The Moral Individual - iv

As an individual progresses in life, there would be many instances where s/he finds her/himself guilty of harm to another person or a group of persons (and vice versa but focus is on the morality of the individual here). This harm was not initiated by the person him/herself but because of  cultural norms was part of the life. The perpetrator and the victim both were unaware of this relationship and the perpetrator always imagined a noble ring or a mutually enjoyable act in the way s/he associated with the other person.

The perpetrator realizes this(harm) as s/he acquires greater knowledge about the long term implications in the form of emotional or physical or one feeding the other harms to the other person. Let us consider this person has developed empathy because of self-pity. How would s/he respond to this situation?

Let's consider the worst case scenario, where the perceived normal relationship has been highly beneficial to his/her emotional or physical needs. In this case, a radical change in the relationship is difficult. In this situation, the crystal clear knowledge of the harm s/he has caused or s/he is going to cause in the long term gets blurred. S/he develops a new self-pity in the eventuality of conceding his/her fault.

A new self-pity on his/her perceived struggle without the psychological or physical fulfillment of his/her needs would make him/her to go slow on his/her own determination to change. It also develops a cynical rationalization that the permanent harm could have been done already before s/he acquired the knowledge of it and any change on his/her part would anyway make no difference.

A society with the burden of many cultural and ritualized practices which deny human rights to individuals or ask them to perform acts with a self-serving reason that those are 'common', cannot hope to correct itself by individuals' goodness. The individual goodness is strongly dependent on the empathy based on the self-pity and the self-pity can develop with the loss of privilege which in turn redirects the empathy requirement on the perpetrators themselves. In such cases, a non-individualistic action called justice which only seeks to correct the wrong done on individuals disregarding perpetrator individual empathy is the only true morality.

Random Thoughts - Love_Lust

This article on Asexuals is inline with the previous findings that love and lust are mutually independent feelings. According them, asexuals can be divided into 'romantic asexuals' and 'aromantic asexuals'. An asexual can fall in love with other person.

As implied, sexuals are defined by the presence of 'lust' and asexuals by the lack of it, not only that, both sexuals and asexuals can be defined by the presence or absence of 'love'.

So, humans can be;
- Sexually romantics
- Asexually romantics
- Sexually aromantics
- Asexually aromantics

However, a sexual individual's orientation could be any of these combinations based on the person s/he meets.

If I think about it there could be persons who lack the feeling 'love' completely just as some people lack 'lust'. I think these people are yet to 'come home'. So, when I talked about presence or absence of love in the beginning it's about mutual phenomenon. But lack of love can be a self phenomenon just like lack of lust.

Communism and Kerala - VI

I'm reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have finished around 150 pages and I find it difficult to read further. The initial excitement at his description of a totalitarian system has been vaporized by a  colligated romantic story.

It could be said that even in his imagination of a totalitarian society he had been helped by the existing systems elsewhere and had taken it to the logical conclusion. However, it was his female characters that one would feel a total letdown.

I'm not mixing my thoughts here. A totalitarian society is created by a collection of people. Females are individuals. One can stereotype a totalitarian society and still get it right because it is not  individualistic. However, a person's experience of females cannot be stereotyped because at  the end of the day he's dealing with any female as an individual. Here I found Orwell had caricatured females.

Both Katherine and Julia are stereotyped females. One has obedience in her bones; the other has rebellion. I get the feeling that neither of them grew into their selves with some kind of irrational or rational logic. They just happened to be like that. On the other hand, Winston is trying to piece together the situation rationally.

He pities himself for his physical limitations. However, the character is confident of its intellectual capabilities. Altogether, I get an impression of an intelligent rational with masochistic tendencies. That makes neither of the females as his equals. It's beyond comprehension how self pity reduces Winston to Julia's equal. George Orwell could be limited in his imagination of a rational woman.

However, that is not the reason I started writing this entry. I wanted to discuss 'newspeak' that he describes. Newspeak is a short hand language with no antonyms and no words for many concepts which are deemed anti-establishment. It's a way to make people think in a very restricted way thus eliminating any thoughts of rebellion from their mind. Eliminate the words that articulate the opposition to the establishment thus eliminate the opposition itself.

Anyway, many Indians can intuitively identify 'newspeak' with 'castespeak'. The Indian languages were/are vehicles of castiest and slavish mentality. However, somehow communism in Kerala has been able to turn Malayalam, the worst castespeak, as a revolutionary tongue. It has achieved it by bringing Sanskritized Malayalam to common people.

My Malayalam(the Kasaragod variant) has a very limited number of Sanskrit words (probably the percentage of Prakrit words could be higher). At family level conversation this has  been sufficient as far as I could see. I find it difficult to follow Sanskritized Malayalam of my relatives (with humble background). Sometimes I find it difficult to believe they can utter those words with a straight face. I'm fairly aware of many Sanskrit words, since I studied in Kannada medium. Still I find it difficult to follow some of the known words used by native Malayalis. Probably because they take some of the obscure meanings (or the meanings which aren't dominant in Kannada literature). In any case, if I use some "grand" Sanskrit words while speaking in Kannada, I could become a laughing stock."Sakhav" (comrade in Malayalam) type of words can only be used in Yakshagana in Karnataka. I feel Malayalis are immune to such thinking.

Sometime back I mentioned about a study that found that among the students completing their primary education, Kerala students had the best grasp of Malayalam, whereas, Kannada and Tamil students had the least of their mother-tongues. I wonder whether the communist movement enabled common people to get used to a vast vocabulary in Sanskrit to express many concepts which in turn helped their children to grasp the language better. The school books would invariably use Sanskrit words in vernacular languages to express many concepts.

Movements and ideologies - Secular Enemies

With the fall of the feudal system (not really true in many parts of India), there are no true secular enemies to fight against. Corrupts, the present day enemies,  pose a grey are for the general population. Because when it comes to money, many people have ambiguous attitude even though majority of them will never get a chance to commit corruption.

In such a situation, it becomes imperative that we change our definitions of right versus wrong. A person's integrity is irrelevant in the fight against corruption. The necessary thing is whether s/he accepts the view that an uncorrupt society is better for all and in fact can improve his/her financial status in the long run (which can be better or equal to benefits from the corrupt self). I think this attitude is better than hoping to have pure leaders to lead us in the fight against corruption. Following an ideal leader itself is self-debasing.

But the alternative of course requires our vision of future society where we can create jobs for everyone and distribute wealth justly. There are many countries with low corruption indices and which are highly successful. However, many of them have been colonial powers and others have benefited from these colonial powers. So those are not true models for a country like India. We need a model which is neither dependent upon colonies nor dependent upon exports oriented economy.

Update: 26-12-2011
There is no central point in this piece but there are some good observations along the way. The ones I'm quoting below are not.

When you're inside a myth it looks like fact, and for those who were inside the myth of the end of history it seems to have given a kind of peace of mind.

         Surely we would be better off if we put an end to our obsession with endings.

It appears some Europeans are losing big picture in their economic turmoil. Let's see the other side. Or the present society. A recent study sums up the situation quite beautifully.

Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in -- a government, company, or marriage -- even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust?

When we feel we can't escape a system, we adapt. That includes feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable.

The point of concern is not whether utopians really seek for a peaceful ending but the common people feeling that the present situation as the best of all endings. 

Random Thoughts - XI_a

Taking my previous post further and considering normal human behaviours (in contrast to different behaviours discussed in psychiatry), I would think it's impossible to find a general truth. We can certainly find individual truths but the summation or the averaging does not give a common truth. This might be obvious, but the disappointing point would be even if one finds an individual truth there is no guarantee that one can create an ideal society for that individual to live in. That kind of society is when obviously impossible in a herd society, it's also not feasible in an individualistic society.

This doesn't mean that an ideal society for an individual is utopian. The word itself is highly limited in its understanding and myopic in its meaning. The present day society is obviously a utopian dream for the past societies. It's a word used by reactionaries who undoubtedly in every barbaric societies of the past, with their position secured, would have justified it with similar vocabulary. These sophists would find true communism existing in the USA when its economy struggled.

The concept of global village or nation without boundaries, even when it comes to fruition, will not create an individual's ideal society. We may need to create nations of ideologies. I don't think there are many ideologies. We need to create only two societies. One is based on lust, where inviting for a cup of coffee is a civilized way of expressing sexual desire. The other is based on love, where any euphemism or physical hints for sex is unacceptable and one can only profess love. The lust is expressed not from words but hinted from the physical presence in lust spaces.

Thoughts - XI

If humans are born as mere FPTAs, I think the quest for self-discovery is absurd.
...
I wrote that and then started searching for information on self-discovery and discovered Thomas Szasz.

I did think earlier that Psychiatry should replace religion without thinking much about implications.

Movements and Ideologies : Berber-Arab Spring

In the relative success of "Berber Spring" and "Arab Spring", it was heartening to see that non-fundamentalist Muslims also have guts to oppose authoritarian regimes or Muslims do have courage without religious brainwashing. The corruption and humiliation felt with the rule of single families perhaps was too strong that it could mask the fear of Islamic take over. But I believe if democracy prevails, the political system could be better than that of Iran. In any case, the so-called secular regimes in these regions didn't do anything to further the cause of secularism among common people(with few exceptions). They just controlled the fundamentalists through force.

But this makes me wonder whether the secular support of the Iraq war even with the argument for democracy is valid or not. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before even Iraqis rebelled against the regime. Maybe secularists thought Muslim Berbers and Arabs were completely hopeless to bring about any change in their society.

Anyway, non-Muslim world is still few years away from becoming completely comfortable with the Muslim Berber-Arab world.

Update: 23-12-2011
A related article in the BBC magazine

According to the historian Eric Hobsbawm:
About the traditional Left;

The traditional left was geared to a kind of society that is no longer in existence or is going out of business. It believed very largely in the mass labour movement as the carrier of the future. Well, we've been de-industrialised, so that's no longer possible.

The most effective mass mobilisations today are those which start from a new modernised middle class, and particularly the enormously swollen body of students.

About Iranian model repeating itself;

The people who had made concessions to Islam, but were not Islamists themselves, were marginalised. And that included reformers, liberals, communists.

What emerges as the mass ideology is not the ideology of those that started off the demonstrations.

Idea of a Nation - v

I have argued before that India satisfies the requirements of a true nation because it doesn’t have a ‘soul’ of its own to irritate, subjugate or  compromise one or the other ‘souls’. But this argument shouldn’t overlook the creation of nation-state India.

When India was created the idea of faceless India was not there. It was a collection of regions where the Muslims were not in majority. The implication of that was;
  
-  The upper class Muslims, who were the most privileged class until the British took over the country, clubbed the faceless castes with no say in politics and social aspects of the country until then with the privileged castes

-  According to the privileged castes it was the caste identity (euphemistically known as Hinduism) that has given India the common identity in retrospect

We see mockery of the faceless castes in either of these scenarios.  The humiliation of the faceless castes implicit in the partition of the country has been mitigated by the “secular” identity of the country. Thus the secular India gives dignity and equal claim to not only religious minorities but also to the faceless castes that anyway form majority within the castes.

Now the question is whether we can compromise with secularism and allow a region to secede based on the two nation theory. But I believe there is a greater question than this. Are we insecure with our near perfect definition of nation-state in the definition of India?

Unfortunately, the idea of secular India was a work of few brilliant minds. The majority castes or Muslims have no idea about it. The castes within their caste framework and Indian Muslims(which includes Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) within their religious identity are some of the most barbaric people on earth. Ambedkar had remarked that the caste system never had an intrinsic virtue to liberate itself, which appears to be true for Muslims too. But of course, isolated religious identity or the caste identities are no longer practical in the present world.

Now the question is whether we are withholding our trust in the definition of India because there are people with no idea of secularism and who merely see it a Hindu-Muslim issue. I believe the nation-state India should show faith in itself and experiment.

With this background, in my view we should take the following steps for the Kashmir issue;

1.            Ask Pakistan to change the name to ‘Islamic Republic of India’ from the present ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan'
•        of course, incomplete without Bangladesh but so is the name Pakistan which is prior to the creation of Bangladesh 
•               This request is not a prior requirement for the points 2-4
•        This requirement is not binding on Pakistan
   
2.        Hold referendum in Kashmir with two options. Join ‘Secular Republic of India’ or ‘Islamic Republic of India’ (No independence)
3.             Referendum should include separate ballots of Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Ahmadiyas, Buddhists and the castes .
•      There must be an initial ballot to decide whether Shias, Ahmadiyas would be part of Sunni Muslims or would like to have a separate electorate
4.            If non-Muslims or non Sunni Muslims don’t approve joining the Islamic Republic of India with a simple majority then the valley should be divided and there should be complete population exchange.   

Rise of Patriarchal Society - VIII

In Part -V of this series, I discussed how the conservative view of male preeminence was borne out of  misunderstanding of the sexual reproduction. In this view, women have no part in creation of life apart from acting as incubators. The life is complete in male 'seed'.

This was the prevalent view in many patriarchal societies, which also led to lower respect for females. I would argue the logical result was that the intercourse itself was an act between two unequals thus a low activity. The most respectful man in  some of the said societies was the one who had taken the vow of celibacy.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? How do libertines consider females and the sexual activity based on their interpretation of creation?
                                               
I couldn't get much information on the net whether the dynamics of fertilization was known during Marquis de Sade's time or in the 18th century.However, his libertine novel 'Philosophy in the Bedroom' has a character, Madame de Saint-Ange, explaining foetus as a fusion of male and female seeds. But she continues that the foetus owes its existence completely to sperm. The female seed doesn't create but only furthers the creation. Another character Dolmance expands on this and says we owe absolutely nothing to our mothers as we are completely formed of our sire's blood.                                                                                                       
This libertine philosophy shows at the end of the day it has to twist sexual reproduction in such a way that women don't have any respect in the act. Is this really required for a libertine? We need to observe the respect mothers get in conservative societies.
                                   
Many conservative societies are known to respect mothers in a way that mask their womanhood. One cannot ascribe any sexuality to her as that would immediately make her lower. But the founding fathers of these philosophies lived hundreds of years before the advancements of bio sciences. It's interesting to see, libertines of a more enlightened era had to take refuge of the same philosophy to support their sexual libertinism. They had used the same 'male is the true creator' argument to denigrate women in a way that mask their motherhood.
                                                   
This example shows, sexual abstinence and sexual libertinism, even though sound opposite, were, in fact, born out of the same ignorance. Both are attributes of pure patriarchal thought. However, the comparison is not strictly true as the influence of these two interpretations are not the same. While conservatism has been ritualized and legalized (and slowly being corrected in the modern era), libertinism has remained individualistic.

Reference:
1. Philosophy in the Bedroom, by Marquis de Sade

The Moral Individual - iii

I have discussed innate morality of human beings in this series of blog posts. I had come to a conclusion that there is no innate morality and it's just a result of feedback loop in humans based on experience of pain. Let us examine the steps involved in this.

- Feeling of pain - a trait
- Keeping memory of pain - a trait
- Observation (of another suffering) - a trait      
- feedback - a faculty
      - perception of another suffering - a basic trait
      - matching perception with memory - maybe a basic trait
- Resultant empathy - a character

I would define,
a character is a combination of traits and faculties resulting in a meaningful behaviour where,
a trait is determined by genes,
a faculty is a latent phenomenon determined by traits

So, basically babies are field programmable trait arrays (FPTA) for a character. I suppose, even 'speech' is a character because it also requires some of the basic traits and feedback faculties.