each of which moves in deferent directions depending on the strength of the force of the striker, the angle of force, the impact of bouncing on the edges and collisions among coins along the path of their travel. The human beings cannot see themselves as being a piece in the pack of cards getting distributed to and played on by hands of varying skills. Carom coins and cards have no mind and therefore no illusion that they make any choice whatsoever in deciding their movements. Human mind is imparted with the illusion of independence. And this is an integral part of the Destiny Principle.
G: This part may appear OK. But what about rebirth in the sense of Atman getting into another body after the first body dies? Hindus seem to believe in this.
S: Yes, Hindus do so. But Atman then Atman can never die. Atman must be of permanent existence. If Atman is of permanent existence, it never changes. The question is whether there are separate Atman’s each with separate identities? Let us assume they are not. Then the question of rebirth does not arise. If Atman is the Pure Knowledge, it is not something that can have separate identity just because we assume that Atman resides in or behind each human body or mind or intellect. Let us assume that there are numerous Atmans. But Atmans being of permanent existence has the Knowledge of the Principles of the Creation or the Universe. Atmans cannot therefore have any illusion that they have separate identities.
G: Then, where does the realization take place?
S: That is a separate issue for discussion.
G: Fine. Tell me one thing now. Why is it that no one is willing to accept the Destiny Principle as Truth and yet you seem to have total belief in this?
S: Because each one of us is destined to have different beliefs in accordance with the Destiny Principle. The Destiny principle is either true or false. Either a person believes in the Destiny Principle as Truth or does not believe so. There are four possibilities. The worst case scenarios are that (a) one believes in something as True when it is not true and (b) one does not believe in something which is true. My position may be an instance of (a). I may be destined to change my position if I stumble on to an alternative principle explaining the Universe, which is more convincing than the destiny principle. So far nothing of that sort has come my way,
G: Then, how do you explain the developments taking place in societies, nations and civilization over time?
S: I have always only one answer: All that happens is the manifestation of the Destiny Principle.
Destiny of Social Divisions
G: This is not clear. Hindus have caste system. It is something bad and adopted by Hindus out of their own choice. How does destiny Principle come here?
S: It is only because of the operation of destiny principle that the caste system evolved. Whether it is bad or good is a separate issue and does not any way stop caste system to evolve. Caste grouping tendency is the natural property of human beings as imparted by the destiny principle.
G: Please explain.
S: Fine. Let us explore caste tendencies in a bit detail. In West Bengal, as in other provinces of India, many Hindus classify themselves into different castes. The four castes / barnas (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Sudra) defined a social system based on occupational structure and might have emerged in ancient Hindu India. It might have been long time back when societies consisted of small population to classify people in different families into the four castes based on the basis of the occupation of the families. Over a few decades or centuries, this caste system could have become rigid and reached a point of breakdown due to natural forces. For some time, a society could have limited the choice of individuals to vocations/ professions to that of the caste of the family to which the individual was linked by birth.
G; But such a system cannot continue for long.
S: You are right. The system did not last long. Surely, such an occupation-based system must have faced problems, as new generations might not have liked to stick to their ancestral occupations, as new occupations emerged and old occupations became irrelevant to the society. The economics of different occupations changed. People migrated from one place to another and got involved into inter-caste marriages. It could have been difficult for any caste, particularly the Sudras, to shift to other occupation classes unless they migrated to newer places. It could have been possible for some persons / families to migrate to less inhabited regions and claim their origin to different occupation-based castes. After all, until very recent period, family tree records were not maintained and available for public scrutiny.
G: So these are independent choices made by people to shift occupations. There is no destined choice here.
S: Exactly the opposite. The decisions to choose new occupations were not independent decisions but were forced by changing environment circumstances and natural human tendency to uplift itself from onerous bondages of the past.
G: But all people did not change. The Brahmins might have resisted the change.
S: Yes. For most Brahmins, the bondage to the past social structure was not onerous. So they would have not let go the advantages of such a system.
In the beginning, the Brahmins might not have helped Sudras or Kshatriyas or Baishyas to acquire from them the knowledge necessary to enter the vocations of the Brahmins. But, some Brahmins might as well have agreed to partly share their knowledge with the Ksatriyas fearing that the Kings might kill them if they declined to share knowledge. Again, wealthy Baishyas could have used their money power to buy knowledge from the poor Brahmins and buy part of kingdoms from weak kings.
G: But how does destiny come here?
S: The changes in external environment did not come about because of independent choice by the society but resulted from the aggregation of individual choices forced by the natural law of human beings to explore, discover and improve their lot. Economics of the professions might have changed over time depending on the laws of demand for and supply of services / products, inducing individuals and families to change professions / occupations. It would be too simplistic to suggest that markets for demand and services are of a recent origin. The ancient (Hindu) civilization in Bharat could not have prospered unless markets existed. Exchange of labour/ service/ commodities is a very ancient phenomenon. Modern competitive markets with paper money as medium of exchange are of recent origin; exchange is an essential ingredient of ancient civilizations. With the growth of population, migration from one land to another and emergence of new occupations, further divisions in the form of sub-castes or gotras arose.
G: But the old castes, sub castes and gotras are no longer socially relevant. Yet many Hindus identify themselves as belonging to particular caste/sub-caste/gotra classification based on their birth.
S: Yes, they do. That is also part of the Destiny process. People like to have a lineage identity. But the caste based on birth would have lost meaning once a person had shifted from a family’s occupation to a different occupation. Shifts in occupation might have caused problems of identification of family trees/ loyalties and purity of castes (problems of the same nature that is caused in the modern world due to inter-religion/ inter-racial marriages and immigration from one nation state to another). Shifts are only natural. Hindu Gods in their incarnations were reportedly born in/ raised by families of different castes: Ram belonged to Kshatriyas, Krishna to Kshatriyas/ Sudras, Gautama Buddha to Kshastriyas, and so on. Many kings in Hindu mythology were Brahmins rather than Kshatriyas (eg.,Ravana). Clearly, natural forces make it difficult to keep a caste system to be consistent with both birth and occupation. Family is a stronger tie and hence an occupation-based caste system had to drift to a pure birth-based caste system and castes had to get de-linked from occupations. Thus, the Hindu caste system died its natural death long, long time ago. It could not have survived with the spread of Buddhism by Emperors like Ashoka, growth and migration of population, inter-caste marriages, the invasions by the Muslims, the period of Mogul Rule followed by the British Rule in a country with a large, growing population speaking such large diversity of languages.
G: While that may be true, in reality caste system still rules.
S: Yes, it does. But this attachment to caste system is a natural human property. It has nothing to do with the ancient Bharatiya occupation-based social structure that became extinct long ago. It is surprising that Indians still talk about Hindu caste system being in existence. They talk of oppression by the higher castes that died with the occupation-based caste system centuries ago, long before the British or the Moguls appeared on the scene. From the Mogul days and throughout the British rule, a new caste system emerged among the Indian Hindus. This fairy-tale caste system has established since then. The foreign rulers had given the opportunity to their elite Hindu subjects to evolve a new caste system and link it to the ancient Hindu caste system. The names of the original Hindu castes were retained but the caste system was not linked now to current occupations. Individuals and families now could assume certain occupations for their unknown ancestors who lived thousands of years and declare them as belonging to the occupational caste of their ancestors.
G: You may be right. But the Hindus continue to have a caste system.
S: A new Fairy Tale Caste system emerged after the Hindu Kings began losing control over the major parts of India. Interestingly, the new foreign political rulers encouraged the growth of this new system and supported its being christened as Hindu System. The fairy-tale Hindu caste system is based on unrecorded, presumed and so-called superior/ inferior occupations of the forgotten forefathers who died thousands of years ago. As I have understood, the Fairy Tale caste essentially tries to link a person to some occupations or other beginnings of his ancestors thousands of years ago.
G: So you admit that caste system exists even today,
S: Hold on. Caste system exists everywhere throughout the World among all religions and cultures. That is the destined human property. But today’s caste system has nothing to do with the ancient four-barna caste system.
G: What we have today is an extension or modification of that ancient system only.
S: No. That is completely a false notion perpetuated by ignorance and deliberate distortion of reality.
G: What was the ancient system and what is the current system?
S: In the ancient ages, Brahmins seemed to have been traditionally honored or they had established claim as the most superior caste. The ancient people belonging to this caste originally were in the vocation of learning, teaching, worshipping, praying to the God on behalf of others, engaged in the profession of priesthood, sanyasis (those who have renounced material world), and preachers and so on. The claim of Superiority of the Brahmins might have been contested by the Kshatriya caste that originated from the ancient warriors, kings or those who fought wars and battles. Most Hindu royal dynasties of the olden times are supposed to belong to this caste. If the Brahmins claimed superiority, it could not have been without the tacit approval of the Kshatriya kings with Brahmin subjects. In ancient ages, a Brahmin could have become a Rishi, or Brahmarshi (one with the supreme knowledge of the Universe) through hard work, deep thinking, extensive study, penance and sacrifices. The Kings also had found their path to superiority. There could have been a Kshatriya who would become a Raja Rishi (Rajarshi) of status equal to Brahmarshi by efforts, sacrifices and learning similar to the Brahmins. King Janaka, the father of Sita, Rama’s wife, was a Rajarshi. Again, a Brahmin could have become as good a warrior as a Kshatriya king and become a King. Ravana, the king of Lanka who was defeated and killed in war by Rama, might have been a Brahmin, though an Asura (demon), was a very learned person, devotee of God and also a reputed warrior. Did he become a King to prove to the Kshatriyas that Brahmins were a superior class!
G: Caste system has something to do with claiming superiority over some others while being equal to some.
S: Yes and that tendency in human beings continue even now everywhere and in all communities. Let us go back to ancient times. Apart from the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, there was the Baishya caste that originated from the people who were engaged in trading and other businesses. They were the real money-spinners and wealthy people. They had to keep the Kings happy if they had to continue with their money-spinning businesses smoothly. They paid the most taxes and ensured that the Kings had adequate wealth to be happy and not become jealous of the business community. The Baishyas were also afraid of God, given the inherent risks and uncertainties of businesses ventures. So they also kept the temple priests happy so that the latter would worship God on their behalf and get for them the blessings of God. Not that some Baishyas would not have thought of becoming kings. It might be that some kingdoms were taken over by the Baishyas who became Kshatriyas thereafter. The Brahmins who were almost always a part of the King’s courts and acted as minister/ advisor might have attempted at installing their stooges as Kings or tried to become Kings themselves. In any case, many Hindu Kings tried to establish their fame by donating lands to their army chiefs, their ministers, their physicians, courtiers and other talented citizens. The landowners in turn would become kings of smaller kingdoms. As land became a tradable asset, some wealthy traders might have bought vast lands and became kings themselves. To protect their wealth, they would not have stopped short of raising army of security guards. They would not have supported weak kings and kings who borrowed money from them. They would have rather tried to remove them and become kings themselves. In any case, many wealthy businessmen of Hindu kingdoms would have behaved like kings given their money-powered influence on the society.
G: What about the Sudras who were the most oppressed?
S: The fourth caste, the Sudras might have had very little opportunity to prove their Superiority as a caste. The Sudras consisted of the rest of the society and included all types of workmen, tradesmen, labor, craftsmen, and self-employed people excluding the occupations of other three castes. Since the Sudra caste supposedly covered most occupations, the bulk of the population would have belonged to this caste. Clearly, no society would have needed a large proportion of people to teach, to be busy in the pursuit of knowledge, become Sanyasis and preachers and provide the services of priests. No society needed a large proportion of people to be engaged as warriors or as kings or preachers and priests or wealthy organizers of business and commerce. A society would have needed only a small percentage of people to be deployed as traders and businessmen to serve the needs of the society. So, the Sudras would have represented a wide range of assorted occupations and formed the bulk of the population. An omnibus caste could not have claimed superiority over other caste with smaller population. That did not mean that different sections of the Sudra caste could not have claimed superiority. Sudra castes would have covered various craftsmen who had held special skills handed down through the generations. There would have been goldsmith, yarn spinners and fabric weavers, carpenters, architects, sculptures, painters, musicians, ironsmiths, cattle-raisers. It could have been possible for some families in these occupations to establish a goodwill and reputation and enjoy monopoly power in selling their services. Some of them could have obtained royal patronage, benefited from land gifts from the kings and extracted high price for their wares from the Baishyas. These skilled and talented families over a period of time would have become wealthy and established a social prestige of their own. They could have become traders, businessmen and kings on their own using their wealth and acquired landed property. The power of money could have made them enjoy the life-style of Biashyas and Kshatriyas and buy the services of Brahmins. Many wise Sudras acquired as much (if not more) fame and influence as Brahmin scholars and Sanyasi preachers. Kabir, a weaver, probably a convert Muslim, had large following among the Indians. He preached the essence of Hinduism. Many Hindus, claiming to be originally Sudras, converted to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity during the last thousand years. But even among those who converted or were forced to convert into Christianity in the west coast of India, there were some who until recently traced their origin to Brahmin Caste and preferred marriages among Christians with the similar Brahmin background.
G: That is a brief of a long history. What does it say?
S: It shows that the so-called Hindu Caste system is a hoax. Given the history of different castes, how many Indian Hindus today can really claim lineage to any particular caste. There is no way they can prove their link to any specific ancient Hindu caste. Hindus of today are mostly tied to a fairly tale caste system evolved in the recent centuries. This fairly tale Hindu caste system has nothing to do with the Ancient Caste system that could not have survived for long under the impact of natural forces. The fairy tale caste system was propounded by the elite Hindu subjects of the foreign rulers to create a superior (but false) image for themselves and power over other Hindus and in the process pave the way for the religions of the ruling class to convert more Hindus into Islam, Christianity and Buddhism.
G: So what is the new caste system now?
S: Hold on. Even today, the fairy tale Hindu Caste system continues to provide spice to life. There is one caste called Baidya / Vaidya or Baidya-Brahmins (in current Bengali language usage letter ‘B’ is common where the letter ‘V’ is used in Sanskrit language). Baidya literally means a person who practices medicine. My immediate ancestors (say, 7-11 generations up to my father) handed down the belief that we were Baidya-Brahmins, a special class among the Brahmins, supposedly superior caste among the Hindus. I have checked with friends who boasted of their Brahmin caste superiority: according to some of them, the Baidyas are the descendants of a family resulting from an inter-caste marriage between a Brahmin husband and Sudra wife. So, Baidyas are a mixed caste, inferior to the Brahmins. G: Quite interesting!
S: Equally interesting is the version I heard some elderly Baidyas who are no more. They said that the Brahmins also practiced medicine as a profession but they would not visit the residence of patients from other caste, especially Sudras, in order not to lose their purity. Some among the Brahmin medicine professionals, out of their dedication to patients (or, I guess, because of their relatively inadequate experience or knowledge or skill or reputation which would take time to build), had gone out to serve generally poor income Sudra families to earn fee incomes. This group was therefore outcast by the rest of the Brahmins. Since then these people were called as Baidya- Brahmins, a superior liberal class among the Brahmins. Later on, I used to taunt my Brahmin friends that they had right to knowledge from the Four Vedas (the most ancient Hindu scriptures covering various disciplines of knowledge from Philosophy to Spiritualism), but the Baidyas had the right to five Vedas – not only Rig Veda, Sam Veda, Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda but also Ayur-Veda, the Veda of the medicines. Some friends who knew more than me however were quick to point out that Ayurveda (Treatise on Medicine/ Medical Treatment) was actually a part of the basic four Vedas.
G: But all this is funny and has nothing to do with our original inquiry.
S: Funny as these might be, they point to the basic human tendency to create around one’s family background a glory. Just consider that I grew up to marry a Brahmin girl. I do not know how Hindus would classify my sons in terms of caste. But recently I happen to meet a young person who is the son of a Baidya father and Brahmin mother. Among his relatives there were many such Baidya and Brahmin inter-caste marriages. And, they continue enjoy the debates over the superiority of castes in family get-togethers. He told me that one of his relatives, Mr. Biswajit Dasgupta, born around 1970 and a keen student of mathematics, radiology and ancient Hindu scriptures including the Vedas had done some research on the origins of Baidyas. I requested him to get me some of his research output. In what follows, I give below a short summary of his research findings.
Mr. Dasgupta quotes from Sanskrit grammar authored by Panini. According to Panini, the word Bid (Vid), meaning To Exist or To Know, is the source of three words: Veda, Vidya and Vaidya. Vid + Acha = Vada, Vid + Kyap = Vidya (education), Vidya + on (favourable sense) = Vaidya. Vidyasyaptam Vaidya i.e., the descendant of Vid is called a Vaidya. All this would to link existence and knowledge with B(V)aidya.
According to Dasgupta, the reference to the Baidyas is found in Rig Veda Samhita: mondol 10, sukta 97, mantra 6 in which Rishi Vishak prays in anustupchhanda verse to the God of medicinal plants. The same verse also appears in Shukla Yajur Veda Samhita Chapter 12 mantra 80. His translation of the verse from Sanscrit to Bengalee when translated to English reads: “Hail thee, the medicinal plants. Just like the kings go to war to defeat the enemy, you all go to the Bipra (the best among the Brahmins) to win over all illness and disease. The Bipra to whom you go is called the disease-killer, life saver Baidya (Vishak)”. Mr. Dasgupta also refers to Mantra 10 of Chapter 30 of Shukla Yajur Veda Samhita (relating to Purushamedha Yagna). His Bengali version of the verse translated to English reads: “(I) enjoin Vishak (Baidya) for Purity ”. Dasgupta also quotes Mantra 33 of Chapter 5 and Mantra 74 of Chapter 20 of Shukla YajurVeda. These verses refer to AswiniKumardwyas (Aswini Kumar named Twins) as the physicians practicing medicines among the god-patients (Hindus believe in one from-less God, 330 million gods/ devatas of various forms, a select group of lesser gods and humans as incarnation of God on earth). God Surya (Sun) is the father of Aswini Kumar duo, born out of the womb of goddess Sangya in the form of a feminine horse and the duo were created to serve as the Baidyas (physicians) for the medical treatment/ protection of health of gods. Mr. Dasgupta then refers to the BrahmaBaibarta Purana, a centuries-old scripture widely publicized among the Hindus in the province of Bengal in India and quotes Baidya/ Vaidya as “ Aswinikumareno Jatascha Biprajyoshiti” which means that ‘ the Baidyas were created by the Aswini Kumar duos from the wombs of women from the families of the best class of Brahmins’. A direct link of the Baidyas to the gods: Human Baidyas are descendants of the physicians and medicine specialist gods who protected the health of citizens of the kingdom of gods.
I have learnt elsewhere that if one examines the Vedas, one will find names of 33 or so gods to whom tributes were paid by chanting the Veda verses as a form of worship. These gods were nothing but parts of Nature observed at that time by man. For example, the sky, the cosmic space, the sun and its different phases during the day, the night and its different phases, the moon, the stars, the wind, the rains were all gods. Because these objects or phenomena were observed to be making movements/changing position/ exerting different magnitudes of strength over time and also making a powerful adverse or beneficial impact on the lives of men, these were thought to be having their own individual consciousness/ minds. Aswis were probably two phenomena of light just before dawn. This twin Aswis were turned into Aswini Kumars in later literature or religious stories called Puranas. While the Vedas and the Puranas talk of multiple gods including the Super God who created all including these gods, it is in the philosophy of the Upanishads that the concept of Single formless infinite God got established firmly in the Sanatana/ Hindu Dharma
Mr. Dasgupta also refers to Chanakya’s writing (Vishnu Gupta or Chanyakya, the son of Maha Rishi Chanak, helped Chandra Gupta Maurya to establish a kingdom with capital at what is currently known as Patna in the present Indian state of Bihar). Chanakya says: Ayurveda Kritabhyas Sarbeshang Priya Darshana Aryashhel Gunopeto Esho Baidya Bidhiyote”.
Mr. Dasgupta says that according to Sreemad-Bhagbat Purana: The warring devas (gods) and the Ashuras (demons) settled for peace to jointly drill out Amritam (the potion that makes one that drinks it, immortal) from the Oceans. God took the form of a huge Tortoise and held the Mountain Mandar aloft from underneath the ocean water. The mountain served as the drilling/churning rod. Bashuki, the huge long king of the snakes served as the rope tied around the mountain rod. With the davas and the ashuras holding on and pulling the two ends of the rope, the mountain rod churned the water of the oceans. This churning led to the arising of a young person in ornamented dress with the pot containing the potion Amritam. This person’s name was Dhannantari. He was a Baidya, the expert in AyurVeda, the science of medicine. Dasgupta thus refers to the great contribution that the Baidyas have thus been making contribution even in the world of the devas (the ashuras failed to get their share of the potion even as they tried to steal the pot of Amrita potion soon after Dhannantari came out of the ocean waters.
G: You indeed narrate interesting stories. But how does all this help understand destiny.
S: Yes, these are indeed interesting stories for get-together parties of families with lot of inter-caste marriages. But they also help illustrate how deep the human tendency is to claim superiority of one group over other groups on the basis of relative glory arising from ancestral/ family background. This continues even today between people who live in metros and others, between those who could shift to metros and urban areas from their rural backgrounds and those who could not, between those from traditionally rich families and the new rich, between those who are members of posh clubs and those who are not, between MBAs and others, between CII/ FICCI (two main all India chambers of commerce) members and the members of small chambers, between mafias supported by ruling political party and other mafias, between those who claim to be secular/ animal lovers/ communists/ social reformers and those who do not make such claims, between those who despise smoking and those who smoke, those who claim to be communists, between leftist social scientists/ economists and those who believe in individual liberty and competitiveness, so on and so forth. The special group image is sought for the same reason, as one would have liked lineage to a superior caste in olden days.
G: You mean to say that this tendency is an underlying property of human beings that is destined to play out in all ages. Today also, we see small traders/ businessmen come to organize them as a different caste. The big industrialists are a different caste. The air pilots are a different class. The investment bankers are a different class. The journalists belong to a separate class. People related to Page 3 forms a different class. And, the society and the political system encourage the formation of such different high value castes/ classes. This is a new caste system that divides the mankind.
S: Exactly. People unite into groups and divide the society into separate groups. Both the tendencies, to unite and to divide, operate as natural forces. All this is destined. This tendency of human beings has nothing to do with Hindu religion or Hindu society. One single Guru or a single Prophet has not propounded Hindu religion. Hindu religious scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Smritis, and are not authored by a single person or a group of connected or related persons. The authors of these scriptures and epics are many different individuals who lived in different centuries and millennium. Until a few centuries ago, most Hindus may not have known about the existence of so many scriptures. Many of these scriptures are collections of sayings of different individuals made available in written form much after the original composers had died. There were many compilers/authors/editors of the same collections. There are differences in style of writing and editing in the collections and even there are different versions of the epics. It may be that the original authors of different parts/ sections/ mantras of the Vedas and Upanishads belonged to different castes by birth or by family profession.
For the spiritual life of many of the original authors, worldly life – not mere caste-ism- was meaningless. They had preached the concepts of Single God, omni-present everywhere and in every living being and non-life matter. They had analysed the material elements of the universe as they had observed then as also analysed human body, mind and behaviour. Their analysis helped them classify all matters and the human beings into different categories with different properties. To relate caste system to Hindu religion or any religion for that matter is both wrong and foolish. But to do so is natural and destined.
G: Maybe, the caste system is not the essential part of Hindu society or Religion. But such social divisions are creation of Man and not destined by divine will.
S: I believe that the caste system or similar social divisions are the results of processes that are part of the Stochastic Destiny Process and therefore are destined to be created in human societies. Human societies have no choice but to create them. Even the communism of Soviet Union and the Republic of China, not to speak of communists of countries where communism could not capture complete State power, has failed to resist the creation of social divisions, even though the goal is to create a class-less society where every one belonged to the same class.
G: I see your point. Social divisions are natural phenomena and not the result of deliberate, independent choice of societies. The forms of social divisions vary over time and across societies. But they evolve in response to certain basic natural tendency of human beings and under the impact of prevailing circumstances.
S: You are right. Even those who try to eradicate social divisions create new divisions. The communists talk about labour and capitalists as also about the proletariat and others. These others ultimately include those who manage the State on behalf of the proletariat. The Indian politicians talk about minorities, about dalits (oppressed), about backward classes, about the common man, about the weaker sections of the society. All this is reflective of divisive tendencies. This happens naturally to human beings. They close one form of social division to create another. They despise caste systems of the past and create new caste system. This is done in pure self-interest - a natural dharma / property of human beings. The caste system continues in new forms in perpetuity and the social conflicts continue as a destined process.
G: I understand what you are saying, Attempts to eradicate social divisions are as much a destined force as the emergence of social divisions. We may preach equality through speeches and books and we may even try to bring about equality among human beings by peaceful or violent means. But simultaneously we are destined to practice inequality in actual social life. No human, it seems, is capable to practice equality. Each human or group believes in his/ her/ their unique identity distinctively different from another human being or group. Human beings form into separate groups each of which is supposed to be unequal in relation to other groups. Such groups form naturally and often are with conflicting interests. Therefore, the emergence of caste system or other social divisions is an essential part of the natural social process.
S: You are absolutely right. There is no social choice made independently: all social choices are resultant of forces that are part of the Stochastic Destiny Process or Principle. Men and women consider themselves unequal, so do fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and foes, colleague and colleague, teachers and students, peoples in location X and peoples in location B, workers and managers. Groups grow larger and then split. All this just happens because of the inherent property of human beings to divide themselves into persons or groups in conflict. This does not happen because they make choices to form or join groups, but because it is in their nature to make such choices. No body becomes Hitler or Mother Teresa by choice, it just happens. We know that all Indians born after 14th August 1947 are born equals. Are they equals in reality? No they are not. Those whose ancestors were recognized as backward castes or tribes during the mogul and British rule are a special caste entitled to reservation on a major part of the Nation’s resources while those who have different lineage are the new neglected caste. These are not independent decisions of the State or society but the fall out of the process of destiny of India and the Indians.
G: We create new inequalities: we go back to the long past and create new reserved / categories to perpetuate social conflicts. This happens because it is natural and hence destined, even though there is no logic to justify such divisions. Yesterday’s royal descendants abroad are our friends even if their forefathers oppressed us. Day before yesterday’s royal descendents are today's minorities. Descendents of oppressors who lived before the Moguls or British came are today’s hated castes, even if they are in minority.
S: These are not divisions created by Indians by applying unbiased logic and independent judgment. Indians create these under the influence of jealousy, pity, and anger and under compulsions electoral politics in so-called democracy where most people are uneducated AND many remain illiterate.
Democratic Equality and Freedom
G: You seem to be of the view that the Natural process or your Stochastic Destiny Principle entirely explains all social phenomena? What about political systems like democracy?
S: Yes.
G: How can that be so? We know that Democracy is a Political System created by Man to treat all human beings equally in the political process.
S: You have an illusion. Try to answer a few questions and you will realize that Concept of Democracy was not created by Man but evolved out of a process. Societies or the Mankind did not make a deliberate choice in favour of democracy but had no choice but to become democratic in varying degrees depending on circumstances.
G: What are the questions that one should ask?
S: The first question is: Is democracy as a political system everywhere it is claimed to be adopted the same?
G: Certainly not. There are wide differences. They talk about liberal democracies, people’s democracy. In some democratic countries, elected governments and military generals become rulers in musical chairs. In some democracies, women had no right to vote. In others, dead citizens appear in electoral rolls and cast votes, many living citizens do not find their names in electoral rolls, some other citizens find their votes have already been miraculously cast by the time they get to the polling stations and still others are either not allowed to enter polling stations or are not willing to go to cast their votes because of fear of being physically assaulted on the way or they do not find any value in voting process.
S: Yes. There are democracies that boast of two major parties contesting elections and others with large number of parties. There are strong single-party governments and there are governments of five to ten parties in coalition. If there are so many variations, can we call democracy has been a deliberate choice made by different societies? There are countries where elections are held under the supervision of large complement of military and police forces brought from different localities or even different countries.
G: Why should foreign countries get involved in installation of democracy in a country like say Iraq? Each country should decide to choose whether it should adopt democracy or not.
S: You have to answer this. For, oppressive dictators in so-called republics or democracies would always argue that no elections are necessary as the people in their countries have accepted the military dictatorships as the best for them. At best they will conduct their own version of elections to force all people to vote only for the military junta or get killed. There is always a chicken and egg problem: which comes first- democratic choice or choice of democracy. Even within a declared democratic country, the way elections are conducted in a locality cannot ever be disputed. The ruling party will always win the elections through unfair election processes and claim that the election results show that the people have exercised their choice in favour of the way the elections have been conducted. The ruling party will say that no Independent Election Commission is necessary in democracy and such Independent Election Commissions’ interference in laying down new rules of electioneering, election campaign, drawing up voters’ lists and other related processes is unwarranted. If a country is really destined to have real democracy, it would also be destined to have political parties that are willing to accept fully transparent and open election process even to the extent of independent third country supervision and electronic/ live camera monitoring of the entire process. The election processes differ considerably among democratic countries in terms of their credibility and as indicator of the quality of democracy.
G: Despite the differences, they are broadly of the same category. And, some of the differences are not because of a fundamental difference in the concept but because of the characteristics of politicians. For example, in our country politicians seem like inevitable devils of democracy. India was ruled by outsiders for several centuries, and is now ruled by 'insiders'. As a 'nation' we seem to have a history of liking to be 'ruled'. I guess it will take quite a few decades to clean democratic processes. Politics has always been interesting, despite the dirty things, the killings and so on associated with politics.
S: So ask the second question. Is it democracy in which most citizens are really interested? The basic property of most human beings throughout the history of civilization is that they in general like to be ruled. There must be one individual or group who should rule with the help of their cronies. Kings, aristocracies, communists have all been dictatorship rules. Democracy in most countries for most of the time benefited the so-called elected rulers rather than the ruled. The difference between democracy and other political systems is only that in the other systems, a bad ruler may be thrown out by another ruler, good or bad, depending on the luck of the ruled. But, in most democracies, a bad ruler is almost always replaced by the ruled through their ballot boxes, by only other bad rulers. Good rulers have theoretically negligible chance/ probability of emergence in democracy. There is another theorem: Those who sell democracy to the people are almost always aspiring to become kings or their cronies. If I were a teacher in politics, I would have taught my students to prove the above theorems mathematically and helped them to laugh at how the most oppressive political system ever known is sold in the new label of Democracy in India and elsewhere.
G: I agree with you that there are problems with democracy. But what could be an alternative to democracy?
S: I do not think I know if there exists any better alternative
to Democracy. I believe that Democracy is the only alternative to
Democracy. I will try to clarify the confusion arising now. For that we ask the third question. What are searching for in democracy or what is our objective?
If the objective is to maximise (a) the extent of freedom and liberty to
individuals, (b) the level and quality of education among the people in
general, (c) the progress of science and technology in the nation, (d) the
quality of life of all and (e) economic prosperity for all, Democracy alone
can not help us achieve this. Nor can Capitalism alone achieve this on its own.
Many countries have declared them as Democratic Socialist Republics or
People's Republic. Last century’s history may help prove the theorem that countries with such names are most likely to be oppressive and guaranteed to fail in achieving the standards of economic progress and individual liberty achieved
by the advanced countries which do not have any prefix or suffix like
republic, democratic, socialist and the like. Again, in ancient India there might have been many small Hindu Kingdoms that were really ruled in the most democratic manner and they were reasonably prosperous, safe for citizens life and liberal in tolerating diversity of ideas, besides being enjoying peace and non-violence at least within the country. But they did not announce to the World that they were democracies. Their democracies succeeded so long as they valued individual liberty and freedom more than the King. So, the answer to the third question is that democracy is not the solution to all our problems. It can deliver only to the extent the overall environment in which it functions.
G: You seem to be arguing for examining democracy not as a pure political concept but in the overall social, economic, cultural, philosophical context.
S: Yes, we are not merely trying to debate for the sake of it. Therefore, we need to see how the choice of a political framework in practice arises. To me, it is not a deliberate choice. It is a destined choice: an evolving outcome of a natural process that I call the Stochastic Destiny Principle. The people who conceptualized the idea of democracy did not do so in a vacuum but were influenced by the forces in operation in the society in relevant times and therefore were in the strictest sense forced by the Destiny Process to think in the ways the actually thought. Secondly, Democracy by itself cannot help us achieve most of the desired objectives. If the cultures in which you place democracy, people do not really understand, believe in and place the highest value on individual liberty and freedom, democracy cannot help achieve the societal objectives nor can it become democracy.
G: How would a most democratic State behave if the overall culture were not so congenial to practice real democracy?
S: I cannot make definitive prescription as I am tied to my Stochastic Destiny Principle. All that I can say is that a state that places the highest value on the freedom and liberty of each individual will try to build the most
efficient, extensive infrastructure for justice, peace, education, health,
science and technology rather than wasting time in building steel mills,
watch factories, bread factories and manage cloth factories, fertiliser
factories and so on. A State that calls itself democracy but whose priority
is on economic development is not going to practice democracy and will fail
to deliver economic prosperity to its people.
G: Since you seem to be placing the value of democracy only in the overall environmental context, we need to explore the concept of capitalism, socialism, international economic order and militarism in our discussions. I am particularly worried about corruption, fast depletion of non-renewable resources of the earth, brute capitalistic exploitation and international military conflicts.
S: You are worried about corruption. Democracy on a stand-alone basis does not cure corruption. You may find corruption to be low among
countries that have democracies, largely free market capitalism, high standards of living, high literacy, high level of efforts in science and technology, low levels of
religious intolerance. And, the countries that are in the top in terms of
corruption are those ruled by dictators/ groups of ruffians with citizens
afflicted by low levels of literacy and education, low level of science and technology, high levels of religious intolerance.
G: I need to empirically verify this.
S: You also need to verify certain other facts. If you are worried about the depletion of the earth's resources, you must verify whether the most inefficient extraction and utilisation of nature's resources takes place in countries like India, Pakistan, China and whether the most efficient are the advanced Western capitalist democracies. If you talk about wars, you must verify whether most wars are among economically advanced western capitalist democracies including Japan.
G: I guess I am getting what you are trying to say.
S: What I am saying is that looking at democracy or capitalism for all
solution is not the correct way of thinking about the society. This way of
looking at solving society's problem has arisen from the indigestion of
western education by low quality brains of Indian social elite leaders and their
followers mostly those who could not have competed in any other sphere of life except politics and without the help of political clout. The latter included many who were first class cheaters as well: they sought to increase their popularity by singing the songs of Gandhi or Tag ore or Karl Marx, but had no intent to understand or follow their preaching. When such people lead the Nation, people in general become like them: cheaters, power-seekers and power-abusers. The objective of democracy in such environment is to allow access to State power for personal and group enrichment. The same is the story in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, etc.
G: So, you are not recommending that we strengthen democracy in all countries, irrespective of capitalism or socialism or communism being there or not.
S: I am destined to hesitate in recommending because I do not believe that my recommendations, if accepted and acted upon, will, definitely or most likely, yields the desired results. I can only say what I have observed. I have observed that the democracy, capitalism and socialism are not stand-alone instruments that have succeeded or failed to deliver. Countries have practiced these ideas in varying ways in different environmental contexts. Some combinations of features in certain environment succeeded in bringing about results that we may consider most desirable, while certain other combinations did not. You may like to consider imagining introducing democracy in the society of elephants, tigers, lions, and other animals. Will such societies practice democracy they way human beings would have wished? Democracy is practiced by educated, civilized people
who really value individual liberty in a ways that are different than the largely uneducated societies ruled by all pervasive State (Governments) power in the hands of elective representatives.
G: On similar grounds, you may say that capitalism is destined to. Capitalism yields 'good life' to great many people who do not have time and energy to care about others in the World. Capitalism seems to thriving on 'creating want' and 'rampant consumption'.
S: What I can say is that capitalism has been seen to succeed in delivering prosperity to great many people for long periods, though not all the time only in civilized societies that values individual liberty and freedom more than the power of the State/ Government. For the past two centuries, capitalistic societies have made the most dramatic advancement in economic prosperity, education, science and technology, sports, culture and entertainment, human rights and human values. It seems to me that rich of the capitalist societies has shown greater concern and care for the poor in non-capitalistic societies. The large population of the poorer nations of the World have only benefited from the progress of science and technology in the capitalist countries. For example, India has only little to boast of her contribution to the progress of science and technology, but much of her economic progress is due to the technology borrowed or bought from the capitalist West.
G: I do not agree with you. I am rather concerned that capitalism’s arrival in India and China can have disastrous consequences for planet earth. Again, capitalism may be lesser evil than the only alternative of socialism that talks great about 'needs' of all and particularly the weaker sections op the society but successfully degraded into a different form of power-abuse and corruption?
S: I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you on the consequences of capitalism coming into India or China. The experience of capitalism or democracy may not be the same in the animal world or human societies where most children are taught to either fear or grab the State power and discouraged to value individual freedom and liberty. Rather, the individuals and groups are encouraged to seek economic prosperity by clandestinely influencing, grabbing and abusing State power in one’s/ group’s favour.
G: You seem to be against any big role of the State beyond law and order and external security.
S: I am neither against nor for any of the political or economic models. I do not find much merit in justifying anything. Whether a country claims to practice democracy or socialism is immaterial. What is actually practiced delivers the results. If the results are consistently good for long periods for most people, the practices must have contributed to that. The practices prevailing in a country evolve over time and the results that such practices produce are part of what were destined to happen, they are not independent choices. Those who claim to practice democracy are not necessarily those who actually practice democracy. Those who actually practice democracy are destined to do so. And, the same is true of those who claim so but actually does not believe in individual liberty and freedom except for restricted purpose to elections.
G: You will say the same thing about socialism. In a sense you seem to against socialism.
S: I repeat that I am neither for nor against anything because of my belief in Destiny Principle. I only state what I observe. Socialism and Communism have been found to perform the way capitalism has done in some countries in the West.
Even Socialism and Communism as practiced in the World so far are to my mind nothing but variants of capitalism, variants in which capitalists, though not owners of resources, enjoy all the power to use them and these capitalists are those who do not get selected through market competition but get elected to use State power or their selected servants. These countries are destined to go through the experience of such socialism and communism, as are distorted versions of capitalism.
G: But how do different countries go through the experience of different variants of democracy, socialism and capitalism?
S: The whole time path of events and happenings are different in different countries. I do not know why they are different. What I believe is that this is in the nature of things in the evolutionary process. It is like the difference of skin colour of people in different regions, the variation in food habits in different regions, the differences in languages, in natural endowments or in history of conflicts and wars. Nothing that happens today in a society is independent of what happened in the past.
G: But things change over time. How?
S: The seeds of change are also in the past. High population growth during the past decades has altered the demography in India. Now close to 50% of the Indian population is below the age of 25 years. The younger generations seem to be viewing things in a different way and trying to assert their freedom and liberty in the urban and metro areas. The recent years have been witnessing rapid spread of international television channels, the coverage of international news in domestic channels, the variety of debates on domestic and local social, political and economic issues, the spread of internet usage and the like. All this has considerable impact on the attitudes and preferences of younger generations. The adolescent and the youth now show both a growing pride in the recent economic successes of the nation as well as a stronger preference for adopting a broader international perspective for acquiring knowledge and skill. The narrow perspective, reluctance to face challenges of the unknown and the strange, and the obsolescence of the skills of elder generations are fast waning in their impact on new generations. How far and when the attitudes and preferences of the new generations will begin dominating, I cannot forecast. One may only speculate about two possible destinies. One possibility is that the highly populated societies like India (and China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia) will become the cause of the gravest disaster that you may call man-made because you do not believe in destiny. The other possibility is that some of these societies will be transformed by the attitudes and preferences of the current generation of children who place greater value on individual liberty more than the State and more open to globalization and technological progress.
G: But what do you conclude from our discussion on democracy, capitalism and socialism?
S: My conclusion is that the features of the society and the economy at any point of time and the changes we observe in them over time in any country is the result of the various naturally interacting forces in that country and the countries to which the particular country is connected to in varying degrees. All such forces are part of the Stochastic Destiny Principle. Thus, this Principle explains both the type of democracy or capitalism or socialism prevailing at any point of time and evolving over time in each country as well as the success of any country in achieving goals that you or I or others consider desirable. The destined time path of no country is in the control of deliberate choice of the societies concerned, least of all to political leaders. The actions of individuals, groups and political leaders are not deliberate social choices but the result of interactive forces linked to the Stochastic Destiny Principle.
G: So, you do not believe that societies make choices.
S: I do not believe that Individuals or societies can make real independent choices. What an individual does is to get into the choice that he is conditioned and forced to make given his/ her natural (genetic) propensities and the circumstances. Social choices are not made: they emerge as the result of interactions of destined individual choices. The political mechanism to translate or aggregate individual choices into social choices is also similarly destined outcomes. The Indians of today or of 1947 did not make a choice in favour of democracy: the variant of democracy that we currently operate in just evolved under the impact of various forces operating in the past. Sooner rather than later, India may transcend this distorted, negative variant of democracy to more open, transparent and positive variant of democracy.
G: You are saying many things. You not only believe in destiny and lack of independent choice for individuals and societies. You are also saying that what we term as democracy need not be democracy at all.
S: Yes, even if a society feels that it is making a choice to adopt democracy, it does not necessarily adopt democracy. It may not even know what democracy it wishes to adopt and how it evolves over time. Often democracy means Government “of the people, by the people and for the people”. This rhetoric makes people believe that they are in democracy when actually they are not.
G: Please illustrate.
S: Most often democratic countries are actually run by governments that are “off the people, beyond the people and fraud on the people”. You are led to believe that democracy means the right to cast vote in elections. If 50% of the electorate is illiterate or uneducated what you have is 50% illiterate and uneducated democracy. There is difference between 80% educated and 50% educated democracies. If there are 50% uneducated voters, why should they vote for educated people? Why should uneducated politicians make people educated? In democracies with political active population who are uneducated, efforts will be made to education a farce. They will question the rule of law. They will question the fairness of educated judiciary. They will question the authority and independence of educated election commissioners. They will question the quality and independence of the educated educationists/ teachers of the places of learning from primary school to universities. They will question the necessity of high standards of education. Thus you will slowly see the decline in standards of education, politicians as education administrators, relaxation of standards of tests and qualifying marks so that the uneducated can be counted as educated. So, the society will justify poor education as a desirable goal selected in a democratic way.
G: You are dramatizing.
S: Not really. In a country where 70% of the people are uneducated and also smoke bidis (a form of cigarettes), what kind of laws will be passed on smoking, what rates of tax will be imposed on bidis and what kind of research on tobacco and cancer will be funded by the Government? We know how low quality educationists have been inducted into education system by politicians. If the Government and the elected representatives of the people start acting on the premise that they are the only authorized and also the most competent persons/ groups to decide about everything in the society, you do not have democracy. Democracy is not all about winning the elections to get the power to lord over others.
G: So, people may claim that they have or trying to have democracy. But they are far from that. Democratic equality does not follow human choice. Nations have to accept whatever democratic equality or inequality emerges at any point of time in conformity with the Stochastic Destiny Principle.
S: Democracy is a formula to resolve conflicts among individuals and groups. It is an arbitrary rule. It has no sanctity of its own. But it has a special appeal because it is a rule for the domination of majority. Even if the majority is foolish or brute, cruel, you have to accept it sportingly. If the whole world was one country, Indians and Chinese would have ruled the World and taken away all the petroleum oil the Arab countries would have had. The application of democracy was not intended to serve the majority but to protect the oppression of the majority by the few. But that is not what democracy is able to deliver most of the time. It cannot because it is so destined. The process of practical application of the concept of democracy can vary so widely and is so susceptible to fraud, cheating and manipulation that the impact on the society often turns out to be opposite of and completely different from what the concept of democracy promises to deliver.
G: And, according to you, this is only natural and therefore destined.
God-dependent Choice
G: It seems that you believe that God makes all choices. Human beings choose what they are destined to choose as individuals or as groups or societies.
S: Yes, but even God’s choices are part of a process that I call the Destiny Principle.
G: A Nobel Laureate says that societies and people should have the opportunity and ability to consider alternative choices available. You seem to say that he is incorrect!
S: No, I do not say that. What he says is what he is destined to say. He is correct in what he says. That is how human civilization progresses. The impact of what he says on others now and in future will be as per the Stochastic Destiny Process. The exercise of choice is the process through which Mankind advances. But the choices taken actually taken are not independent decision of any man or a group. The discovery of choices, the willingness to make choices and the actual choice making are all outcomes of forces beyond the independent control of an individual or a group. We choose that we are destined to choose given the past, the forces of prevailing circumstances and the properties/ inclinations in built in each of us.
G: Isn’t that contradictory?
S: No. It is part of the destiny process that most people continue to think about making choices, generate alternative choices and feel that they make choices. Destined choices by any person do not come from out of the blue: they come out of the destined process. People may think about alternatives but choose the one that is best according to some criteria. Some one decides to do something to maximize his self-interest. Some others decide to do something in the interest of someone else or the society. These criteria have also evolved over time. If some people do not think about making choices, and someone advises them to empower themselves by making choices as result of which those people become choice-making people, this is what is in the destiny. I believe in Destiny Principle and simultaneously make choices and advise other to make rational choices. I do not find any conflict. I do whatever I do in making choices and advising others on making choices only because I am destined and compelled to do so by the forces that have been operating on my body and mind since my birth.
G: I thought that those who would believe in your Destiny Principle are irrational, unscientific minds attached to old scriptures that are no more relevant to modern civilizations.
S: You are destined to think like that. You are as correct as I am about Destiny Principle.
G: But over the centuries, Human Society has expanded its stock of knowledge that gives the power to control destiny. So, nowadays we should be saying that we make our destinies.
S: Man has acquired great knowledge no doubt. That was destined to happen. Man did not acquire knowledge by choice but by the forces of destiny. Even that knowledge acquired so far is far, far inadequate for Man to be able to alter his destiny even a little. Assume that a man-made computer clock knows how it keeps time. Would that make it change the time? No. Even if one had the entire knowledge, one cannot control one’s destiny.
G: Isn’t Man’s life different now than what was centuries back because of the expansion of Man’s knowledge? Can we not say that Man has changed his destiny?
S: No. You cannot logically claim that. In the history of natural evolutionary process, man is of recent origin. This process has imparted many properties in human beings. One such property is to discover what goes on in the environment, acquire knowledge and apply knowledge to change the way Man lives. This is the working out of the Destiny Principle. Man was destined by the process to discover numerous properties of the physical world and destined to use this growing knowledge to light fire, grow food, hunt animals, kill fish, cook food, construct better shelter, weave clothes, build machines, defend against natural calamities, fly airplanes, communicate long-distance through radio frequency, invent computer and internet, formulate drugs to cure diseases and help extend life expectancy, send manned and unmanned spacecraft to probe the planets and the stars in the skies. All this was destined. Man had no control over the process.
G: Such an explanation would rob Man of his great achievements.
S: Do we have to give credit to children as they grow up slowly in to full grown adult bodies and acquire mental capabilities to deal with complex concepts and various languages. This happens naturally because it is a natural process. Most babies are destined to grow up into adult bodies: babies do not choose to become adults.
G: You seem to make Man as an integral part of Nature as all other things in the Universe.
S: Is there any specific reason that one must consider human beings as autonomous entities outside the Natural System?
G: The Universe has been expanding. It shows that completely new things can emerge independent of the Natural System.
S: No. It does not show that. The discovery that Universe is expanding means that the distances among galaxies are increasing. But this expansion is taking place in what? When you walk east and I walk west the physical distance between us increases. But the distance exists on the surface of the land. When fire expands in size, the expansion takes place over a three-dimensional space that always exists. Similarly, the previously known Universe can expand only within the hitherto unknown Universe. The distances among galaxies can increase if the galaxies drift apart in space that already existed even if unknown to us so far. It is a completely endogenous system in which nothing can emerge independent or nothing exogenous can arrive from outside.
G: So you do not believe that the Universe is expanding?
S: The Universe is Infinite. The things within the universe can expand or contract within the universe. If the Universe has to expand it has to expand within the Universe. Ask yourself where is it that the Universe is expanding? If you admit of anything separate where the expansion takes place, then it must be already in existence whether previously known to exist or not. The entire universe is filled with something or the other, whether we can observe them or not, whether they have mass or not. The size of the Universe is Infinity. Where are the limits of the Universe? There are none. If something within the universe expands it must be within the previously known parts of the Universe or newly discovered hitherto unknown parts of the Universe.
G: OK. For a moment let us assume that you are correct that your Stochastic Destiny Principle operates as a process over the domain of this infinite Universe System that is completely endogenous and does not admit of any external, outside shock. Now, please explain how you would design such a process and system that is ever lasting.
S: I am sure you do not require me to write a treatise on this subject and detail the design of an infinite system and its inherent process or processes. You probably want to visualize the feasibility of such design. I suggest that you do some small experiments. For instance, you may take a big graph paper. Take a red pencil, a blue pencil and an eraser that can remove marks on graph paper without affecting the strength of the paper. Toss a coin. When a head comes, put a red dot on any one of the small blank squares on the graph paper. When a tail occurs, put a blue dot on any one of the small blank square within the distance of three small squares from any previously coloured small squares or if that is not possible choose any other blank square to put the blue dot mark. After you have done this for four dots, in every fifth draw erase any two squares already coloured. Go on doing this to see how long you last. Now, record the destiny of different squares and colours in terms of their longevity in terms of number of tosses a square remains coloured and number of blue dotted and red dotted small squares.
G: Such games may be never ending. But how does this help me.
S: It will help you design endogenous systems that last forever without external shocks and without giving any part of the system any real discretion to choose.
G: When did God design the system and how? Or, does he continually design and redesign the system.
S: I really do not know. But I do not believe that God, like a design engineer, works on his system. The entire universe or the creation is filled with something or other, whether we can see, feel or discover them or not. Each infinitesimal point in the Universe is filled with some mass-less thing that let us call OM rather than atom or sub-atomic particles like neutrinos. Conceptually, no vacuum exists. All that we see and feel or cannot see or feel are floating in the media called OM. The natural process takes place in this OM. The OM is constant, indivisible, limitless infinity. God Himself is the System that evolves and adapts in this OM. The natural system design is a process that evolves and adapts. That is why the ancient sages believed that God splits Himself in to many forms and then integrates back into one form or become formless. The division and multiplication process continues continuously in sub-atomic particles, in atoms, in living beings, in oceans, mountains, in air, in the Sun ad stars, in the cosmos within the known universe and within that part of the universe that is yet unknown, undiscovered by Man. As with anything else, the emergence and evolution of Mankind and human civilization is nothing but the result of that never-ending natural process. What Man comes to know about the Universe at what point of time is also part of the same stochastic Destiny Process. No one can be independent of that process.
G: Even God is not independent of that process?
S: Right.
G: So, even God does not exercise independent choice.
S: Correct. See, most people will agree that there should not be any War or military conflict in the World. Wars have always had a devastating effect on the minds of people only after Man came to know how to protect them form storms, fire, earthquakes, floods, rains, volcanoes, epidemics and etc. These physical/ natural calamities had a beneficial effect on Man. The benefits were immense in terms of progress of science and technology as well as religion and philosophy. The Wars have tremendous benefits that people do not want to count. These benefits again take the form of progress in science and technology, greater understanding of the sources of conflict leading to war, development of better methods of negotiations for peace, enabling people to learn their mistakes and foolishness, the embarrassment to the false pride of people/ nations or their leaders of both the fighting parties.
G: It is amusing to think of benefits of War! Are Wars fought because the benefits are substantially higher than the costs?
S: Alexander the Great forced wars on other countries if they had not agreed to become part of his Empire without a fight. People have learnt lessons from such wars including the World War I and II. Today, people do not fight wars to expand their territories. But they fight because both parties are unable to give up the attachment to their past and accept the reality as in Palestine. Or, they take uncompromising stance to belittle each other as in the case of the US and Saddam (and now some of the divided Iraqi groups). Maybe, people would take lessons in future and learn not to act so foolishly as Saddam, France, Germany and Russia did. Maybe, future US administration and military would learn to develop effective strategies to deter the rise of oppressive tyrants like Saddam who threaten World peace without going to war or win wars against such tyrants without causing human casualty or avoiding human sufferings.
G: You imply that Wars cannot ever be banished from Earth?
S: So far wars seem to have been inevitable. Even Lord Rama had to fight and inflict a great cost to his followers and Ravana's Kingdom. Lord Krishna could not stop the Kurukshetra War and its devastating consequences. But successive generations have learnt highly beneficial lessons from these Wars.
G: If the costs are so huge, why should your God System make Wars inevitable?
S: We estimate only the costs of War. We must also learn to estimate the benefits of War. So long as there exists a fair chance (in probabilistic sense) that the benefits of a war may far exceed the costs of War, Man is likely to remain potentially violent to slip into Wars from time to time.
I personally think the cost of Iraq war is much lower as compared to some other wars US engaged herself in the past. The War benefits to society may have been much bigger. Man has made considerable progress and continues to do so in reducing the costs of war and enhance the benefits from war.
G: The war in Iraq still continues in 2006 with US Military actively present. The US has failed to win the war.
S: The Iraq war, according to me, is over. US military can withdraw from Iraq, if the war was to unseat and banish Saddam and destroy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The remaining people fighting in Iraq will continue to fight civil wars because they are still intoxicated by the warring spirit and selfishness.
G: Even not counting the damages after the fall of Saddam regime, the cost of the War is substantial. The money could have been better spent for human welfare.
S: But war benefits are also to be counted. Just by allowing the War in Iraq to happen the way it has many Arab World countries have become further wealthier through rise in crude oil prices and poorer countries like China and India continued to get more of their citizens employed and become richer by providing the American cheap supply of cheap food, clothing, furniture, software services etc and all these on loan. It is not so easy to calculate costs and benefits of War to Humanity as easily as some think because they believe that there are no benefits from Wars.
G: Are you a warmonger?
S: No, I am not. Lest others misunderstand, I must state that I do not want wars to happen even if the benefits far exceed costs of wars. I am among those who are frightened by wars. But ex-post evaluation of the desirability of a war by estimating only the costs and ignoring benefits, to my mind, is dishonesty or trick or simple ignorance.
G: Can you prove that the cost of Iraq War is much less than the benefit of the war?
S: I probably can, but only after a few years when the benefits become clearly evident. However, when man or a nation makes a choice to go in for war, it can only make a forecast of likely costs and benefits. The forecasts may not always come true as all forecasts of the future are probabilistic and can never be made with certainty. All wars may not necessarily result in positive net benefits, even if ex ante forecasts anticipated net benefits.
G: So, you hedge your position by introducing probabilities. That’s clever but not convincing.
S: I welcome your comment. It is exactly the same comment that applies to any other ex-ante or ex-post attempt to evaluate the desirability of war based on estimates of cost. They are all clever attempts that fail to convince.
G: But the US had launched war in Iraq to get a strong hold over Iraq’s large oil reserves.
S: I do not have any idea about what goes on in the minds of the US administration or the Americans. Maybe, you know better. But I would not consider that such an objective for Iraq war is really in the feasible zone in the modern day world. Rather such an objective may be feasible through less costlier non-war methods. A perpetual UN sanction regime with UN-operated sale of Iraqi oil auction to multinational oil companies could have been designed to suit US interest in Iraqi Oil. In any case, the war was destined to happen as per the Destiny Principle. The choice of the War by the US and Saddam was destined.
G: So you may agree that both political and economic interests may lead to wars.
S: Anyone will agree to such a Statement. But these causes have in turn some fundamental causes that are related to the tendencies human beings have been imparted by the Destiny Principle. Wars are the result of the same Grand Process that yields natural phenomenon like tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes, burning of the Sun, the planetary motion, the emergence of life on earth, the reproduction of life forms, the growth of children and the death of human beings.
G: While I do not agree with you that wars are nothing but another form of natural calamities, can I shift to another area where Man has proved his independence? Man has designed new systems and policies to improve his economic conditions. These economic decisions are not forced by any destiny principle: they are of Man’s own.
S: Should we shift this new area of your choice to the next session of our dialogue?
G: That is what it seems destined.
Economics of Destiny
G: We are destined to discuss the independence of economic choices made by people!
S: It seems so. Please prove that economic choices of human beings are independent choices. Giving examples may help me better appreciate your point of view, if I am so destined.
G: Fine. Let us take the case of a car driver working for a small businessman in Kolkata. He is 32 and comes from an agricultural family in Bihar. His wife and two children live along with his mother and younger brother in the village in Bihar where they have adequate farm land to grow rice, wheat, vegetables and fruits that cover their needs and also to sell in the market to raise cash for buying other necessities including clothes, utensils, soaps, medicines, cooking oil, spices, cooking medium, etc as also pay for children’s education and doctors. Some of the money from sale of farm produce helps meet working capital needs for farming. He himself earns about Rs. 45,000 a year, lives in a small shelter shared by a few friends on payment of rent and run a joint dinner kitchen for them. He visits his village three/ four times a year and contributes about half his income to the family back in the village.
S: OK. What economic decision does he take?
G: None. The chained may have nothing to loose. But all are chained to choices that one has to make. The Driver had made choices that he had to make forced by the circumstances and his genetic codes. Nothing was decided by him. He was born in the family he did not choose. His tendencies were shaped by his genetics and the environment in which he grew: both the genetics and the environment were not of his choice. His and his family's economic rationality is the result of genetics and environment that neither he nor anyone else had chosen. He could have earned more had his family reallocated the wealth by selling the farm land and going into cash/ bank deposit investments. But this choice was not within the feasible zone for him and his family, given their attachment to land and the uncertainties of the future, their education background and so on. He is one of the Yadavs who could not become a politician and minister in India. Certain other Yadav had only one choice: to become a politician and a minister.
S: But all this happens due to an unjust social structure.
G: Yes, but none of the Yadavs chose the social structure. Since ages social reformers thought of designing and implementing a just social order. No such just social order has yet come to materialize. Society seems incapable of choosing a just social order, wars, fights, agitations, political campaigns and ideologies, and revolutions notwithstanding.
S: Then what is the utility of studying history, philosophy and economics? It is to make proper individual and social choices.
G: But all such choices are the result of so-called choices made earlier. All choices are chronologically bound by consistency. That we do not have a just social order is the result of the past choices by the society and the new ideas and pressures that happen to be generated. Today's driver Yadav or Minister Yadav are not what they are because of their choosing: they could not have chosen otherwise than becoming driver and minister respectively. Study of history, philosophy and economics explains how and why Yadav Driver and Yadav Minister are what they are today. Such studies are themselves knowledge that has been acquired by chance and not through independent free choice. Today's driver Yadav's grandson may become a politician and nminister decades later. It all depends on the stochastic destiny process. Today's driver Yadav has as much economic rationality as was possible for him at each moment of his time. His choice is bound by his initial conditions and the time path so far. He has no choice to be different. The society today has no choice to be different than what it is today.
S: But he can make choices that will make the future different.
G: Even there, his choices are determined by his past and the circumstances to which he has to react to. So, there is virtually no real choice or option for him make independently.
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Pat Two: Cause Effect Paradigm
[This is in continuation of the dialogue that begun in 2003 and continued till early 2006 in Choice of Destiny and Destiny of Choice. The present dialogue began in the second half of 2006. Man suffers from a great dilemma whether to believe in God and spiritualism or in Science and materialism. Choice of Destiny and Destiny of Choice tried to explore and expose this dilemma. Those who believe in God have difficulty in leading a life that is based on the acceptance of the proposition that they are puppets in the hands of God. They like to reserve something that they can do and choose independently of God. This is a dilemma that separates Man from God even for those who believe in God. But a similar dilemma faces those who do not believe in God and believe in reason, rationality, Science, Scientific methods and Supremacy of Mankind over Universe. For them the key is the methods of science and the past success of science’s explanatory power, but they still need for themselves a scientific proof to establish the certainty of the triumph of science in completely explaining the entire Universe in finite time. However optimistic one may be about the future of science based on its past success of science, a probability of less than one here gives rise to a dilemma whether the progress of science can be fully be explained by science itself. How far the disbelief in God is is dependent on a firm faith in the ultimate state of complete scientific knowledge about the Universe? This needs to be explored. One way of exploring that is to study how far choices are really made under Cause-Effect Paradigm.]
1. Cause-Effect Paradigm
G: We are meeting after a long time. Last time we met you were so obsessed with your Destiny Principle that you intended to explain all aspects of societal progress over time solely in terms of that Principle.
S: I know you do not like a Destiny Principle that refutes the existence of any choice to man as an individual or society. Many of my learned friends who believe in God did not like the human choice destructing Destiny Principle, even if it is of stochastic variety. Man wants to determine, at least partly, the destination he reaches at any future point of time.
G: That is true. Your concept of Destiny is not merely a meaningless one from the point of view of science; it takes away the freedom of choice to believe in God even from a person who believes in God.
S: I am sorry for that. But I can’t help. If you believe in God, you cannot but accept that it is God who has forced you to believe in God. It’s that simple.
G: Nor do you leave those who do not believe in God happy. You say that their disbelief in God is not an outcome of their free, independent choice but is the effect of God’s will.
S: It is not my choice either.
G: I understand your position. But your theories make the progress of science and human civilization beyond Man’s control.
S: Yes. But that seems to be the Truth. Something causes progress of science to take place in a sequence and pace that vary over time. Scientific progress is the effect of something. Science is about establishing links between causes and effects. Science is based on a particular paradigm of reasoning. And, it is a natural phenomenon. But associated with that is another natural phenomenon: a strong Cause-Effect Paradigm Obsession Syndrome.
G: Yes, Cause-Effect Paradigm is very fundamental to scientific methods: the association of effects and causes. But where do you get an obsession syndrome here?
S: Before that let us look at the cause-effect paradigm in a time perspective.
G: OK.
S: If you would observe the cause precedes the effect in time.
G: Yes, that is the sequence. It was the Big Bang that caused the Universe. It is energy and our limbs that help us jump. It is weight and gravity that pulls us down. It is some cells / DNA/ RNA within the body and their interaction among themselves and with external environment that determine our physical, emotional and intellectual growth, stability/ instability and decay. Whatever happens now must have a cause/ reason that exited before that particular happening.
S: Can you not think of effects preceding causes?
G: No. How can that happen?
S: We keep that for the next session.
2. Cause-Effect Inversion
G: How do you say that effect can precede cause in time? It is not possible.
S: The reason why one cannot believe in cause preceding effect is because of blind faith in Cause-Effect Paradigm. This paradigm gives rise to an obsession that I call cause-effect obsession syndrome. Once this Syndrome afflicts you, you cannot view the causes as effects and the effects as causes. But it is perfectly possible to run backwards in time and imagine decaying cells becoming alive and multiplying. If I am a scientist today, that is what caused me to study science in my school. If I am to die of cancer some eighty years later, this must cause cancerous cells to be hidden somewhere in my body much earlier.
G: You are saying the same thing as Science does but you are just interchanging the use of the terms cause and effect.
S: Yes, I am doing that but probably I am doing more than that. I am saying that it is today that caused yesterday and today is the effect of the future. I call this Cause-Effect Paradigm Inverse.
G: You have gone beyond fuzzy logic to funny, absurd logic.
S: Why do you call it absurd? Most of the time we do such funny things in real life. We first construct a future and then that causes us to think what we should do now. We wish to fly at a future date and that causes us to construct a device that would make us fly. It is the design of future that is the cause and the technological experiments that comes before that is the effect.
G: You are wrong. What we construct or design about the future is the result of our past knowledge and experience. We design the future today when the future has not yet arrived. You must be careful about the way you deal with time.
S: Yes, we must be careful in handling time. If we say that we must live for a cause, the way we live now becomes the effect of that cause.
G: You are only playing with words. Such play will not help us progress.
S: We must be careful with words and time. Fine. But even noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore had composed a short story, titled IchhaPuran (Fulfillment of Wish), about how a father and son lived after they interchanged their position by a boon from the God.
G: That is a funny story for entertainment.
S: That is true but it is equally true that the story had important lessons to tell. But let us not distract from our main point. We classify time in such a way that some events of the later time can be ascribed as the effect of some other events of an earlier time. That is the natural process. But it is possible to look in an inverse way and some events of a later period had to cause some other events in an earlier period.
G: Why should we work with such inversion of cause and effect? How does this help us?
S: I agree that the normal cause-effect paradigm helps us to discover many natural laws. That is how the science has progressed. That is how even human civilization and the society have progressed over time. That is how even the concept of God, religion and culture have changed. We find out causes and effects and their relationship by observing the past happenings and, where possible, by doing experiments. But this method has still not helped us solve the problem of forecasting the future with certainty. Unless we are able to forecast the future with certainty all our knowledge remains incomplete in explaining the Universe or the Creation completely.
G: How does this issue matter? One day, science will discover all that explains the entire Creation and we will have complete knowledge.
S: It matters because we want to be certain that the progress of science is uniquely associated with a future state where we will all know the complete explanation of the Creation from time immemorial in the past to time immemorial in the future. Without the establishment of certainty, reliance on science will remain a faith no different from the faith in an ideology or a religion or the God. We cannot just wait indefinitely for science to reveal everything that we need to know. We also need to know how exactly science will discover all that we need to know. And, what happens after we get to know all that we need to know through science.
G: But has not the progress of science and technology already proved the capability of scientific methods?
S: If we have to have place complete reliance on science, we must be able to explain scientifically how the present is uniquely tied with the past. If the present could have come about also from a past different from the one we have witnessed, we have a problem. And, we have a greater problem if a present different from what we are witnessing at present was also possible given the same past that we have already witnessed. We need to establish that the past uniquely determines the future and the future is associated with a unique set of the past.
G: How can one do that? Future is unknown. We cannot predict the long-term future with certainty as yet.
S: If the future of science is uncertain, our belief in science and scientific methods is only a bet or a speculation or a faith that cannot be scientifically defended in a way that is stronger than the defense of faith in religion or God.
G: How do you propose to use the Cause-Effect Inverse to help us out of this dilemma?
S: First step would be to explore the uniqueness of present-past association. Once we get some confidence with the results from such exploration, the nest step would be to describe the desired ultimate state of complete scientific knowledge. Then, treating that State as the cause one would need to work backwards in time to see the effects of the cause and compare the actual past and present with the scenarios worked out as effects.
G: Assuming that this is feasible, how do we use that analysis?
S: If the worked out scenarios and the actual/ observed, present and past, tally, we could come to the conclusion that we could rely on science to attain Complete knowledge in finite time, not in our life time though.
G: That would be a great thing for the Superiority or rather Supremacy of Science. Does that mean that then Science becomes independent of the Destiny Principle?
S: No. Rather that would only prove completely that Science and its progress is explainable by the Destiny Principle. More interesting is the case where the reverse projection of the future in to the present and the past significantly differ from the observed ones. The most interesting possibility would be where the desired future state of complete scientific knowledge is consistent with alternative scenarios for the past.
G: What would that imply?
S: It could mean that Science may never reach the State of complete knowledge. It could also mean that Stochastic Destiny Principle works and that the progress of science is subject that Principle. All progress in science and technology is purely a natural process much like the process that generates rains, floods, volcanic eruptions, death of star, etc.
G: Your discussion is becoming too messy and abstract to the point of being bereft of sense. Can we not shift to some examples in real life?
S: We could try doing that in later sessions. But now we need to note that quite apart from this time inversion of cause-effect relationship, in real life we deal with time in many other inverse ways.
G: How?
S: When we discover light from a distant celestial body in a far away galaxy, we are dealing with the past in the present. When we listen to a disc recorded earlier a recoded DVD of Olympics we deal with past in the present. We capture the past and replay it in the present. We cannot capture the future in a similar way. But forecasts and predictions are probable images of the future. We do write scientific novels to project the future. If we work forward from assumptions and initial conditions to future state, why can’t we work backwards from a given/ assumed future state to the present and from the present to the past? Analysis of fossils found today helps us move backwards to paint the past.
G: But doing so is not necessarily an inversion of cause and effect relationship, as we normally understand.
S: You are right. But it might as well be an inversion if we simply could start thinking in terms of a dynamics that associate one state with another state with reverse ordering of the states in terms of time. We start with a 60-year-old just dead and work backwards in time or from a fruit to the tree to the sapling and to the seed. We may start from the current state of the earth to its state billions of years in the past. We can go back from the future to the present and to the past. We can go back from a desired future state to the present. This is only an analytical tool. Once you have the solution to a difference equation involving time, you have a time path along which you can move both forward and backward.
G: Let us end the session here to avoid further confusion.
S: I agree.
Paradigm Obsession Syndrome
G: You were talking about Cause-Effect Inversion. Even if we accept that, how does it help us?
S: It helps us avoid the Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome. To put it another way Cause-Effect Inversion is the antidote to Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome. To understand this we need to elaborate the Syndrome a bit further. Can I have your permission?
G: Granted.
S: We have already seen the basic characteristic of this Syndrome. It is reflected in the belief in and faith on the ability of Science to explain the Nature/Universe/ Creation completely one day in infinite time. This belief or faith is not based on any scientific reasoning but only a projection of the past successes of science in explaining many Natural phenomena and identifying many Laws that govern the Nature or Universe or Creation.
G: But do all scientists develop this Syndrome?
S: No. Pure scientists’ mind may not be able to accept this faith. For them, they accept as Truth only those Laws/ Principles/ Propositions for which scientific inquiry has found valid scientific proof and this acceptance is conditional on Scientific Inquiry not finding any inadequacy of the proof at any later point of time. Pure Scientific mind accepts as Truths that have been established by known and accepted scientific methods. It rejects propositions / theories that are inconsistent with the accepted Truths or have been proved wrong by scientific methods. It pleads ignorance about any other theories or propositions.
G: Then, how does the Obsession Syndrome develop?
S: It develops naturally from the great power that Science and Technology have demonstrated over centuries. If science has discovered so much and impacted Man’s life so much as compared to the ancient days, I would tend to develop a faith that one final day Science will discover all that completely and fully explain creation with zero probability of any part of the Complete sets of Truths being ever proved wrong after that final day.
G: I now seem to understand what you are trying to say about this Syndrome.
S: But there is more. When this Syndrome affects my mind, I tend also to believe that the search for and establishing cause and effect relationships are easy now that I am conversant with accepted scientific methods. So even before I am able to establish valid proofs, I start believing in cause and effect relationships that I only surmise to be Truths. If many others join me in the same belief, I develop a confidence in those surmises yet to be proved as Truth. When many people, including the common people, join this process of spreading of faith, surmises turns into Truths based on popularity. We develop different schools of thought. The scientific community and the common people get divided into different groups based on what they believe to be true. They tend to criticize each other based on inadequate proof supplied and possible vested interest motives.
G: I see. What is this motive issue?
S: So long as the debates over scientific theories/ propositions remain within the scientists, there is very little concern with the motive issue. One school of scientists may not agree with another. Both may go on finding fault with the logic/ arguments/ proofs supplied by each other. But sometimes, each school tries to go beyond the debate and start ascribing personal / group motives to explain why the other school has vested interest in favouring a particular theory without valid proof. For example, those in favour of theory X may get tempted to say that those favouring the competing theory Y have an ulterior extra-scientific interest to do so: the ulterior motive may be to protect the reputation of the leaders of their school of thought or to support a particular social policy.
G: How can scientists do that kind of bickering and character assassinations?
S: Normally they do not. And, it does not really matter much even if they do such quarreling strictly among themselves for the scientific community in general has the patience to bear the pains of long periods of waiting to get to the Truth.
G: So, the Syndrome does not really matter.
S: It matters in the real world outside when the policy-makers, administrators, politicians, educated classes, environmentalists and even the common people get involved or roped in subjects/ theories/ propositions of scientific debates.
G: How?
S: Some scientific Truths have implications on public policy. When scientists prove that nicotine and other elements in tobacco raises the chances of a smoker attracting cancer, anti-smoking lobbies develop. But many doctors who treat patients continue to smoke. The tobacco growers and cigarette/ tobacco product manufacturers resist ban on consumption of tobacco. Confusion arises. Different groups take their defense from scientific cause-effect relationship discoveries. Some may argue that if people start smoking on a limited scale after the age of 60, this may in itself not cause cancer before the smoker dies at the age of 75. There are many people who smoked away till they met death before attracting cancer. Now, public policy regarding smoking divides common people, even members in the same family, into smoking and anti-smoking groups. Even passive smoking becomes a great issue. Both the groups believe in cause-effect paradigm but fight based on their own understanding of the scientific basis of the relationship between smoking and cancer.
G: We know that smoking increases the risk of cancer. This is based on scientific observation and analysis.
S: You are right. But it is equally true that many smokers did not have cancer before they died and many non-smokers died of cancer. Both are scientific truths. So, the Truth that a scientist can accept is that smoking may most likely cause cancer and injury to health. If we are not affected by cause-effect obsession syndrome we will not accept the statement that smoking will certainly cause cancer. Science is not so easy and simple as people afflicted by cause-effect obsession syndrome would believe.
G: But most likely incidence of cancer due to smoking is based on scientific application of Probability Statistics Theory with empirical data.
S: True. That is why we use it with most likely qualification and we never mean that it is certain. Based on this high probability of the average smoker we tend to develop ban on smoking or smoking in public places.
G: That is logical.
S: No. Not necessarily if we come to know that the genetic/ biological/ molecular combination differences among individuals can lead to differences in the likelihood of each individual getting affected by cancer before death. This may mean different sets of human beings classified by such genetic differences may have different probabilities of being affected by cancer before death depending on he starts smoking and rate of smoking. In case later science confirms such calculations, public policy implications could be different: like smoking can be banned for individuals based on genetic test reports. This would be especially relevant once the society recognizes smoking may be giving enjoyment or pleasure to some people and this value of enjoyment from smoking has to be compared with the cost of smoking including differential probability of attracting cancer before death of different individuals.
G: But that is relevant if and when Science comes with such discovery of the Truth of differences in probability of attracting cancers for different individuals.
S: Correct. But once we start recognizing such possibilities in the future our moral justification for general smoking ban today weakens. We specifically correct the cautionary statement from “smoking will cause cancer” to “Smoking will cause cancer unless you are an exceptional case”.
G: Can you give another example?
S: Yes. Scientific Truth leads us to use pesticides to protect agricultural produce on the fields. Scientific Truth also leads us to ban use of pesticides given the potential adverse effect on the health of the people who eats vegetables produced by farmers who use pesticides. Then starts a process of trying to find the optimal rate of pesticide application. A debate on optimal standards emerges. Again, people get divided on the issue of use of pesticides. Each group thinks that they have the scientific proof of the cause-effect relationship between pesticide use and heath of the people. Observe the Coke-Pepsi drink controversy that caused widespread concern in India in 2003 and again in 2006. Both sides had their own scientific proof. If you observe you will find many learned persons joined the two sides of the debate and yet either most of these people will not fully aware of the scientific findings or were hiding that part of the scientific knowledge from the people that were not consistent with their argument or case. In fact, the debate created more confusion about scientific methods and findings. These debates are natural phenomenon and cannot be avoided but they are also the most unscientific activity that can happen.
G: So, what is the solution to such confusion caused by Cause-Effect Obsession paradigm?
S: The solution may lie in cultivating cause-effect paradigm inversion. That means we need to encourage people to view in the reverse way. Among those people who were affected by cancer, how many have had anything to with smoking or consuming tobacco? We work backwards from cancer to cigarette smoking and tobacco consumption. This approach of looking at things in this reverse way is Cause-Effect Inversion. It may sound absurd and funny but it helps remove cause-effect obsession syndrome that take you away from the letter and spirit of science. If we have Coke or Pepsi cola tomorrow as drink and apple as food, how should this cause us today to produce them with ingredients that meet the standards of pesticide residues? Can cola consumption tomorrow cause us to find today milk and municipal water supplied to homes as containing very high levels of pesticide residue and therefore cause us today to subject to processing of water and milk to certain standards of quality? Can safe food and drink tomorrow cause us to ban use of pesticides in agriculture today?
G: We better end this session here.
Frustration Syndrome
G: I surmise that your motivation to develop Cause-Effect Inverse is to prove that one has no independence in choosing the future consistent with your Destiny Principle.
S: You are right in being suspicious about my motive. But my voyage is one in exploration and examination.
G: But I also suspect that your Choice-absent Destiny Principle has emerged from your frustrations and failures that you have experienced in your life. Since you could not succeed in many areas despite your best efforts, you have become a believer in fate. I say that you exhibit a Frustration Syndrome. You failed in many areas and did not find any cause of that failure that was under your control and you chose not to use the control.
S: You are partly right. My frustrations and failures in life are the raw data for the hypothesis of Destiny Principle. But all my achievements and successes in life are equally important raw data that contributed to my thinking. I could not relate anything independent / free choice that led to my achievements and successes. There was no cause that could fully and uniquely explain my successes and achievements as the effect.
G: But your life is not a representative sample.
S: You are right. But there are so many persons like me in this world. The states towards the end of many lives are so similar despite wide differences in initial states. There is no unique relationship between end states and states before that. When we deal with so many persons we have more than representative sample for analytical purposes.
G: But much depends on how you establish equivalence of (identical) states. That is very difficult considering the multitude of dimensions of a state for an individual, especially in view of individual differences in psychological and mental perception about seemingly identical states.
S: If we cannot establish equivalence of states among different individuals, the problem gets further compounded for the reliability of scientific methods.
G: How sure are you that your approach is not conditioned by your failures and frustrations and your life experience?
S: I am not sure of anything. I just want to explore and find out. I want science to address my concern about the capability of science to attain complete knowledge in finite time.
G: You can never get that.
S: In that case reliance on science for attaining complete knowledge about Creation becomes a matter of faith.
G: How does that matter if people have faith in science?
S: It matters. In that case, it would be difficult to make a rational choice between spiritual / religious pursuit and scientific pursuit of knowledge as alternative paths to complete knowledge.
G: I understand what you are saying. One can have blind faith in God or Destiny Principle. Another can have blind faith in the future progress of Science. Being faiths, there is nothing to choose between them. So what?
S: You are right. It does not make much difference to the World. If there are cultural prejudices, social prejudices, religious prejudices and irrational behaviour all over the world, the scientific prejudices can co-exist as well. For, all this is consistent with the Destiny Principle. It is the very essence of Nature and Natural Laws. Belief in Science and belief in God will co-exist in Nature. That’s Natural Law. And that’s Creation. We cannot really choose between them. We happen to be believers in either Science or God or both or none from time to time.
G: You will say that this is just the result of a stochastic process.
S: Yes. There are many who are frustrated by failures including failure to get God’s favour to fulfill their desires or wants. Some of them stop believing in God while some continues to believe in God. It is not a result of independent free choice: it is simply the result of stochastic destiny process.
G: But Science delivers. There is proof.
S: Yes. Science delivers. But God also delivers so many things including Science. Science and scientific methods are part of the Creation, i.e. God. Concept of God, spiritual philosophy and practice of religion are the result of the natural human urge to know about the Universe and about Creation. This urge has given birth to many concepts, methods of analysis and experiments. Over time this helped evolve the concept of science and scientific methods. Science is also a result of Man’s urge to know.
G: But the urge to know is followed by the urge to use knowledge in life.
S: That is absolutely right. All these urges are natural sub-processes of the great stochastic destiny process. Scientific inquiries have made great successes and great failures. But Science continues to advance in both knowing and in continuously expanding the new area of ignorance Man wants to reduce.
G: How then do Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome and Cause-Effect Inverse contribute to the process?
S: These two are very natural, integral sub-processes of the Creation. These processes along with Cause-Effect Paradigm and human race have no choice but to co-exit. That co-existence and interaction is the history and future of Creation and its various parts.
G: Spiritual leaders do not know many of the Truths that Scientists have discovered.
S: The reverse is also true. Spiritual leaders know something that Scientists do not. Scientists also do not know how and why spiritual leaders come to exist. Spiritual leaders try to know something, which if they come to know results in zero need to know anything else including what Science may have discovered or trying to discover. But Creation is not about just spiritual leaders and their knowledge: it is also about Science, scientists, about people afflicted by Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome, about people with blind faith in God or Science, about human beings in general, about other life forms and about everything else we are aware of and not aware of.
G: To avoid confusion lets end this session now.
Full Convertibility Example
G: To progress in our discussions in more meaningful way, we need illustrations of Cause-Effect Paradigm, Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome and Cause-Effect Inverse.
S: Fine. Let us go through some real life examples. Let us reflect all these three through our dialogue. Can we explain why Indians fear Full Convertibility of the Rupee?
G: One reason can be that China has not done this. China with a larger population has continued to peg its currency with the Dollar and still runs a largely State controlled economy. If such a big country which has been growing much faster than India for long does not have full convertibility, why should India take such a step whose consequences can be bad?
S: So the scientific prejudice says that it is advisable to follow someone who is more powerful than you are.
G: Yes, it is better to follow good examples. Why do you call this prejudice?
S: Because the example is not relevant from the point of view of Cause-Effect Paradigm. Such examples reflect Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome. First, we only know of the past of China but we do not know of the future of China There is no certainty that China will follow the same policies all the time to come or that China will continue to do well with the same policies adopted in the past. If China’s pegged to dollar currency and restricted currency convertibility policies are to be good examples, we have to wait and check all the time in future if China is continuing to do well and/ or whether China is changing its exchange rate and currency convertibility policies. If future is what will prove whether certain policy or set of policies are good or bad, we cannot just follow examples of the past. To overcome this obsession syndrome, we have to paint a picture of the future and work backwards to the present.
G: Fine. There are other examples that show that many Asian countries that had adopted policies of free exchange rate determination by the market forces of demand, supply, etc., later suffered the Asian financial crises. But India and China escaped because they did not adopt such policies.
S: Association of events may not imply that a straightforward cause and effect relationship exists. Those countries that suffered the financial crisis in 1997 also did many other things that were not necessarily consistent with or necessarily complementary to full convertibility. So which is the cause of what is not very clear? Besides, many of these countries survived the crisis without much real damage. Normalcy returned in a short period of time. Why should some one worry about such short-term crises that make the economy stronger soon? Unless afflicted by Obsession Syndrome, we need not worry and invent logic to avoid what we fear.
G: Yes, Indians are generally afraid of full convertibility. Why risk full convertibility if we can avoid it for longer period?
S: Indians avoided markets, competition and liberal external trade for over four decades since Independence and remained a poor, slow growing country. The cost of such a policy turned out to be huge on the economy and the people.
G: Why do say that past economic policies forced the Indians suffer a great cost?
S: I do not have to say this. Those who are afraid of full convertibility today know this fact. The much faster economic growth of India since the time India started liberalizing and opening up is a pointer that they should wonder about. The cost of avoiding full convertibility can also be great.
G: It is better to pay such costs when we do not know what exactly will happen in future. India must get stronger before she adopts full convertibility. Otherwise, who knows how strong western countries will start dominating India soon?
S: But full convertibility itself can help India become stronger by growing at a faster rate and effectively deal with any threat of foreign domination. How many countries with full convertibility are foreign dominated in the world today? You do not know. So you develop apprehensions about what is strange and unfamiliar to you. So, you build up a cause-effect relation between Full Convertibility and foreign domination. You are affected by obsession syndrome. You start misusing the cause-effect paradigm even without being conscious of doing so.
G: You know who I am and you accuse me of obsession syndrome.
S: All these are but natural forces that are inherent part of the Universe or Creation. You are also part of the Universe and therefore can reflect Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome.
G: That is all the more true of you. Whatever you are saying may also be because the same Syndrome affects you.
S: According to my understanding of the Creation.
Part Thre: Irrelevance of Relevance
[This is the fourth in the series of serial dialogue that begun in 2003 with Choice of Destiny and Destiny of Choice, followed by Cause-Effect Paradigm in 2006. The present dialogue began in December 2006. Minds exposed to the three R’s are attracted by Scientific methods irrespective of their level of education. Children learn to argue from a very early stage. Argumentative and debating societies have been regarded as congenial to effective democracy and progress of scientific inquiry. The reasons why societies differ in terms of effectiveness in democracy and scientific achievements are however not very clear. But when ordinary citizens and learned persons show equal proclivity to argue, does that lead to individual behaviour based purely on scientific truth and knowledge? Does individual and social behaviour reflect any influence of faith beyond science? Even as rational scientific minds interact, various perspectives emerge and the relevance of one perspective to some appears irrelevant to others while another perspective appearing irrelevant to some is the most relevant to others. Balancing of differing and sometimes conflicting perspectives may take place in debates, actual decision-making and social behaviour but represent funny, ad hoc reconciliation based on nothing else but sheer muscle or number or money power rather than the power of reason or science. ]
1. Diversity of Relevance
G: You are now supposed to give more international illustrations of Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome and Cause-Effect Inverse.
S: Yes. But I am also supposed to do that by introducing one more dual proposition. That is: not all that we consider relevant while discussing an issue are really relevant and some may be irrelevant. This I call Irrelevance of Relevance. The dual of this proposition is: not all that we consider irrelevant are irrelevant and some irrelevant may be relevant. This dual proposition is what I call the Relevance of the Irrelevance.
G: Do these proposition have anything to do with Cause-Effect Paradigm, Obsession Syndrome and Inverse?
S: Yes. I hope my examples will show this. I heard about an interesting incident from one of my colleagues in Coal India Ltd. in the late 1970s. In a passenger bus, a group of college going students refused to pay ant fare for their trip on a particular day. The bus conductor persuaded them that they should pay for the trip and that is what is fair and legally binding obligations for any passenger traveling in a bus. The students argued that on the previous day they had to suffer because the buses were on a wildcat strike and they could not go to school. So, they needed to be compensated for the loss on the previous day by getting a free ride the next day.
G: But that is not being really argumentative. Their argument for not paying the fare is not justified. That the buses were off the road on the previous day is not relevant and the argument is not logical.
S: So, what the students considered relevant is irrelevant according to you.
G: Absolutely.
S: That is an example of Irrelevance of Relevance. Now observe the dual here itself. What you consider as irrelevant is also relevant. After all the students were asking for fairness and justice. How can the buses go off the roads and put the students to inconvenience.
G: Students were inventing this argument because they want to benefit in the form of extra pocket money. They want to spend the money saved by not giving the bus fare for other purposes. Their parents may have already given them the money to pay the bus fare.
S: If that is true, there is something wrong with the students’ upbringing or education or value system. If you have such a situation, from the students’ perspective they are making a relevant point. They are asking for compensation from the bus owners. But for the sake of argument, let us assume that the students have the right kind of education, value system and upbringing. They can still be making a relevant point by asking for compensation for the extra walking they had to do for the buses going off the roads on the previous day. They were protesting by declining to pay for today’s trip.
G: But such behaviour is based on childish logic. The students had no contract with the bus operators that they cannot go on off the road to protect their own interest. For example the bus operators might have gone off the road to protest against poor maintenance of the roads by the Govt. resulting in higher running expenses for them.
S: The well-educated adults leading the ordinary people including the students so often engage in such child-like behaviour arising from cause-effect obsession syndrome.
G: What is the obsession syndrome here?
S: The students believe that buses’ going off the road was the cause of their suffering and the improper maintenance of the roads by the Govt. department. The distinction between proximate cause and the real cause is not made. If they had no obsession, they would have supported the bus operators and protested against the Govt.’s inefficiency and negligence. Real cause-effect paradigm would have suggested to the students to seek compensation from the Govt. Such unscientific behaviour is so common in daily life of adults as well.
G: I do not think adults do such things unless they go mad.
S: Some adults may some time go mad. But many adults together cannot go mad if popular leaders can goad groups of adults into childish behaviour. Are you not aware of the reaction to the news of Saddam Hussein’s indictment in an Iraqi court and death penalty award to him?
G: Yes, I am aware. Many people are not happy with this.
S: Some people are. So there are differences. I quote from an email I had sent to about a dozen of friends: “ Human beings seemed to be a very peculiarly funny lot in the different ways they get agitated over the same event. Some people believe that Saddam, an oppressive tyrant despot, merited a death sentence for his various deeds. Some Shiite Muslims or Kurds, the most oppressed by Saddam may rejoice. Many Saddam haters did not ever take out a protest march on the streets to pray for Saddam's execution. They are still quiet. It does not make sense to most people to demonstrate and demand death sentence or execution of a person of whom very few in different distant countries would know much.
G: But it should be the duty of every human being to demand for justice and for bringing a criminal to book.
S: That is your or many others’ view. As far as I understand, except for people who suffered because of the activities of a criminal and those in the directly affected neighborhood, no one can be expected to be much interested in becoming active in anti-Saddam activity. Just find out the statistics: what is the percentage of the population outside Iraq adversely affected by so-called bad deeds of Saddam? For the large majority of the population outside Iraq and its neighbourhood, Saddam’s past and present are not relevant at the moment just as any particular Nasa mission to the space. How relevant is it a person who has not been affected and also not aware of the actual realities about a person in a distant land to actively support, least of all demand, severe punishment for such a person allegedly having committed heinous crimes. If it is really relevant, it is not based on any scientific cause-effect relationship except that the person emotional vulnerability to anything in the world is high: it is emotion and blind faith on what comes off the newspapers and electronic media. A common man living far away from the scene may not find any reason to be concerned. A rational, educated would be least concerned with a debatable, controversial issue that he has no means of judging directly and independently.
G: But reality is that some persons in a distant country like India are agitated about the death punishment award to Saddam. They are not indifferent to Saddam issue.
S: Some people do that because that is the natural law: to be driven by emotions irrespective of reason is natural and legitimate. But it is equally legitimate and natural to be indifferent on the part of others. It may not be scientific to act on conclusions that one cannot verify. If one does not know the Truth about Saddam and has doubts about evidence and proof of the alleged case for or against him, it is perfectly legitimate for him or her to keep quiet. One does not need to be either for or against Saddam. He or she should therefore not take any stand and act on this issue. The issue is not relevant to him as a member of the human society.
G: You do not seem to be a worthy human being if you cannot take a position.
S: That is your view and I do not see how you can throw me out of the human society just because, I have the capability to remain indifferent to what goes on in different parts of the World and I am unclear about the Truth about what goes on. While I may remain indifferent, many people are disappointed with the Iraqi court's death sentence award to Saddam. Some of them are excited enough to organize and join mass protest against the death sentence award to Saddam. Some among this latter group, of course, believe that Saddam is an innocent person who should not be punished at all.
G: So what they are doing is the right thing to do.
S: Maybe, it is right only because they are naturally inclined to do so. Many of Saddam sympathisers are also American haters, though they may not mind getting American degrees and seek American capital and technology for their use. For some of them Saddam is a darling hero of the oppressed people and therefore has the right to inspire them by being alive. For some others, Saddam is so innocent and fair person, it is pity that he is being punished. Still others have a great sense of fairness and feel that a neutral court outside Iraq should have tried Saddam. The present Iraqi courts are dictated by an Iraqi govt. installed by anti-Saddam US govt. that wants Saddam to die. Therefore the trial of Saddam was. Some think that Saddam is the only lawful Head of Govt. in Iraq and cannot be tried by courts. Some others think that George Bush should be hanged first and Saddam should be reinstalled as Iraq chief. Wonderful diversity of thoughts! The Great Nature is so beautiful with its varying shades and colour: different groups of persons take beliefs and faiths as equal to scientific truth.
G: Can you give some more analogies?
S: Most human beings on this earth have been taught to behave like human beings. I also do not like human beings to act like animals. But each human being has the right to act like a monkey or a dog. If some human beings do exercise that right, I do not have a logical reason to register my protest whenever a person exercise that right. But I might object when my son or a close friend acts like a monkey or a dog not because of any scientific, logical reason but simply because I am pained to see my friend or son just behaving like an animal.
G: You seem to believe in the saying that ‘Charity begins at home’.
S: In my words here it means ‘just and fair behaviour begins at home and in my own country’. Even if I think that America is oppressive or unjust or Saddam is oppressive or unjust, I feel sad but am not inclined to start a campaign against or for America or Saddam. I would still be inclined to stop my son becomes an oppressor or an unjust person.
G: Any other example?
S: Yes. I am against killing people. But as a soldier in the war front my task is to protect my life and my country not by running away but killing enemy. If my country’s soldier keels the enemy soldier or the enemy soldier kills my country’s soldier, I have no reasons to protest, though I am against any one killing any other and against wars taking place. Similarly, when a criminal kills a kidnapped child for not getting the ransom in time or to flee because the cops being after him, I do not need to protest against murder. I am only sad. If the child is from my family, I may react violently to express my grief or even kill the criminal if I happen to catch him. That’s an emotional outburst and not a rationale scientific behaviour. I do not organize protest against killing of a person by another person as they occur because that has no rational basis. If I do that I am acting emotionally or exploiting the emotions of others for my personal benefit.
G: The weird examples you give are in the nature of cause-effect inverse to help distinguish between cause-effect paradigm based behaviour and cause-effect obseesion syndrome behaviour.
S: You are right. We know that some human beings will have natural tendency to oppress others, be unfair and cause injustice to others. We know that some human beings will protest against such oppression, unfair treatment and injustice. But protesting against some cases of alleged instances does not necessarily follow from any cause-effect paradigm. Equally important the concept of fairness and injustice or oppression varies from society to society and from circumstance to circumstance. In terrorist organizations, if a terrorist wants to leave his organization after some time, he will be provided such treatment as such organizations consider fair and just which is different from and irrelevant to when a member leaves a sports or cultural club.
G: So, you cannot agree to be part of any particular organized protests against alleged case of oppression or injustice as conceptualized by an organizer of protest, especially if you suspect that the organizer has some other ulterior motive to do so.
S: Exactly. All that happen are all natural phenomena. Those who organize protest or protest are as much a natural force as those like me who may not feel the need to protest or be part of an organized protest. There is nothing to choose between these two different kinds of forces. There is nothing so specially great or scientific or rational or human about organizing or raising protest. What is relevant to one type of human beings is irrelevant to others and vice versa.
G: Can we move on to another example of Irrelevance of Relevance?
S: Oh, sure. But let us wait for the next session.
Irrelevance of Protecting Ecology
S: Should we discuss the example of the worldwide concern about protection of ecology and environment?
G: In such a straightforward issue, I do not think there can be any debate. The way human beings are exploiting natural resources, the World is heading towards an ecological and environmental disaster.
S: So, you mean that protection of environment and ecology is relevant to everyone.
G: Yes. This is the relevant perspective for everyone.
S: You want to say that everyone in the World know the scientific truth about how human beings are exploiting the environment and the non-renewable natural resources. This is first cause-effect relationship you depend on. Then you want to say that since everyone’s life and the lives of the future generations are at stake due to environment pollution and ecological damages being caused by human behaviour, everyone should be concerned. That is another cause-effect relationship you invoke. That is why you say that Environment and ecology concerns are relevant to everyone or the human society.
G: You got me correctly. That is what I want to say.
S: Unfortunately, you are wrong. First, everyone in the World does not know the scientific truth about human behaviour and environmental and ecological disaster. Only some people know.
G: Yes. If some people know the scientific truth, that is enough. All persons may not know at a given point. But truth is truth. Truth implies that human beings should change their behaviour. It is suffient if some persons who matter and have the power, know the truth t.
S: That’s how you perceive. But for those who do not know the truth, your perspective is irrelevant. Second, even if everyone knew the scientific truth, not all are interested in protecting the future. In fact many may not have any view about the future after their death.
G: Yes, some persons are very selfish. They do not care about the future generations. They are fools. They are not relevant.
S: Correct. For these people, your perspective is irrelevant. Let us assume for your sake, that everyone knows the scientific truth and are not selfish and care for future generations’ welfare. Still, the issue may not be relevant to some of them because they do not know what solution will change human behaviour.
G: Human beings should to try to find out solutions. That is why I think what I say is relevant to all who knows the truth. It is most relevant for the knowledgable culprit. It is the economically advanced West that is responsible for exploiting the environment and ecology in a non-sustainable and damaging way..
S: I do not agree with you. The debate on this subject will continue for long, if not ever, again and again. For that is the way Nature’s laws operate. There will be crises coming again and again because of the natural greed of human beings and consequential Natural Resource exploitation on a massive scale in ways that hurt the ecology and the environment.
G: So, you seem to agree
S: No. I do not agree with you. The ultimate disaster is not round the corner. Human beings will not be an extinct species in a short while. Human beings will continue to be doing other things in the meanwhile: invent technologies and changing life styles that will reduce the dependence on exhaustible natural resources, increase the use of renewable natural resources, increase the efficiencies of the use of natural resources, conserve ecology and protect environment as well as make possible comfortable living in adversely changing ecological and environmental conditions. We therefore need not anticipate a complete devastation in the foreseeable future.
Irrelevance of Relevant Environmental Concern
G: You seem to believe that human beings cannot design and implement a more efficient and unfair system than the natural system or free market system!
S: I do because that is the hard truth. The cause-effect paradigm leads you to the conclusion that extravagant exploitation of non-renewable natural resources and inefficient use of such materials affects ecology and environment. That is what you have observed from past history. But that does not necessary imply that the rich nations are doing just that, unless you have a cause-effect obsession syndrome. You want advanced West to reduce their contribution to pollution and allow emerging economies to increase their contribution to pollution. So, you fix standards, start carbon credit and start trading in carbon credit. That is a good market system idea, but that cannot solve your basic problem. Ideally, you want an overall absolute limit on each kind of pollution that human beings generate per year or per decade and you want each human being in the world to have the right to pollute only up to a limit determined by the overall absolute limit divided by the total human population. But, this seems so funny that you create the right or entitlement to pollute environment. And, you want to have larger entitlement for Indians and Chinese to pollute!
G: I see the point you are trying to make. It looks so silly. But as human beings we have to do something.
S: That is what you are naturally inclined to believe. Doing something is not necessarily better than doing nothing! Of course, people like you will try to do this. You will do this because of Natural Law that is playing out through your nature and inclination. But other natural forces will also operate. They will operate directly or through other persons with inclinations different from you. The future will be result of interaction of different natural forces. You cannot achieve anything better than what Nature allows you to do.
G: You are coming back to your stochastic destiny principle again.
S: You are absolutely right: that is the ultimate truth. Creation and destruction are natural processes that cannot be controlled by the mere wish of human beings except by chance.
G: But we must be concerned with ecology and environment when we know the truth.
S: If you are by nature inclined that way, you will do just that. In fact, it is the western world that shows greater concern than the poor countries. So the poorer countries want to preach that the already rich countries should develop technologies that would protect ecology and environment. And, they want a fair share of the entitlement to damage ecology and environment.
G: They should.
S: They need not. If we are so concerned with ecology and environment, each one of us should be completely avoiding doing anything that is scientifically proven to have an adverse effect on the environment and ecology. There is no need to seek greater entitlement to damaging environment and ecology. But human beings are naturally conditioned to pick up fights because of self-interest and jealousy. For that you do not need to demonstrate your ability for reasoned argumentation.
G: Are you trying to make an oblique reference to my identity of “ Argumentative Indian”, a la Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.
S: If you think that to be argumentative is a great characteristic, you should be proud of such an identity.
G: Isn’t argumentative a great characteristic?
S: It’s for you to value your characteristics. For me all characteristics are great and powerful: they can lead to great creations as well as destructions. I maybe thankful for just being what I happen to be as a result of the interaction of different natural forces in the past. But past is no more relevant to me except as a pleasurable trip back in time or tools of my natural tendency to play the game of reasoning and analysis. Past, in its various parts, has been contributing to making what I am and what I will be in future. Past is not relevant to me: it is the process that yields the present that I am.
G: You mean to say that you are not an argumentative Indian?
S: I am all that Indians commonly features. I am as argumentative as an Indian can be. But I am also as acquiescent as an Indian can be. I am as religious as an Indian can be. I am as Western as an Indian can be. There is no particular Indian that I think dominates me all the time. The exact process in which the past centuries and millenniums have contributed in my making is not known to me. I cannot be proud about anything that I have not myself done. I can only be thankful to the past.
G: But in our discussion, being argumentative is relevant.
S: I agree. But being argumentative does not necessarily mean that we are rational and reasonable human beings. Being argumentative is not necessarily a virtue. It may merely be a form of easily accessible communication that avoids physical fight, avoids violence to settle disputes and that help people to learn if they wish to learn.
G: Hold on. We have been in argumentative mode since long time. Now you say that we are not rational, reasonable human beings!
S: See. Let us not mix up things, though this is so natural for argumentative people to do.
We are trying to be rational as far as we can. That’s what human beings can do. We cannot ensure rationality. Consider the fact that poorer nations like India and China want to grow fast and catch up with the advanced richer countries, for which they need to consume great amounts of hydro-carbon fuels and thereby inflict a damage to ecology and environment. To minimize the overall damage, the current rate of damage by richer countries therefore needs to be brought down. That is argument for fair sharing of entitlement to damaging environment to ecology and environment.
G: That is true. The richer nations, particularly the USA cannot be allowed to inflict such huge damage as they are doing every year now.
S: This type of argumentation will not solve a dispute. This is another example of Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome. If the dispute and the poor claim entitlement to damage based on population, argumentation of this type will soon end and yield to settlement through wars by the use of money, muscle, technology and intellect. That is what is natural and happening even now.
G: So, you are saying that scientific reasoning with the rich countries will fail to change their behaviour.
S: They will change their behaviour in their own interest, not because of the argument put up by poorer nations. They know that the stock of minerals and fossil fuels are finite and hence will try to find out ways of getting more of their needs per unit of energy or any finite natural resource.They may even accommodate the poor nations out of sympathy. Your argument is flawed and irrelevant to solving the ecological and environmental problem of the World.
G: Why do you say so? You do not agree to fair sharing?
S: To feed the billions of Indian and Chinese, if we use chemicals fertilizers and pesticides, we will hurt ecology and environment more. If we do not want to use polluting chemicals to feed the billions and give them decent dwellings, we will need to cut down forest cover and damage ecology and environment. No civilized person will raise the question as to why poor nations dramatically cut down on their population by half. You can’t stop producing more and more poor people. You do not think of fair sharing of the entitlement to produce numbers and burden our planet.
G: That kind of argument is hitting below the belt.
S: No. It’s the Cause-Effect Inverse to expose the Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome from which one suffers and as a result produces invalid, biased arguments. You do not like that the issue of population size and its impact on environment and ecology because that is your weakness. If you had fewer numbers to deal with, you would have required much less of energy and materials to make them rich. But even with huge populations, you still like to imitate the life-styles of the rich West and its extravagant use of finite resources that leads to ecological and environmental damage.
G: Then, what is the solution?
S: I do not know. But mere argumentation cannot solve the problem so long as you argue only to promote your interest at the cost of others. That’s not reasoned argumentation; it is mere shouting. You know how much water billions of poor people will require when they become rich. You know how much of non- biodegradable plastic material waste they will generate to damage ecology. Yet you cry that the rich waste is unfair!
G: What then is the alternative?
S: There is nothing. There is no choice. You are destined to shout thinking that you have strong reasoned arguments when actually you really do not have any argument to justify your existence that burdens this planet. That is the natural law operating through you. You produce more poor people and when by natural consequence they become terrorists you justify the growth of terrorism by blaming the extravaganza of the rich West. That poor countries suffer is relevant but their argumentation is irrelevant so far as ecology and environment is concerned.
S: You are saying that whether poor countries remain poor or become rich, disaster is unavoidable.
G: Yes, that is the inevitable unless Nature reveals the solution by enabling scientists and technologists to find new technologies that remove the current constraint on resource availability and environmental and ecological impact of resource use.
Irrelevance of Intellectual Property Protection
G: Can we have one more global example of cause-effect obsession syndrome, cause-effect inverse and relevance of irrelevance?
S: Oh, sure. First, let us deal with what causes some people to seek right to intellectual property (IP) and its protection from being copied for commercial purposes. Those who have anything that is novel that they have designed or discovered or invented may have a need for IP protection. They want to make money from their own IP or at least want to get recognition for their contribution. Some of those who think and can demonstrate that they have created something novel and the use of that creation by others should be subject to their permission which they may grant at their discretion, if necessary against payment of some monetary consideration by those they have agreed to allow such use.
G: The cause is the desire on the part of the creator to benefit from his/ her creation and the effect is the demand for IP.
S: Yes. But there is an underlying reality that is not so explicitly stated. If X has invented something that can be successfully commercialized and money made without any possibility of copying on commercial scale by others, there is no need for IP protection. Unfortunately, for most creations copying is generally very easy. Therefore, restriction on copying is what is being sought. The cause-effect obsession syndrome starts then as follows: if you allow free copying no one will have incentive to create or innovate things that can help human society to progress. So, IP right is nothing but negation of human right to copy.
G: Right to copy!
S: Yes, freedom to copy can be regarded as a fundamental human right. Without copying human civilization cannot exist. From the childhood you learn to copy and parents urge you to copy them so that you can live. You must copy how to walk, how to keep yourself clean, how to eat and drink, how to talk, how to read, write and communicate, sing, dance and so on.
G: So, the cause-effect inverse here is that if you do not allow free copying right, human society cannot make progress. If I am not allowed to copy running and innovate as to how I can increase my speed of running, how do I catch a thieve running away stealing my money from my pocket?
S: You are right. That is why many creators themselves want that their creation be freely copied without any restriction. They enjoy that many people benefit by costless copying of their inventions. The greater is the incidence of copying the greater is their delight.
G: So, you are against copyright laws.
S: Please do not jump to conclusion without logical justification. I recognize the natural need and right to copy. I also agree to the need for copyright laws. If copyright laws are not there, authors will not write for a book, publishers will not publish books, music companies will not record songs, movies, dramas and events on tapes, audio/ video cassettes, compact disks etc. But despite all copyright and patent laws, we have official sales of recorded music industry falling behind the sales of illegal copying based pirated music distribution industry. A similar thing happens in pharmaceuticals industry. The official industry has to innovate to make unauthorised copying and piracy uneconomic and restricted. That is the technological and marketing challenge the official industry has to take up.
G: So, you say that both copyright and copying will continue.
S: Yes. But one should note that not all things that you see some other person do can be copied or at least easily copied by you or others. There are a few possibilities of copying: a novel creation can be easily copied sooner or later, or difficult to copy even after a long time, or almost impossible to copy in the foreseeable future. There are a few possibilities on the cost of creation: a novel creation without much cost (resource, time and/ or effort) or with substantial cost. For simplicity, we can have six possible combinations: (a) easy creation & easy copying, (b) easy creation but difficult copying, (c) easy creation and impossible to copy, (d) difficult creation and easy to copy, (e) difficult creation and difficult copying, and (f) difficult creation and impossible to copy. For (c) and (f) categories, there is no problem. Problem arises in the remaining four cases.
G: Creations of category (a) also does not pose any problem. For that which is easy to create, there is nothing that the first creator can demand to be compensated for. The same thing may have been created soon even if the first creator had not been the first to create.
S: You are right. Categories (b) and (e) also do not pose much of a problem because there is an embedded IP protection for quite some time, copying being difficult. Real problem arises in the case of (d) category creations: if you do not protect the commercial interest of inventions/ innovations that cost much time, effort and money but easy to copy, adequate effort and money may not be attracted to the creative process of innovations and inventions. As a result, the society may suffer from slower progress of the human society.
G: For (d), therefore everyone will agree to Intellectual Property Right (IPR) and IPR protection.
S: I also believe that everyone will agree.
G: Then where does the debate originate?
S: It arises from how the inventions or creations are classified as novel creations of category (d) and how long the protection is granted for them. Failure to identify creations of category (d) as such or inadequate protection period for such category creations may hurt the process of creations and therefore the interest of the creators and the progress of human society, though the copiers may be benefited.
G: On the other hand, creators of (a) category creations may try to show that their creations are category (d) creations. This will also hurt the process of innovations besides hurting the society’s interest.
S: You are right. Thus, the problem arises not with IPR protection as such but with the way the IPR protection is ensured in the case of (d) category creations: short, unambiguous laws on IPR, proper identification of IP creations of category (d), and the enforcement of such IPR. This clearly is not an easy task and cannot be handled of run-of-the-mill, ordinary bureaucrats. It requires highly perceptive scientist personnel capable of quick decisions on IPR protection applications and IPR protection intelligence and police personnel with adequate powers and accountability.
G: But this is an almost impossible task in large population countries with high propensity to copy clandestinely without paying the creators any consideration
S: Yes. That is why India and China may find it difficult to have strong and effective IPR regimes.
G: But there are non-profit foundations which do lot of collaborative research on the basis of what is called open source model of development as in the case of software development. These foundations and the people who participate in open source software and other scientific problem solving do not seem to worry about IPR or the pecuniary or reputation/ recognition prize rewards.
S: You are right. This is new model of development of science and technology is driven by motivations like the psychologically good feeling of being challenged by various unsolved problems or of being part of an open community of problem solvers or simply the scope of learning new things. Often, such open, collaborative efforts results in faster cracking of problems than the time taken by the closed door, secretive scientific and technological in-house research undertaken by company R&D and research institutions.
G: If that were so, why do we emphasize on IPR?
S: First, complete open source process of creative innovation and invention may not suit all areas of science and for large companies to depend on. Second, such open, collaborative efforts at problem sharing and problem solving may actually increase the efficiency of problem solving within companies and research institutions. Third, the open-source, collaborative efforts can also lead to new regimes for IPR protection laws. Those who participate in the open, collaborative processes may get something in the nature of free stock options: options in this case will be on the sharing of gains from patents based on collaborative generation of solutions to scientific and technological problems.
G: Ultimately, strong IPR regimes will help countries like India and China to gain faster.
S: Yes, relatively low income countries with large population of scientifically trained minds should do better by giving up the practice of copying and start participating in open source development of science and technology. It is a cause-effect obsession syndrome that leads us to believe that IPR protection is in the interest of already advanced, rich countries and multinational companies. When we look at open source process of scientific and technology research, we develop a cause-effect inversion. Then, we start seeing that effectively designed and implemented IPR regimes are relevant to poor countries like us: reliance on unauthorized copying the creations of foreign innovators and denying IPR to foreign innovators actually hurt countries like us more than the advanced Western countries.
G: But you can’t expect poor countries to spend huge amount of resources to innovate.
S: The issue is that can poorer countries remove their poverty through copying. Both the goal of lifting huge populations from poverty and the means of copying are wrong. The goal should have been to enable each of their citizens to become as rich as possible. If you aim low, you achieve only that. If you aim high, you apply your brain better and succeed. But whether you aim low or high is not within your choice. The means to achieve the goal should have been to allow creative and productive talents in science, technology and entrepreneurship inherent in human beings to flower.
G: How can poor, uneducated people identify and use their talents? You have to educate them first. That is why the State plans programs to do that.
S: State can only plan. The State cannot implement and get the results. People achieve the results individually and groups at their pace. Directing, controlling and cajoling them do not help. If State plans for the people, the people think that it is the State that has the responsibility for and capability of achieving what the State plans.
G: If the State does not arrange for economic and social development, who will?
S: You suffer from Cause-Effect Syndrome. You think planning is the cause and achievement of desired goals is the effect without any scientific basis. Did all inventions and discoveries in this World result from State planning? Confront the Cause-Effect Inverse by finding how state planning and initiative had caused the following effects: the proof that the Earth revolves around the Sun and the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, the discovery of the theory of relativity, the building of the first airplane, the use of the wireless technology, the development of the principles of management, the technique of double-entry book keeping, the popularity of cricket or soccer or Lawn Tennis all over World, the proliferation of amusement parks and shopping malls, the development of plastic money. State is irrelevant to the progress of human civilization.
G: But some States do better than others!
S: Yes, that happens because some States allow greater economic freedom to citizens and allows merit and talent to compete in exerting their influence on how the State functions. Such states may do better than other states that curb individual freedom, encourages acquiescence, rewards loyalty to the Ruling class and requires merit and talent to seek State patronage.
G: You mean to say that India’s economic development in the last 60 years was possible without the State’s direction, control and initiatives.
S: Whatever India or any other country has achieved so far is purely because of individual enterprise. The results achieved are not because, but in spite, of the adverse effect of State’s active meddling with economic affairs of the country.
G: Why do you say in spite of the State?
S: Because State planning and control has constrained the progress of education, dynamism of entrepreneurial risk taking, motivation to excel, and so on. When the whole World was available for Indians to acquire knowledge, to trade with and gain, to compete with and succeed, the Indian State ensured that the people of India live virtually isolated from the World. Economic freedom was snatched away from the citizens by the State in India. Citizens that live in economic serfdom perpetuated by the State’s over-riding power cannot deliver outstanding results on a sustained basis.
G: Why did India choose the State-ist model, if what you say is true.
S: There is one and only one reason: You choose as your nature permits you. That’s getting back to Stochastic Destiny Principle, as you would like to point out.
G: But since the economic liberalization started in 1991, India has become less Statist.
S: That is your illusion. Instead of a fixed short chain that you tug in the neck-collar of the dog you can use an expandable-and-contractible chain also. That is not freedom.
G: How is this relevant to IPR. You have a tendency to digress!
S: This is another example of the Relevance of the Irrelevance. When you are so obsessed with State-ism, you cannot imagine the potential of economic freedom to the citizens. Unless the individuals are free, exploitation of creativity is constrained. The citizens are forced to copy rather than innovate since the State does not believe in IPR.
G: But we have copyrights and patents since long.
S: Yes, some legislation exited till the recent changes took place. But we know how high has been the incidence of violation of copyrights, trademarks and patents as also the extent of piracy in recorded audio/ videotapes and CDs, drugs, automobile spares and so on.
G: In such a huge country, enforcement is not an easy task.
S: It all depends whether one chooses to be equal to the task. One makes choice one is naturally inclined to make. That’s your destiny. But that does not justify the poor enforcement record. Poor IPR laws and poor enforcement encourages copying, breeds mediocrity, discourages innovations and kills motivation to excel, which hurts economic and social progress. Copying clandestinely, according to me, is an activity of people with low self-esteem.
G: If you are poor, you are prone to copying.
S: You are right. Some poor people find no alternative but to steal to live their lives. Some other poor people organize muscle power to become bandits to commit robbery or become terrorists. Some other poor people just tolerate their poverty. It all depends on the natural inclinations of the individuals. Violation of copy rights, trademarks and patent laws, however, are committed generally by rich people, even if they belong to poor countries.
G: You do not seem to be interested in prescribing solutions.
S: Prescribing solution is easy. In fact, our discussions point to alternative solutions. The responsibility of choosing a particular solution and the success or failure of a chosen solution lies only with those who want to solve the problem. They choose according to their natural inclinations. That is in accordance of the stochastic destiny principle.
G: As usual, we have to close this session without reaching an agreement.
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