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Session VI (15th October 2007), presented the stand of our traditional wisdom on the need to voluntarily put rational restrictions on our desires and also on the resultant chase of resources for satisfying them. Our tradition calls these restrictions as Dharma. Dharma (duties and responsibilities) is one the two Para economic pursuits of human life, the other being moksha, i.e. salvation. Artha (resources) and Kama (desires), which happen to be the central theme of Economics, have to be achieved, strictly within the framework of the para economic pursuits. It is important to note here that the meaning of Dharma in Sanskrit is not confined to only ‘religion’ as it is interpreted in its derivative languages spoken in India today. Religion, as it is understood in the common parlance in India today, is a particular way of worship, which is a component of Dharma, not its totality. The etymological definition of Dharma, given by Mahabharat, was stated in the session VI. The comprehensive definition was given by Kanada in his Vaisheshika sootra.
Dharma is all that, by following which, we achieve both material prosperity and salvation.
Our tradition firmly believes that the ultimate objective of the human existence (i.e. life) is to realize one’s identity with the Ultimate Reality i.e. salvation. But, for qualifying oneself for the salvation, every human being is required to perform one’s duties and fulfill one’s responsibilities towards the society (the worldly responsibilities) and towards the Creator (the spiritual responsibilities). For both these, every one of us has to earn resources and spend them on activities. Our body is identified as the best instrument of performing the dual set of duties mentioned above.
The body is the best instrument for performing one’s duties and fulfilling one’s responsibilities.
Hence, it is necessary that the body is taken care of by providing adequate resources for it. However, excepting the materialist philosophers in our tradition (Chārvāk and Poorvameemānsaks), all other philosophers, social reformers and saints have repeatedly exhorted that this life is meant for performing one’s duties and fulfilling one’s responsibilities, which were clearly defined according to one’s position in the social hierarchy and the stage in life (Varnāsramadharma). Nowhere, in our traditional literature we find the gratification of wants as the objective of life, let lone saturation. On the contrary, the duties and responsibilities have been repeatedly mentioned by our scriptures and even the popular literature. Rigveda, the oldest scripture in our country, articulates these duties in three categories.
From the time of birth, an enlightened person is tied to three types of debts, viz. the debt to the sages (the spiritual leaders), which is to be repaid by learning, debt to gods, which is to be repaid by performing one’s duties (Yajna), according to one’s position in the social hierarchy and the stage in life (Varnasramadharma) and the debt to the ancestors, which is to be repaid by continuing the family lineage.
The Bhagawadgeeta is much more articulate on this issue. In the third chapter (Karmayoga), explaining the interdependence of the divine beings (gods, whose manifest form is nature and society, as we have stated in an earlier session No. 2) and the humans, the Bhagawadgeeta (song divine) says:
When the gods are pleased by, the human beings, performing their duties, they will bestow on them, the objects of enjoyment (goods and services). (However, as a token of acknowledgment, the human beings are expected to offer back a part of the endowment to gods (i.e. to society and nature). Whosoever enjoys the entire endowment without giving back a part to the gods, is verily a thief.
Mahabharat explains to outcome of an attempt to saturate wants by an ever increasing application of the resources to them. This should teach a good lesson to the proponents of the worship of mammon (wealth) on an ever-increasing scale, for saturating human wants.
The desires never get quenched by consuming resources. They, instead get flared up like the fire on which an offering (usually ghee) is poured.
Saturation of human wants is a self defeating process. But, it has been an implicit objective of both the Capitalist and Communist economic thinking. In the next session, we will see how this mindset has caused the disruption of both, the environment and the society.
In spite of such a fragile physique, how could the human species survive and prevail over all animal and plant species? What made it possible?
Subhuman species obtain everything required for survival and propagation, all by themselves. Man is the only animal, which depends on other (human or nonhuman) beings for a majority of his needs. This was possible because of the division of labour and the resultant specialization. Developing and managing many organizations scientifically was required as a precondition for these. Society is the largest and the most important of such organizations.
We can never be happy, all by ourselves. We cannot even tickle ourselves. Happiness increases and sorrow decreases when shared with others.
Thus, for surviving, developing and sharing our happiness and sorrow, we need the society as a framework.
Specialization provides nearly every member of the society, an opportunity to perform operationally meaningful work and to honorably earn a living, even to the handicapped people, who are therefore spared from becoming pitiable objects.
Conflict or (its civilized version, competition) is certainly an important principle of a social living. But, a society is sustained, only when competition is rationally reconciled with cooperation. Nature sustained and even today sustains life on this planet by a wonderful reconciliation of conflict and cooperation (interdependence). We must learn this lesson from nature, if we want to sustain our (human) society.
The seemingly weaker plants and animals have an important role to play in the life sustaining cycles of nature. Hence, for their protection (as a species), nature has endowed them with certain special abilities and tricks, along with imposing certain restrictions on the use of the physical strength of the powerful predator animals. They include a much lower birth rate and a high death rate (particularly in the infancy), intuitive restriction on hunting only when hungry and that too strictly for satisfying hunger only once at a time. In nature, these restrictions work through the instincts, making all nonhuman living beings, perfectly programmed bio-robots of nature, living only on the subsistence level of consumption all through the life.
The acquired content of knowledge, in the case of human beings, is much larger than the intuitive knowledge and is more dominant too. Hence, as the most privileged species, we have to consciously accept some self-imposed restrictions on our behaviour, for the sustenance of the society, which protected us from the cruel principle of natural selection and of nature, which is a source of life and nourishment for us. The traditional wisdom of our society calls these self-imposed restrictions as Dharma. Mahabharat defines Dharma as,
Rules and regulations, which hold and sustain the society, are called Dharma.
Summary:
In session IV, dated 28th September 2007, we saw how the replacement of ‘welfare’ by ‘optimisation of scarce resources’ as the sole objective of economic activities, culminated into confining a homo sapiens sapiens (modern wise man) to a homo economicus i.e. an economic man, whose life mission is only want-gratification by acquiring resources in a competitive environment.
The worship of competition to the complete neglect of cooperation, as a principle of life, worsened the situation, under the influence of the Cartesian Newtonian Conceptual framework. The policies of economic development, under this conceptual framework, have brought the world to the brink of extinction. As the new conceptual framework accepted by the physical sciences has not effectively been incorporated into the social sciences, the en-tire set of activities conducted by an economic man, are motivated by what Bhagawadgeeta calls a diabolic attitude. The disastrous results inevitably follow.
The Problem:
Once the materialist (sensate) outlook towards economic activities in particular and towards life in general was accepted (under the influence of the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework), the homo economicus syndrome prevailed over the human minds. Bhagawadgeeta analyses the behaviour of such people under its study of the divine and diabolic attitudes of the people in Chapter 16, verses 7 to 15. The characteristics of the people with a diabolic (Aasuri) attitude described in these verses, exactly match those of the Homo economicus.
The people with a diabolic attitude, are ignorant of what they should do and what they should not. They do not possess cleanliness, nor proper behaviour nor truth.
The sole objective of life for an economic man is the gratification of wants, irrespective of what they are and what effects do they lead to. Hence harmful commodities like tobacco products and liquors are produced, advertised and sold. Products like fossil fuels which cause air pollution and also like chlorofluorocarbon, which widen the Ozone hole and nuclear power plants, causing the radiation hazard, are used only for their economic cost effectiveness, without any consideration for the disastrous effects of these on the next generation. Jungles are cut for the richer population’s fancy for new furniture every six months.
For the short-sighted objective of a conspicuous consumption of a variety of goods and services, we destroy nature’s cyclical mechanisms of recreating resources. It is a common knowledge today that, if all the people in the world today, demand the same quantity and variety of consumer goods that an average American citizen consumes, we will need seven earths to provide for that kind of demand.
Surprisingly, though during the time of Bhagawadgeeta, not even a semblance of the today’s environmental problems existed, the analysis and diagnosis of the nature and genesis of the diabolic mindset that causes the destruction of the world is unequivocally predicted. Second, the characteristics of the diabolic mindset exactly match those of the homo economicus syndrome, under the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework, as can be clearly seen in the following verse.
Those (people with a diabolic mindset) say that this world is unreal, (because) there is no foundation or a controller to it. Various objects in it, are unrelated to each others and what objective could there be for it to exist, other than gratification of desires?
The Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework, dictates a reductionist approach for observing and analysing the world around us. Every phenomenon has to be broken (analysed) into its components and each component is to be studied as though it is independent of the other components.
The Einsteinian revolution in Physics has shaken the very foundation, if not the existence, of this framework. Under the new framework, everything in this universe is related to everything else. Second, the so called unbreakable, solid atom visualised by the Newtonian Physics, was found to be a space in which the negatively charged electrons orbit round the nucleus and the position of an electron at any particular point can be told only in probabilistic terms (The so called Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg). Dr. Fritjof Capra, in his epoch making book, Tao of Physics1 displays how the old framework of Physics has now been replaced by a new holistic framework and how the intuitive findings of the ancient (Upnishadic) Indian and Chinese thinkers, exactly match the experimental findings of the Einsteinian school.
The so called materialistic thinkers, be they Physicists, natural scientists or Economists, cannot even admit the existence of a superhuman power like God, controlling the activities of the various agents functioning in the universe, because it is beyond logic. Hence, like the people of a diabolic mindset, these scientists also deny the existence of God. However, there are many riddles in the study of the nature of reality, which cannot be comprehended (let lone analysing them) by the framework of a three dimensional universe.
The economic scientists, unfortunately have not yet come out of the old framework and so are stuck to the optimisation complex of want gratification at the individual level and want saturation on the social level.
What is the inevitable outcome of this Homo Economicus syndrome? Bhagawadgeeta warns,
With this mindset, the people with a diabolic attitude, having lost their conscience and intelligence as a result, engage themselves in horrible actions, which culminate into the destruction of the world.
Do we need to comment on this? The leaders all over the world today, enamoured by the Homo economicus syndrome, have brought the world to the brink of extinction.
1. Dr. Fritjof Capra, Tao of Physics, Sambala, USA, 1975.
