Nation State……Cycle of human civilization

‘A nation state is a type of state that conjoins the political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation, from which it aims to derive its political legitimacy to rule and potentially its status as a sovereign state. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, whilst a nation is a cultural and ethnic one. The term "nation state" implies that the two coincide, in that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated with it. "Nation state" formation can take place at different times in different parts of the world.’  There goes the definition, does it exists in modern times, no, and increasingly human society is diverging away from its path. Yet, from the historical perspective, the concept, at least as in a limit, was a step towards change from earlier ideas of sovereign state governed by monarchies or theocracy. The new organization structure to implement nation state was either through democracy or republic or communism. All better than the previous structures in the sense that power and in turn economic benefits was spread between even more greater sections of the society. The efficiency of the allocation of resources far exceeded than what was achieved previously by the system of Monarchies or Theocracies. While nation state was better, but it also had severe drawbacks in emphasizing sharp demarcation of the borders in terms of cultural ethnicity, this led to the extreme examples of Hitler’s Germany, Imperial Japan and Colonial Governments of Various European Countries. We, together as human society learnt our lessons through the three centuries of 18^th,19^th and 20^th and in the process giving birth to the new ideas of everything ‘transnational’.

Today globalization has already reduced the cultural diversity to the point of almost obliterating the ethno-cultural argument of the nation state. All that stands in the way of total homogenization is Religion, Language and human genome evolved body shape and size. Language barrier will break through technological evolution (as we figure out ways to effectively translate various languages) and simultaneous promotion for a need of a global language, religion through the acceptance of a common human rights concept, spread of the secular ideas and with the acknowledgement that there are multiple ways to God. Human physical form, via intermarriage as economic and political immigration in an increasingly physically interconnected (technological evolution in transportation) world increases. Today this (physical immigration) what is being resisted most , particularly by the rich nations , citing the ideas of nation state, in particular the cultural ethnicity , in reality to hang on to the global political power. However this very resistance is an obstacle to the efficient allocation of the resources (the ideal of our economic and financial system), look at the ageing population of the developed nations. Like nature that abhors vacuum, money abhors unproductive provision, so the barriers will break, people will immigrate as immigration, a human right; is same as the right to survive. More significantly, it is because of this settlement, there will be a change in the demographic structure of every country. The Global nature of this migration will result in mixing of genes, slowly diluting away the purity of the existing pools, resulting in a new physical form of the human being, leading to global standard of one class of genes. There will be no more Caucasian, Mongoloids, Dravidian or Negroid races as separated by their typical physical characteristics.

With people of the world all leaving under the vast commonality of humanity, there will be a need for governance, if not for anything but just to keep up and manage the efficient allocation of the earth’s resources. Economic ideas of growth through exploitation will be replaced by the concepts of sustainability and balance. What will be the organization structure that will govern I do not know but I do know that democracy or republic or communism will not be able to handle the multiple forces of such a large scale endeavor. Maybe new concepts will emerge as we, as human beings, muddle through this vast project of globalization.

Pluralistic states, like those in the United States, European Union and India are step towards it. While the concept of absolutely global, once again might be an ideal in the limit, till then national cultural groups will not disappear, the natural place of these groups will not be attaining power at the expense of other minorities. As immigration happens, people from different minority backgrounds continue to relocate and live in states that are not their ancestral home, pluralism will have to be accommodated, if not for anything at the least for the sake of peace, productivity and access to significant human talents. As of today, in every country, minorities need resources to survive but they produce more human talent and ingenuity per person than the majority of that country.

There will be very little basis of large scale conflicts between human being as the differences between civilizations will be non-existent, over that, variations arising out of residing in the earths diverse geography will be smoothed down by technology. As we see around the world, in today’s clothing fashion trends and so on. Maybe in such a world, there will not be a need for a world government, no organization of higher authority to manage us. We as a human being will be able to manage ourselves; a possibility is a societal collapse and move into communal anarchy (or harmony, depends on which way you look at it) or zero world government, in which governance is done on the local level based on a global ethic of human rights.

If that happens, a real possibility, I think we as a evolution of human beings will complete a full cycle. While there may be a complete destruction by the annihilation of mankind on earth , clearing the way for a fresh new start  I do not know. Nonetheless, if it does not , if human society survives, diversity will once again start increasing as the each local governance gets institutionalized, if not for anything else but for just local individual interest. Then the cultures, ways of living life, subsequently followed by religion, civilization and others forms of structures to hold mass consciousness. They will get sharpened , evolve and grow in another great cycle of human life on earth till , once again, like the pervious cycle,  human necessity will force them in reduction of diversity though globalization or something else.

What is Beauty ?

A beautiful poem, piece of writing, painting, music or a movie takes one into an esoteric experience. Something which is almost always cannot be described verbally rather into the world of cognition. I always wanted to think that beautiful is universal, at the least to mankind. Over the years I found out that it is not the case, it is only universal when everybody has similar sensibility and value system, as in today’s globalized world. Imagine a few hundred years ago , in a not so globalized world , the practice of having a ‘small’ feet for Chinese women or extreme long necks on Burmese women or etching scales on ones’ body in Papa New Guinea was considered to be beautiful but to the rest of the world it is not. To the world , it is not even disgusting; there is complete nonchalance, no extreme emotions. Why is that? Did it not reflect a unique combination of proportion, scale, balance, symmetry and rhythm? Maybe or maybe not? However one thing was certainly different, the concept of belief in a particular world view, thus the associated morality, sense of purpose of life and so on.  This is the basis generating the perception of beauty. ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’ as they say

There is no universal beauty. It is culture, world view specific. If that is the case all the taxonomy in Aristotles ‘Poetics’  do not apply. Aristotle as such did not develop a theory of esthetics in the sense BharatMuni’s NatyaSashtra did, through the idea asserting “that entertainment is a desired effect of performance arts but not the primary goal, and that the primary goal is to transport the individual in the audience into another parallel reality, full of wonder, where he experiences the essence of his own consciousness, and reflects on spiritual and moral questions “. While I would not agree with the “reflects on spiritual and moral questions” as I believe that these are cognitive factors which in the first place drive the creation of the parallel reality and experience itself.

I believe that anything beautiful is a slice of life itself , slicing dimension maybe time, space or our consciousness. It is the reality that brings for the Baharatmuni’s Bhavas ( emotions) and subsequently the rasa( sentiments). Emotion is the instrument of action, an action which instills sentiment in the motions of sliced reality. This notion of process of slicing the reality is a very deep intellectual process as Anand Coomaraswamy ( 1877-1947) put it “ it is not by sensibilities but by his intellect that a man can be called an artist”.

So when Tagore writes his poem or Ganesh Pyne and Da Vinci does his painting or Satyajit Ray creates his cinema they are all slicing chunks of reality but with a twist. The twist is their own intellectual understanding of the reality and what do they want to communicate through it. Hoping to transform the recipients of the art through an experience to what they felt or thought.  Art is just the expression , beauty is the objective , the experience. It is not necessarily noble, pleasurable but should always be able to bring extreme emotions (bhavas) and rasas . You can either love it or hate it but will not be able to ignore it. If an work created as art can be ignored, then it is not a work of art but just another banal expression .

It is for this reason, certain works of propaganda are works of art, created to promote a particular political cause or point of view. There is always a truth in beauty, not the truth of the factual reality of the time but deep introspection of the existence of primeval human emotion and also the fact that without emotion, be it positive or negative, there is no life.

With globalization the world view is changing or more appropriately the world view is converging. In this way , slowly all over mankind a universal sense of morality, an acceptance of only way of life is becoming the norm, thus the sense of what is beautiful. In this ecosystem the idea of beautiful women or a painting or music becomes global. Since everyone will agree, a theory can be created, rules can be set and finally everything can be produced from a formal framework.  Do we, as a human being want to live in this world by drowning diversity and celebrating monolithic human attitudes is another question?

Personally I would like to live in the world where, if ever I could I would like to go in the far corners of the world and see completely different things emerging out of human ingenuity. Whether they are beautiful to me it doesn’t matter, what matters most is that they are genuinely different arising out of completely different value system. That would take me to in Bharatmunis words “to another parallel reality, full of wonder” and help me to experience the God within me .

Do God Exist ?

I always remember this high school physics thought experiment. Imagine a dog who only lives in a two dimensional world , that is he cannot perceive the third dimension. What happens to him when someone drops a bone from the top of his head , the third dimension. ? He sees the bone as it lands in his world of the two dimensions, but he is unable to comprehend from where the bone came from. This is because he has no idea of the existence of another dimension , the third dimension.

In human life , in our society many things happen for which we do not have a rational explanation, so we attribute them either to luck or to some external force ( like GOD).  Thus is an existence of something beyond us which we cannot control, do not know how it operates but do exists. Over time , as our mankind’s collective wisdom increase we can explain one phenomenon but still others exists which we cannot rationalize. In ancient times we did not know water cycle and rain, so Rain god existed but today we can create artificial rain ourselves so the necessity of Rain God reduced.

Will it be ever possible to explain why something happen and something do not ? Why there is stock market crash? Why a particular individual won a lottery? And so on. We still do not understand gravitational force and just became aware of a new matter called dark matter. It is for this, and these entire unexplainable phenomenon’s God exists.

 God also exist because hope exists. Hope is the elixir of life without it no life can exist. The idea of procreation is a simple but a fundamental manifestation of hope in life. It exists as the only reason to live in an extreme scenario when one is powerless against a much superior force. Imagine a feudal lord raping your wife and daughter, castrating your son and making you work to death. It is only in the belief in hope that someday (depending whatever your religion is) God will punish the perpetrator or you will reborn again for your redemption against the lord, that you will live. Why will somebody dig his own grave at gunpoint then shot and buried in it, without an iota of hope?

The argument whether God exists or do not exist doesn’t matter. It always exists, because it is antithesis of human fragility.  Whatever we cannot do, wish to do or hope to do can be done by omnipotent God, thus it is real and subsists in our mind and continues to live and grow in our common human consciousness. Like the concept of infinity, God exists without any bounds, endless but very natural.

Is there a reality which exists beyond us or is it that we just create a new realities with our thought, as our brain evolves? Is there a truth, one universal truth for everything and that is God ? Can we rationalize that if there exists one universal truth then there will one universal law which will lead to that truth? These and other similar questions can lead us to hundreds of arguments and thousands of pages of intellectual thesis. The very fact that we are thinking all these, says that we are alive, and yes, we hope to answer them one day and create new ones, like God.

God exists because we exists, it is like the ability to breathe as soon as we are born , so do the idea of God takes form in our mind. Like the concept of unidirectional flow of time that naturally occurs to us, so is God effortlessly building in us with the notion of hope. It is a necessity, part of our existence in our world , it is what we are and for that reason only, logical analysis for the existence God is ridden with sometimes contradictory, incomprehensible fallacies. It exists because the concept of ‘belief/faith’ lives as an evidence of our senses to be meaningful. We believe in God , not consciously but subconsciously like our breath, we cannot do otherwise.

The idea of God as an absolute truth is incorrect. It is not , God is just a natural phenomenon , a concept of feeling, like love, hope, despair, pain  existing in every human mind. Everybody is born with it. In this way God has no conflict with the natural sciences or to say evolution. While we tend to expand God to explain everything , including evolution, which as a scientific endeavor do give rational explanation of  many phenomenon and thus the idea of  ‘belief’ along with God can step back and let the concepts thrive. We need to remember that in science the hypothesis are approximation can only be made more plausible but cannot be proven to be true. A good hypothesis can be readily proven false.

That which cannot be explained rationally is accepted as belief attributed to God. It can either be a manifestation of God as classical Vedic thought might lead to us belief or some action of God which the religions from the Middle East (Christianity, Islam et all) might lead us to think.

A taste for Recorded Music…..

I am one of those person who was born into recorded music. In 1960’s onwards recorded music completely took over human society, worldwide, making millionaires out of artists.  My first introduction to music was through recorded LP’s of Lata Mangeshkar  and Hemant Kumar , popular  singers in those years and probably greatest ever.  Over the years I have listened to many types of music from all over the world , from tunes of Indonesia to pipes of Inca’s , US rock and roll to Indian classical music . You name it, but they were always recorded. At first during my childhood it was the record player’s with LP’s having beautifully designed covers and woody tonal quality of the emanated sound , then the tape recorders with cassettes and now crystal clear ethereal sounding CD’s and digital music.  I don’t remember ever listening to live music, I mean music straight from the instruments or voice to my ears.

Recorded music is always perfect, designed with deliberation and carry across the message as it is intended by the artist. It is not a living thing, no loose structure, improvisation of the moment or errors exposing human fragility. It is always impeccable with predefined sound vibrations and tonal patterns that always reliably affected my consciousness.  So when I close my eyes, sometimes, my head fill-up with the tunes that I have listened to over and over again either by choice or forcibly. India , in particular Kolkta where I grew up , on every conceivable occasion be it local club soccer tournament or Pujo it was always a necessity to broadcast music over a contraption popularly called ‘mike’ . In the process you were forced to listen to the latest popular numbers. I liked them. I liked them all and absorbed them into my soul without any apprehension. Not only that, I wanted more and went on to collect tunes, different tunes, varied tunes which I gathered, listened and soaked in them. It was the love.

My love for music, a love which was always transmitted and consumed through a machine. As the songs and tunes soared through my heart lifting me, taking me across in long flights of pure imagination and emotion, I never once thought of wanting to meet the singer or musician. Is it that I did not want to include the producer of the music in my very personal precious experience, which itself I wanted to memorize in my mind forever? So now, after many years, when I listen to certain tunes I hark back to those lonely teen days where sitting on rooftop, under afternoon shade, I would lie back, listening to music, shutting my eyes and feel the warm breeze of summer holidays under my nose.

I know it is just that. Is it just that? Yes it is personal very personal. Like the process of rumination over words before writing them down on pieces of paper as poems.

Growing up in lower middleclass of Kolkata , live music that I could ever afford was also not direct. Singers propped up on makeshift stages or stadiums singing through big speakers,  that was the music, performed in front of us. It was not just music but the people, the surroundings, the atmosphere, the musicians response to his audience, everything. We listened to the whole lot including the sound of the space in which all these was happening. An experience, different one, but not music. I abhorred those concerts.

I always thought, how it will feel to sit in front of Ghulam Ali and listen to him singing the gazals directly to me or have Sandhya Mukhopadhyay lift me up with her lilting voice. I wanted to listen to their songs directly, in full form, three dimensional sounds, surrounding my head and ears and extend my fingers to touch their soul. Merge my soul in their taste, smell, feelings, tunes. That would have been true love transmitted between us and without the machine.

That I could not afford. Till then recorded music stays, intermingled with my life’s small things as the very personal fragrance of my soul. So more realistic and warm the recordings are, better it is.

Why I travel

My motivation to travel, I mean spend your own money for vacation to distant places, is mixed with all kinds of confusion. I am almost always not sure why I want to go to someplace, where I end up anyway, later savoring it as a part of my personal history. Yet when I am in the process of travelling, that is constantly experiencing a kaleidoscope of sweet chunks of life, I enjoy. I take photographs hoping to capture the essence and don’t write about it. I almost always read up on the places I would visit, its history, culture and so on hoping to have a greater understanding when I am actually at the place, but it never happens. On my head, I just carry a junk load of information and images from the photographs that I have seen over the internet, that is all.  How can you understand a place when you are just taking a fleeting glance of it or can you? I just end up, doing a match-up of the things I visit with the information loaded into me hoping to etch the trip more thoroughly in my psyche.

Yet, everyplace has its own power and charm and that cannot be captured, duplicated and reproduced for mass consumption. Probably it is for this reason, even today, in the age of information, people travel. To gather, feel and relish the pearls of very life as lived out in a diverse environment. There was a time when human beings hardly ever traveled from the place of their birth, only in search of food and at the most a few miles. Only the daring ventured out, not only to forage for food but in hope of a life that is far better than they have been given to by their birth. Then there were the traders who almost always traveled far and wide in search for a better deal, profit, exotic stories. If they survived and when they came home, loaded, they would be the local stars, source of all new things for the inquisitive, variation seeking human mind. Even in my early childhood, growing up in a lower middle class family of a developing country, I faced the similar situation.

Every now and then, somebody who traveled some places be it the Ellora caves , the Taj Mahal or Egyptian pyramids would be a hero to me. This man has seen the things with his own eyes , the very objects we see as photographs in books and magazines or in movies. He was hero. Had it been a previous generation or two before me, he would have been an absolute hero, being the only source of information as no books or movies were there, only narration and hand drawing.

The very first time I travelled was for work. I had to leave the city I grew up to travel to a different city within India, Hyderabad. India is like Europe, each state in India is like a country, completely with its own language, culture and idiosyncrasies.  I found myself for the first time looking at conversation instead of participating in the dialogue, searching patterns in the written curves of alien language and savoring on the hot food of Andhra thali. I grew up in Kolkata , a cosmopolitan city and knew almost everything about Telegu‘s and have also experienced the culture to an extent but never like this. It humbled me , my urban, cosmopolitan , sophisticated attitude. I felt I grew, started to appreciate the world we share and embraced the vulnerability of the unfamiliar.

It is then I started travelling, connecting to the narcotic hum of possibility that starts breathing when I juxtapose the cool midnight air of Leicester Square, London with the stones of Qutub Minar, Delhi. I read about them , seen pictures, movies,  every one of them yet when you stop in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and next at Golconda Fort, next at Konark Temple, Orissa , India you start feeling the act of motion. The art of being ’on the road’, always, at least intellectually, deepened my life.  I did not travel just for scenery or for the food , for the history ,culture, for the people but for everything . The whole, the good the bad and the ugly .

I travel for inspiration. When you are inspired what do you do? Jump with joy, smile or keep quiet, walk away. I can do any number of things still I would feel an incredible mental simulation urging me to say aloud that this is life and I am alive. I still remember one day of the early morning sunrise on the beaches of Bakkhali, Kolkata , WestBengal, India. As the sun slowly rose from the horizon turning the sky red, like any other day , but on that day I was there , standing as usual with other tourists, I felt a deep happiness rising through my spine whirling and turning and merging with the deep red color of the sea water. It was the brief moment that I remember , it was the same fleeting moment when I was looking at Michelangelo’s painting through my binoculars in Vatican , Rome or standing in Key West sea shore , Florida watching a teenage couple dancing away a fine evening on the swinging Cuban drum beats,at Ellora, looking at the majestic rock cut temple. Yes I took photographs. Lots of them, but they cannot and will not be able to bring these feelings, maybe remind me of them.

I travel for uncertainty. Like the commuter bus that I ride to work every day my life in general is bound by rules and predictability. A structure that do not allow sudden drafts of whispering breeze , it is for this, I have to step out into the world of events that can occur at random. Travel. Travel for pleasure. Travel for freedom, complete total final and absolute. I felt it , the essence of unknown when in one evening I got lost in the streets of Tokyo , when on a sudden turn of events in a zoo we witnessed the birth of a giraffe and always when walking down the streets of Kolkata , India , my favorite city, the people , the colors, food ,light ,dust ,always discovering new things.  I see what I see, I do not arrive to see.

I travel to indulge in my addiction to aesthetics. The beauty , the intoxication of it , I still remember one of most fascinating moment of  my life watching the setting sun on Grand Canyon. It was like music of gorgeous light be played on the rocks of the canyon, at a very grand scale. I remember the lamp , the beauty of evening Ganga Puja on the Varanasi Ghat, India, candle like structure of Bryce Canyon, a beautiful girl painting on cobbled street corner in Sienna, Italy, fall colors at the Kancamgas Highway in New Hampshire, the sound of Buddhist humming at Asakusa temple, Japan or the feel of soft white sand and blue waters of Bahamas. So many of them, like rag pieces, they hummed, murmured and drugged my aesthetic sensation over and over. It was hallucinatory, allowing me to float on the smile of the truth.

I travel to love. As Tagore put it beautifully ‘You live the world you love it.’  I love the world and want to love it more with all my integrity, passion and emotion. The world is an endless mystery and to love it I will need to discover it and so I travel. From walking barefoot on the green grass lawn of leaning tower of Pisa , to enjoying sumptuous cooking at Lucknow restaurant, to talking to an astronaut at Kennedy Space Station I would like to embrace the life of the world dancing on the edges of time . A passionate embrace of love of this simple reality is the only fulfillment of my life.

For all of the above etches a celebration of journey of the world into my mind. I create memories. I travel to create memories of my own.  The recollections, which I can think over and over again like the notes of various ragas enriching my various moods and transcending, merging my soul to the eternity of life and universe.

Meritocracy or Privilege

All along my life, till this day, I struggle with this notion of meritocracy vs privilege. In my early child hood, I was born in a lower middle class family of 1960’s Kolkata, India. My family was not rich, barely getting by but was very happy.  Earliest memory I have on this was at elementary school.  We had to write in pencils and thus erasers (which we called rubber) took an important place in our pencils boxes. One of my friends had scented erasers and I did not have one, it is just that my parents could not afford one. I was not jealous of my friend but nevertheless spurred myself to the fact that I will try to save some money and buy one. I never did and never could have as I did not have a pocket allowance. So when today when my son went to school, first thing I did was to find out and buy some scented erasers for him.  This is not an issue of meritocracy over privilege but just the fact that my friend’s parents were wealthier than mine.

In my teenage I use to play soccer both for my school and at the Kolkata soccer league.  Compared to my age, I was fairly adept at my game and loved it with furious passion. Playing for my school was not a big issue for me after all I was already in the top league of junior soccer in the country. In spite of all that the first time I tried to play for my school team my candidacy was rejected. I was surprised, so was my parents, friends and all who knew me and my game. No reason was given to me as to why I was dropped.  I still remember my school losing to a mediocre team while I was standing at the sidelines as a spectator, yes literally as a spectator with all my skills. Later I came to know that some wealthy parents kid was taken in in my position. I really felt sad that my school would rather loose, than apply the principles for meritocracy.  Little did that young teenager, that I was, knew about the intricacies of influence and wealth.

In my higher secondary school years, those months of intense academic competition to get into the professional schools of engineering and medicine I felt myself on the privileged bus as compared to many. I was living in the city where there good schools and colleges, and environment of positive peer pressure, could afford the books (though marginally) whereas millions of kids, around the country, lived in poverty, could afford neither. Then again , when contrasted with some others I was not privileged at all , not having affluent parents who could afford specialized academic coaching and so on. However, with consistent hard work and a little bit of smarts I did manage to get myself admitted to one of the leading engineering schools of India. It was there for the first time I discovered the Government of India’s affirmative action program , a program by which certain section of the societies (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes )  were given priority for admission to the professional schools.  ‘To uplift them from the years of suppression’ definitely a noble gesture, a privilege. I saw how it was abused where generations of very rich people sons and daughters holding certificates of Scheduled Castes/Tribes thriving and taking advantage of these dispensation, generation after generation, whereas the real poor languished in the labyrinth of hopelessness, opportunity less world and struggled. It made me sick to the core, I revolted, but kept quiet and with time learned to overlook it and carry on with my life.

College was a big arena, with vast conflicting forces, so its ups and downs were also considerable.  The gap between privileged and meritocracy also grew. I saw rich people sons and daughters with all their nurturing from early child hood blossoming in the prime of their youth. I saw them shine as millions of others who stood outside the gates of our college looked at the promise of a better life slowly but surely fading away from them. Even when compared to me, a young man from lower middle class family who somehow got into the same arena was jostled around, almost always loosing.  It was never about of meritocracy rather privilege.  They got the better job, better pay, better position, better career path, better and more authentic promise to live a comfortable, fruitful and meaningful life.  I also got something, not left empty handed; after all I was in the same college as they were, at the least, that far did my meritocracy take me to.

Further on in life, in the broader society, we all know how the idea of meritocracy has been bent, stampeded and diluted by the societies vested forces. If only anybody, who has exceptional abilities can really thrive and live upon meritocracy as a pillar of life. For all the lesser mortals like us, if we cry meritocracy then we can find ourselves shoved deeper into the perils of uncomfortable life and insecurity. Thus to stay and  survive where we are, we keep quiet, allowing a full reign by the privileged few to pile and hoard wealth, opportunity and everything that come with it. Not going into the details, I can rehash the definition and say that, success in life is also about meritocracy, but not a definite skill rather a good to have factor in a plethora of skills. 

Then again, looking back to the millions of others who stood outside my college gate, for whom well-heeled, consequential life slowly glided away because they were ordinary and were not privileged, I feel empty.  Is that the difference between first world and third world? Then again within the first world also the same exists. Is it like earth itself, with the deserts and tropical forest, the heat and the cold? Opposite extremes will always exist.  Only thing we, our human endeavor can do is to create and maintain the balance not surrendering to any of the extremities; the complete rich, or complete poverty; all privilege, or all meritocracies. Can that concept exist at all? Can society be built completely on meritocracy? What will it look like?  In human history there was none, even the early Greek Spartan society was not. It had some institutionalized privileges.

The very human (rather for life itself) nature of accumulating and giving everything to its progeny stand out against the stringency of meritocracy where fairness is singular. Then how can we build a society on those principles. We don’t know, but what we know from the evolution of human civilization and its political organizations, (from tribal leaders, to kings, emperors, presidents to modern democracy) is that the notion of fairness creates a more dynamic, stable society and in time builds a powerful country. Probably it is the only core difference between developed world and developing one in terms of implementation of the concept. US is more just in its dealings within intra-race, at least amongst the euro origin white Americans than say Europe are, in its dealings within its white citizens. In countries like India, China fairness, the rule of meritocracy is much less when equated with US and Europe but lot better than African countries. A step further, US at least theoretically, is trying to evolve this concept into inter-race relations, way ahead than any other country in the world. What about transfer of accumulated wealth to its children. Every developed country has some sort of scheme in place, in US it is much more intense as compared to Europe and to India , China . It is the time, it changes things towards better allocation of financial resources. Aristocracy on the other hand suffocates the redistribution channels and conserves the riches for one’s family and multiple generations. A rich man may give all his collected wealth to his not so smart children , who to his/her children in the process over time and generations, that wealth do not get re-distributed to meritocracy creating opportunities for a new generation to arise.  This is possible, that is why the existence of aristocracy has been denied in America. Reverse happened in pre-colonial India, China creating huge disparities between rich and poor leading to a weaker, fractious nation, and was subsequently gobbled up by the colonial powers of Europe.

I do not know whether it will be ever possible to build a perfect society based entirely on meritocracy, at the least we can try to evolve towards it.  While acknowledging the fundamental human nature of giving ‘ all that we have’ to our children , we are sure that it is only through meritocracy, as a society we can make our present life better and our future world ,that which our children will inherit , best. 

Bootstrapping together: Religion and Economics

I am an ordinary human being, I am no genius and I am completely anonymous. There are thousands or millions of people like me who aspire for a better financial freedom in their life, a good life, free to do whatever we please within the boundaries of our own morality and culture. So in a way, our aspiration of good life, achieved by economic well-being needs to be within our framework of our own religion.  Sometimes a narrow framework developed from misinterpretation of religious sayings restricts our economic activity but mostly, in the context of modern 21^st century it is not. While at a personal level there is no dialectics between economics and religion it is there at a macro level. If a religion is organized one with a mandate to convert and spread, then economic power might become very useful in achieving that objective. After all, morality and culture can only have a meaning when one survives. The fundamental instinct of every human being to survive can only be appeased by economic success, but all these attainment loses significance if there is no morality and culture to give it a meaning. In a way, economy is needed to pull a man out of poverty but not enough to dissolve his wretchedness. It is also not self-sustaining as an unhappy man will not perform well enough to climb into high echelons of economics and endure there.

On our planet there are multiple religions and each having many followers choosing to live their life in one way or the other. It is their religion; their belief is what gives meaning to their life. The economic judgments that these individuals make to live their life according to their faith is what micro decisions are about. A company doing business need to be cognizant about these and act accordingly so that it can achieve its mission, whatever may be, profit maximization or social welfare. Collected together these micro decisions become broad economic behavior. For centuries, we have seen various religions endeavoring to spread their faith, and increase the number of followers, which was the indicator of that religion’s power or influence level.  All these lead to dynamics of macro demand for goods and services, say certain product maybe of high demand in Saudi Arabia but may not be worth that much in England. Presently world religion are either organized (like Christianity, Islam) or personal (like Hinduism), this fragmentation also have a profound effect on the individuals behavior and thus in turn macro demand/supply curve. Also throughout history, we have seen many cases where the society – not only internationally, but also domestically - is under dispute among polarized rival religions, sometimes they lead to holy war and destroy the economy. At the other extreme, a tolerant society promoting diversity, at an international or national level can lead to a happy ending with a synergy effects. Economic growths is either, about increasing the size of the Roti via higher productivity or make a new roti with a different taste so that there are two roti’s instead of one. So yes, religions do have a deep impact on economics and that is manifested by defining an individual’s morality framework that subsequently influences the culture and behavior.

Religious practices impose an immediate trade-off, as they require time and resources that are then unavailable for an alternative way. However there are many alternative ways, each and every religion have their own chosen way. For every opinion there is route. Also for the atheist, there is a way, the way to find the meaning of life and live in joy, fulfillment and freedom. The fundamental aspect that is common to all forms of religion or no religion is that they prescribe rules of behavior, or practices, which constrain followers, with varying degrees of strictness. All of them have a common goal, which is to give a better life to an individual. This is also the very reason for the existence of the subject of study of economics. Its approach is not through prescriptions on human morality but through efficient allocation of resources. This work best when there exists diversity, increased choices provides numerous ways to arrange resources for higher productivity or building a new economic engine. This, I think is the cause of affluence of the modern society. Twenty first century society is much more multicultural, multi religious than in any other in known human history.

The other side of the argument is that if the world had only one religion, can we say we would have been economically better off. My answer to it will be ‘no’ simply because we will be ignoring the all the other possibilities. Diversity is the key, while choosing a particular way to live a life brings coherence, along with it, it is also important to be aware of multiplicity of evolution and ready to absorb newer, different ideas (be it religious or economic) that might enhance our way to live life.