This is post devoted to a single thread on this topic. A very interesting discussion.
February 21
Chapter 3: Why Integral Unity And Not Synthetic Unity
Surya comments:
- Without synthetic unity there is no God/Man separation
- Without God/Man separation there is no need for prophet to access truth
- Without prophet to access truth there is no truth based on history
- Without truth based on history there is no exclusive access to truth
- Without exclusive access to truth there is no religious intolerance
- Without religious intolerance there is mutual respect
- With mutual respect there is no religious violence
|
February 22
BD Chapter 3: Integral Unity vs. Synthetic Unity
Surya posts:
Dharmic faiths = Integral Unity
---------------------------------------
Integral unity means ultimately ONLY the whole exists; the parts that
make up the whole have but a RELATIVE existence. The whole is
independent and indivisible.
Creation is not separate from God. Since the divine manifests itself
as the cosmos, the entire cosmos is intelligent and ultimately one.
God is not merely the creator (the external force) of the world; God IS
the world.
...Integral unity can be discovered and experienced through spiritual practices.
Dharmic notion of integral unity is summarized in chapter seven of
Bhagavad Gita. Long before the Gita, Vedas described only one Ultimate
Reality, with many layers and levels. There is no shift in the
Scriptures from polytheism to
monotheism as some Western scholars claim.
Abrahamic faiths = Synthetic Unity
--------------------------------------------
Synthetic unity starts with parts that EXIST separately from one another.
There is one unique event, the creation, that is separate from its creator and before which there was nothing.
Physical and non-physical entities ultimately have their own independent existence, linked only externally by divine fiat.
There are inherently separate entities: God and Creation, God and Human, body and mind, spirit and matter etc., ."
Does the knowledge and concept of integral unity guide our views and policy for rural development ?
.... Dr.
Kamal's question is quite pertinent, particularly considering that his
institute in involved in Holistic research for rural development..."
Karthik responds:
"I feel this knowldge was addressed when Gandhiji called for "production
by the masses instead of mass production" . EF SChaumacher, an Econimist
in 60s revived this with his "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if
People Mattered" and his reference to Buddhist Economics. A reasonable
write up on this is in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_economics.
THis could be well applicable to Hindu Economics as well.
.."
Surya responds:
"Integral Unity should not be confused with a centralized,
monolithic system. Forcing such a top-down hierarchy is indeed
antithetical to Dharmic traditions. Such a forced unity is synthetical
in nature. Thus, mass production is a synthetically forced unity.
Schumacher
talks about how high economic efficiency can be wasteful in certain
natural resources even though it is the least cost or most economical
approach. Mass production seeks to replace human capital with other
less expensive resources. In the end, it ignores the human element and
the human need for a respectable livelihood: ...
The notion of cottage
industry advocated by Gandhiji was founded on the principle of "small is
beautiful - economic way where people matter".
...
The
dilemma that arises is: Economics where people matter is unstable - it
is an ideal that is a peak of the mountain; one can easily slip off
this peak when exploited. Economics where profits matter is stable - it
is at the bottom of the valley of ideals but it is very stable;
difficult to exploit you here.
I will leave with a question:
Will
the growth of Dharmic traditions bring greater stability at the top?
Or should we give up and accept as fact that the bottom of the valley
is the only stable economic state?" |
|
Ram comments:
"
One of the overlooked advantages of the decentralized dharmic spiritual
system is extreme resistance to outside attempts to destroy it, such as
moves by conquerors to wipe out the system.
The strength of the
centralized authoritarianism like Christianity or Islam is its clear
lines of authority, organization internally, its leadership class of
highly trained priests, its education system and its ability to act like
a unit against threats. That is also its weakness, because the
centralized system works well only when it is protected by the state. If
the state is conquered by an outside group or a new political entity,
the centralized authoritarian group loses its protection and can easily
be shattered.
....
Look at how the Russian communists crushed the Eastern Orthodox
church after the Russian Revolution as an example. ....
So in a single generation the Eastern Orthodox was wiped out, and no new
generations grew up within that system.
...
In contrast the dharmic systems like Hinduism are apparently
designed for the long term, to be able to resist immense pressure from
the outside. Hinduism does not depend on the patronage or protection of
the state and can exist strongly even if the state is hostile. ... They can choose
their own spiritual path, their own ish devta, without permission or
approval from any organized group.
When the Muslims invaded India they made enormous attempts to wipe
out Hinduism and convert all to Islam, by force if necessary. ...
This went on in various forms for hundreds of years, but yet at the
end of the Moghul era in India less than 10 percent of the Indians had
been converted to Islam. In most other countries they had conquered, the
Muslims quickly achieved conversion rates of over 75%, and in some
places like Iran and Iraq they hit close to 100%. In India the only way
to wipe out Hinduism was to wipe out the Hindus physically, which was
foolish.
.....
I understand that Buddhists has also proved very resistant to
destruction or conversion, because of the same decentralized system that
has the individual free to pursue his connection with the divine
without intermediaries, institutions or permission from authoritarian
structures.
We believe that the Hindu rishis and swamis who wandered the world
thousands of years ago made some conclusions that we are still
benefitting from today. Religions rise and fall over time, depending on
the nature of their structure and change in circumstances. ... A system that is fixed
and attached to the norms of a particular culture in historical time
will shatter when that culture changes and moves on.
So those rishis and swamis developed a system that would be flexible
and adaptable to change, that would not be dependent on centralized
authoritarian structures, that could be practiced without dependence on
external instututions or priests, that could be practiced secretly or
at home, that offered freedom of choice as opposed to a fixed menu, that
allowed members to function at their own level of development, that was
based on firm and defensible philosophical principles, that allowed and
welcomed new methods of worship and religious systems, that was
egalitarian and non sexist, non racist, respectful towards other
systems, respectful to the environment and all living beings....
That is the heritage of Hindus, one which we neglect at our peril."
Arjunshakti responds:
"Its
true that Hinduism is resilient but lets not forget that Hindus in the
past did also stand their ground militarily especially during Islamic
periods.Theres many myths that have been created to promote that hindus
were just passive were slaves for a thousand years but still made it
through.This is the reason why sometimes even good intentioned Hindus
think that its ok we dont have to stand our ground because we survived
in the past so we will continue to survive but thats not the truth or
the reality.."
struth91 adds:
"...The core takeaway of Chapter 3 is in the contrasting attitudes towards
Science and Reason in the respective societies. Hebraism and Hellenism
coming together to create the artificial entity known as 'Western
Civilization' was always a force-fit.
It is ironical that
Matthew Arnold used 'Hebraism' as his term for Christian Biblical
heritage and moralistic worldview that contrasted with Science - when
the original Hebraic religion (Judaism) was and is perhaps less
dogma-driven than is Christianity, resulting in a more positive attitude
towards Science.
See this
article for a Jewish viewpoint on why Judaism 'embraces Science' far more so than does Christianity:.
Each
one of the three points that the Rabbi makes for Judaism, holds true to
a much larger extent for Hinduism (& Dharmic religions in general)...
"
Surya comments:
"
...applied to evolving proper
policy for development.
For clarity, I will identify my position: Followers
of Dharmic traditions find comfort in a self-organizing socio-economic
system versus followers of Abrahamic faiths who will find comfort in a
highly organized, centrally commanded socio-economic system. Advantage
for followers of Dharmic traditions is that they are comfortable will
both forms - they can choose either forms and be comfortable as we see
in India. Followers of Abrahamic faiths are uncomfortable with
self-organized systems.
Underlying
premise is that the faith system of a follower defines his/her zone of
comfort and hence is a major driver of choices he/she makes for the
system.
Reasoning with BD concepts is as follows:
1) Chaos vs. Order
______________
Comfort
with chaos implies that Dharmic followers are open to a socio-economic
system which is self-organizing in nature and evolves to meet the
specific needs of the society.
...
For
example, Mass production by cotton mills is highly structured,
centralized, and driven centrally by profit motive (economic efficiency)
as opposed to handloom industry that is organized around societal needs
(economically suboptimal but caters to the human needs of large number
of artisans)."
Karthik responds:
"... Just by coincidence... they remind me somewhat of these five principles:
- The importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person's advantage
- Individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities
- The multi-variate nature of activities giving rise to happiness
- A balance of materialistic and nonmaterialistic factors in evaluating human welfare
- Concern for the distribution of opportunities within society
Guess
what those five principles are? They're known collectively as the basis
of
what is called "Capabilities Approach". Amartya Sen is credited with
having "developed" these ideas (all by his own sweet self!) in the
1980s. The "Capabilities Approach" as applied to other aspects of
society is a recurrent theme in the writings of another vaunted
professor of "Ethics", Martha Nussbaum.
Easy to
see what happened here, no? First, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum et al
pile onto the deconstructionist bandwagon and use Western critical
theory to relentlessly hammer dharmic civilization as obscurantist,
elitist, caste-riven, inegalitarian, restrictive, etc. etc.
Of course, once the Western Grand Narrative representation of India has
become the norm in cultural studies, our civilization's intellectual
wealth is conveniently available for plunder, digestion, and
re-packaging as "original thought" by the Amartya Sen/Martha Nussbaum
types!
"Poverty" is still bandied about
as a characteristically Indian vice... but a "capabilities approach",
outlined on exactly the same dharmic principles of self-organizing
social and economic development described by Surya below, has suddenly
become the unique, original intellectual property of Sen and Nussbaum!!
All hail the Age of Reason!
These fellows are indeed the Clive and Mir Jaffar of today."
Rajiv comments:
"This is very good analysis of Amartya Sen's and his girlfriend's (i.e.
Nussbaum's) trajectory that fits the UTurn Theory. With one hand
appropriate (i.e. stage 3 of uturn) and with the other hand denigrate
the source (i.e. stage 4 of uturn). These stages as per uturn theory do
not have to happen in one set sequence, nor do thay all happen in the
same individual, and could take multiple generations of scholars to
become evident. There is also stage 5 in which this "new and Western"
thought is re-exported back to Indian intellectuals who eagerly lap it
up"
Surya adds:
"
BD comments further to distinguish between apparent organic systems and Dharmic integral systems.
(1)
Synthetic unity is, at best, a convenience; it misses out on the deeper
bonds that hold people together across the boundaries of hierarchies
and diversified of various kinds. Synthetic systems can be functional
and pragmatic -serve their design purpose well. For them to be integral
systems, how the individual elements function versus the whole is
looked at.
(2) A tighter form of
synthetic unity can take on an organic quality where the overarching
interests of the whole override separate interests of the parts. The
whole takes priority and parts are subservient to it.
(3)
Many organic systems fall short of integral unity in the Dharmic sense.
This is because their building blocks are still separate and exert
powers separately. It is rare for a synthetic collection to become so
integrated that the parts permanently relinquish their own
self-interest.
(4) It could be a
tentative coalition for a purpose - individual interests can surface at
any time. In integral systems, there is no question of temporary
coalitions. There is only one purpose.
.. There is a simple test offered in BD to see if a system qualifies the definition of an integral system:
If the individual elements of the system retain their identity and interests separately then the system is synthetic.
..
It
is easy to identify some synthetic systems. For example, the capital
marketplace is synthetic in the sense that its participants try to
optimize their own separate interests, the market's purpose being to
enable each participant to transact for its own benefit.
Cooperative
farming is a synthetic system. Here the coalition is temporary and the
individual elements are participating out of self interest. United
Nations is another example of this kind."
Rajesh shares:
"
Actually this issue of Top-Down Organization vs Self-Organization is important for the future trajectory of Indian Retail Industry.
In
the Western World one sees a few big players who own most of the retail
outlets. They keep on buying the smaller players in the market further
consolidating their market share and joint-monopoly!
In India one sees a huge number of sellers and vendors, who may be small and have just a few shops in a single town.
Now
why is it important to preserve Mom&Pop Stores, family owned
businesses, etc. vs Big Retail. After all Big Retail does offer us
consumers more competitive prices, i.e. until their (monopoly project is
complete), they do help in the creation of more efficient industry for
Logistics, Refrigeration, Storage, Assembly, etc.
The biggest
advantage in keeping it small is that in times of repression,
self-organized retail sector has the ability to absorb a lot more
people, who can look independently for opportunities, who can be
self-employed. The Self-Organized Retail Sector offers a buffer for such
times, especially as all other areas including agriculture in order to
become more efficient have to cut down on dependent people. So
Self-Organized Retail Sector remains the only savior in such times. For a
huge country like ours where big industry nor government can provide
jobs for everybody, this is a huge plus point.
How does the West
react during times of recession? Well they roll out huge stimulus
packages. They give money to various industries like construction
industry, and other industries, for doing new projects in the hope that
this heightened economic activity would give more people jobs.
Invariably one gets only jobless growth. The industry takes the money
but does not hire new people because they can do without! And the
unemployed have nowhere to look for jobs. And the government has nowhere
to fund jobs directly except the already bloated public services. So
these people remain unemployed. In the West there is no Industry, which
can act as a Recession Buffer.
In a global economy, where the
pressure is so much to keep production costs low, it is possible that in
agriculture and manufacturing there would be shift towards more
efficiency and possibly more organization. That is all the more reason
that inefficiency costs can be tolerated when they are more closer to
user, i.e. in the retail sector.
Summarizing, we should keep the
Retail Sector as self-organized and try to avoid Big Retail to force its
way in! It will save us from the Recession and Jobless Growth problems
of the West!"
Karthik adds:
"Developing,
and effectively marketing, a BD-based "App" for economic development is
a particularly pressing need, because poverty (like the "plight of
women") is one of those emotive touchstones used over and over again by
postcolonial theorists employing Western categories to depict India as a
"uniquely divided and oppressive place" (Ronald Inden, quoted in BD)
When
the arch-pedagogues of the Western Grand Narrative, and their acolytes
on the Indian Left, use "poverty" to bash India (and by extension, all
that is Indian)... we have the deck stacked against us from the start.
That
is because "poverty" is emotionally loaded, and any discussion of the
subject provides an excellent vehicle for gratuitous civilizational
invective.
Everybody knows "poverty" is bad, right? So when we
get defensive about drain-inspector portrayals of poverty in India (such
as "Slumdog Millionaire") it becomes easy for the enemy to portray us
as vain jackasses... indeed, to assume a moral high ground and bash us
with righteous indignation at our "inhumane indifference to the
suffering of less privileged Indians". We are accused, in our embrace of
"bourgeoisie nationalism", of willfully turning a blind eye to the
harsh realities with which millions of our fellow countrymen contend
every day.
Here is a case study in the use of "poverty". A
potentially honest and non-judgmental journalistic treatise on an Indian
slum has been immediately co-opted by the Usual Suspects to push their
venal and motivated deconstruction of
India.
This book in particular deals with the Annawadi
slum near Mumbai airport. Having not read the book myself, I cannot
comment on whether it is simply a "drain-inspector's report" or actually
offers a fresh perspective. It is quite possible, given Boo's
reputation as a dispassionate and thorough journalist, that the book is
simply a careful, non-judgmental and even sympathetic record of her
interactions with Annawadi's inhabitants over a period of some years.
She has not spared economic inequality in the West, and was awarded the
Pullitzer Prize in 2000 for her reporting on the plight of welfare
recipients and group-home inhabitants in Washington DC.
Boo
herself is a journalist, not a "theorist". She appears to have reported
on her experiences in Annawadi (thankfully) without resorting to
"analysis" or "interpretation".
However, her book has already
become a vehicle for celebration, and hijack, by the theory-wallahs we
know so well. They have seized upon it as another chance to do India
down, and reinforce their pet themes.
....
"A
beautiful account, told through real-life stories, of the sorrows and
joys, the anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and
powerless in urban India whom a booming country has failed ...."... Amartya Sen
Not to be outdone:
"....."
Ramachandra Guha
"Her
book, situated in a slum on the edge of Mumbai’s
international airport, is one of the most powerful indictments of
economic inequality I've ever read. If Bollywood ever decides to do
its own version of The Wire, this would be it.â€... Barbara Ehrenreich
[...In her view, Bollywood should take
its cue from the mirror that American journalist Katherine Boo is
holding up before India, and become inspired to incorporate the Western
Grand narrative of Indian poverty into its own pop-cultural
representations of itself!...]
.....
One effect of this assault is
to pre-emptively delegitimize alternative frameworks of conceiving of
poverty, of approaching and resolving the social and economic problems
associated with poverty. That is exactly what the Indian left wants: a
monopoly over the characterization of Indian poverty,
restricted to dogmatically Marxist frameworks that will never, ever
concede an inch of space for dharmic solutions.
Just one of many reasons why I am so grateful that Rajiv has begun this work.."
struth91 posts:
"Regarding a BD-based "App" for economic development-
Economics
is best addressed as a component of Governance (Raj Dharma). A useful
way of understanding Dharma, the ethics and science of decision making,
is to categorize it as operating at 4 levels : Individual &
Community Dharma, Corporate Dharma (covering all forms of organizations
and leadership issues), Raj Dharma (including governance, politics,
economics and jurisprudence) & Inter-State Dharma.
There's
already a fair amount of work on classical Indian thought around
economics ..
As is well
known, Kautilya's Arthashastra is probably the earliest ever treatise in
the world on economics. There was also a defined Sreni Dharma for
regulating the srenis / guilds of ancient India, a precursor to
modern-day Corporate Law.
Coming to
"Apps" in this area- would be better to aim to popularize concepts,
processes and frameworks of analysis that are derived from classical
Indian thought. But there is some danger in full-fledged economic
positions unless these are sophisticated and nuanced enough to stand up
against current models. Simplistic 'black and white' positions, such as
an anti-multinational message (the RSS propagated this in the nineties)
can be easily panned as being 'obscurantist'...."
Senthil introduces a new angle to the discussion. Rajiv notes: "Good
points made. See my challenge in the new thread I am starting, titled
"Is the Vedic lifestyle viable today?". This thread was summarized here.
"One of the important message in BD is "Reversing the Gaze"..
its a call to bring ourselves out of the western models and see them
from our dharmic perspective..
So far, we
were discussing about
dharma from a philosophical angle.. i call it as
"Software" part.. We also need to consider another part of our dharma,
which is the
hardware part.. ie, what are the physical environment
needed for our dharma to flourish? I wish, this should also be
discussed.. Let me share few things, which i had thought over..
1.
The present system of politics, the administration, the geographical
organisation, are all based on western systems. What i find is that, we
are trying to fit our dharma, in to these western systems, which i feel
is
incompatible.
To quote one example, the current westernised
urban system, heavily pollutes rivers, seas, and ground water system.
So many lakes, has been destroyed to expand big metros like chennai,
mumbai etc. Such acts cannot be part of dharma. Rivers are divine for
us, so as other water sources.
Another example i could cite is
that every hindu has to perform pitru dharpan to our ancestors, and for
that we need water sources. In our traditional administration system, a
nagara or a grama is planned, and built in such a way, that is
conducible for hindu way of life style. In all ancient nagaras, there
would be a shiva/vishnu temple at the center, with a big lake. In All
traditional gramas, there would be a grama devata at the centre of the
village, with a lake/pond or a small water body besides it. These
water bodies, enable hindus to do their religious
rituals. So our dharma flourished, because, our nagara and grama were
built according to agamas. Today, the metros, and towns are built
based on western model, for western type of economic system, and not
based on dharmic way of life or dharmic way of economy. That's the
reason we are finding it more and more difficult to adhere to our dharma
in Metros. Infact, its virtually impossible for dharma to exist there.
2.
We never had anonymous/atomised populations before britishers. Our
society had a different kind of representation system, based on
family/jathi/village, which is still existing in the other part of
india. Every jathi had jathi panchayat headed by jathi elders, which
resolves internal family and jathi disputes. At a village level, there
would be village panchayat, resolves issues related to village
administration or inter-jathi disputes. Whether jathis are outdated
or not, is a
different question. ...
3.
Hinduism is often described as a way of life. However, a way of life is
based on societal setup, and the physical setup (village/nagara
planning).
Societal setup: the jathis, its gothra, kula devata,
all have their own way of worship, rituals, marriage etc. which forms
the cultural part.
Physical Setup: the facilitation by design of
living area (village/nagara), in such a way, that the life style (&
hence the
dharma) of these jathis are made possible and feasible.
There is one more angle - the economic angle - which i will not include for now.
4.
Based on Rajiv's excellent point of "Sanskrit Non-Translatables", i
would like to convey, that the words,
Nagara, Grama, Dhesa cannot be
equated to city, village or nation of the western vocabulary. In
Europe, the nation is always based on race and language. Whereas in our
civilization, a dhesam is based on dharma. We had 56 ancient dhesams,
and all of them, had the same social structure - The brahmanas,
kshatriyas, vyshyas, and shudras. The racial formation is virtually
impossible in such setup.
In western terms, a village is a place
with sparse population. As per webster's dictionary till 1830s, a
village is termed as place where barbarians live. We cannot apply this
term to denote our gramas. Our gramas are well planned, and well
designed as
per agama. (Note: we verified this aspect, by visiting many of the
gramas in chera dhesam in tamilnadu.. )
5. The social
composition of a typical village is same across south india ( for north
india, i have no data as of now). The farming community would be
predominant, and some dozen other jathis that exists as part of them.
The beauty is that, all these jathis constitute a single entity. ie,
due to some reason (famine/war), if the farming community migrates, they
do no go alone. But migrate as a whole, with all the associated
jathis.."
Raghu responds to Senthil:
"We
must guard against a romantic reconstruction of our past. ... studied
the Vaastu Shastras for ten years... We have seen both the exalted and
the extractive sides of the so called pundits. While the original texts
are open and rational, later day practitioners and present day Vaastu
pundits have distorted the design principles beyond recognition into
a dogmatic set of formulae backed by blind belief.
Some of the governance mechanisms described by Dharampal and Claude
Alvarez were misrepresented by the leaders of the time to accumulate
land and wealth on the one hand, and allow the traditional duties to
languish.
We have a difficult task on our hands, firstly of rediscovering a
balanced sense of pride, secondly, of looking critically and rationally
at both the past and the present. Dharampal was fond of saying that we
can't become a great nation by
running behind the tails of the west, nor by blind resurrection of the tradition."
Rajiv's response: This is a good comment and belongs to the new thread I started with message no.
2208. (summarized in this post - last week).
Arun has the last word in this discussion:
"The decentralized knowledge systems such as we call Hinduism today survived.The
centralized ones, such as were taught in Nalanda, Taxila (of course, it
included the traditions that survive today) perished. It is not as
though we did not have centralized knowledge systems, IMO."
