We are just a day away from celebrating our Nation’s 65th Independence Day. In 1948, although we were released from the direct grip of the British empire, it took us a while to get our act together. There were the many errors we made in our attempt at self-governance, for some of which we had to pay a huge price, in being involved in a useless war against terror that ate into almost thirty of the sixty five years of our being ‘free’.
This column written and published in October, 2011 is reposted as a reflection of why we as citizens of this nation need to attempt to resolve our ‘inner contradictions’, about the ways in which we need to move forward as a truly independent and free Nation, as the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy has said. Like The Buddha in the ‘Kalma Suthra’ is said to have said we have a duty and a call to question, query and resolve issues that loom in our minds when we know that 'These are bad; these are to be blamed; these are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these lead to harm and ill’.
‘The Age of Reason’ is a collection of three pamphlets published in the 17th Century by British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine. What became a very popular and influential work, his work was able to shake the then dominant belief system. He did it through critical commentary of the then powerful social, religious and political order. According to a Wikipedia account, Paine’s ‘The Age of Reason’ “was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility.”
Questioning accepted basic norms of society is never easy. Paine called for ‘free rational discussion’ of ideas spiritual and material, that reached beyond dogma and popular belief systems of the time. In human history, from time to time we have seen the likes of Thomas Paine question the existing order causing ripples of change enabling more enlightened thinking on issues that impact human development.
Centred Power
One of the messages under the heading ‘Humanity Rising’ posted on a Face Book page by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ activists had a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi with the following lines alongside 1. First they ignore you 2. Then they laugh at you 3. Then they fight you and 4. Then you win. It added “We are at stage 3. Hang in there!”
The world around us is seeing a new kind of change. And the hope is that this time around it will be a ‘change we all can believe in’, and not mere election time promises that fizzle out on meeting the ‘realities’ of the happenings on the ‘Wall Streets’ of this world. A recent publication on the city of New York, boasted that apart from being the world’s financial capital and the home for the United Nations head quarters, seven of the world’s top eight global advertising agency headquarters to be based in that city. It also boasted that the city was the home for “internationally influential newspapers, large publishing houses, most prolific television studios, biggest record companies in the world and being a major global centre for the television, music, newspaper, book and magazine publishing industries.”
That‘s some power to reckon with and as we read and discovered earlier this year of the exposures of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, these can go to unjustifiable ends to push ideologies and positions, far remote from what is desired by humanity at large. Often they act as catalysts in making and braking political leadership to hold desired positions together.
One percent syndrome
Such is the power activists now call the power of the ‘one per cent’ (1%). In these recent developments we perhaps are witnessing the emergence of another ‘Age of Reason’. This time what’s being questioned is the might, inapt ways and dogma of those who hold access to resources and the unholy unions between them and the advocates they have set in place in the seats of power in the political institutions around the world.
For decades now we saw the emergence of info-communications and other technologies leading to making what some called the ‘global village’. We saw its apparatus being used to create movements in attempts to bring pressure on world leaders to make rational decisions on managing climate change, poverty, epidemics and deal with issues of social justice. We also saw the same technology being used to push more and more useless production of ‘stuff’ we never needed for our rightful existence and may not need now. It was those who designed and produced them that determined we needed them. We could recognise this imposing thrust on us today, as the art (or science) of marketing and promotion. Many channels of communications are at work to make us believe we need them. There is an ongoing attack on our subliminal minds to make us believe that what we want is that ‘what is thrown at us’. We saw its use to transfer funds from money market to money market creating havoc even in several once prudently managed economies in Asia a decade or so ago, and it continues to happen all around us even today.
Plastic money
We saw how bubbles of plastic ‘money’ supported the growth of trading businesses, where there was no real hard production of useful goods or services. A good hard work ethic was replaced by what some called a ‘smart’ work ethic. We saw hordes and hordes of ‘stuff’ produced, often more of the same functional application where we could have done with a few, touted as providing ‘consumer choice’. We saw real estate markets inflating to burst-out loud leaving behind trails of homeless and poor in the US. While there is a new consciousness emerging all around us with movements against corruption, injustice, corporate greed, placing too much pressure on the environment and waste of resources, there is also a counter movement developing to maintain the ‘status quo’.
I was in disbelief to see a recent programme on Bloomberg television, where Indian villagers were being introduced to plastic credit cards, touting it as a gateway to bringing prosperity to their lives. Upon the experience of the burst of credit bubbles in the US, the reported initiative did not make any moral or economic sense to me as a viewer, for I am one who believes that media has a social responsibility to uphold.
Inner contradiction
Most of the time it’s our self-interest, reluctance to step out of our comfort zones and the protective instincts in us that keeps us away from examining dogma and reaching out to examine reason. I remember reading Leo Tolstoy write “everyone sooner or later clearly or vaguely experiences the inner contradiction “I want to live for myself alone, and want to be a rational person; but it is irrational to try to live for myself alone.”
He also went on to tell the world at large “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you”. That perhaps is what the doyens of the ‘1%’ around the world ought to do; stop for a moment to listen to the voices of reason and act to correct the injustices around, perhaps a turn around in the current models in use is in order.
In the charter of Buddhist inquiry ‘The Kalama Sutta’ the Buddha is said to have said "It is proper for you, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumour; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration; 'The monk is our teacher.', when you yourselves know: 'These are bad; these are to be blamed; these are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed these lead to harm and ill,' abandon them. It’s time now for careful inquiry, for it could well be, too late to postpone it.
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