Democracy at Stake
The fallout of the recent US election is yet to settle to a reasonable extent in order to bring relief to the country and the world. What the long election battle in 2016 brought to the fore is the strain to which democracy has become subjected today. A system designed to deliver on a lofty promise to humanity shows clear signs of a deep fissure at the very root. America is still visibly divided after a long, acrimonious election war lacking in the least of decency or dignity, and ending logically in disunity fostered all the way. In the process the pillar of modern democracy, viz., the political party system, has been reduced to a virtual redundancy.
Democracy can hold a society on its journey to a desirable direction only if the people participate in the process with sincerity and earnestness, inspired by leaders worthy of emulation. This certainly is not a mechanical journey; the ethics involved here is not reducible to the narrow binds of the legal system. Surely, nobody claims with success that law has been compromised in the recently concluded American election process. We are puzzled as to which direction we follow from here on. It is not that plans of action are lacking. But where is the spirit that will ignite the plans to success? Again, does success consist just in translating a blueprint into action in life?
A New Approach to Today’s Problems Rooted in Our Past
The time has come to realize that old, tried solutions to apparently similar looking problems are no longer going to work, in as much as the challenges we face today have qualitatively different characters with their roots having gathered strength over the centuries. Solutions at new dimensions need to be explored and pursued as new insights are desperately needed. The ISIS catastrophe cannot be addressed the way the world wars were, not simply because new technologies, including web-based, are available for use to the perpetrators of violence today in order to inspire and train their recruits across the globe, even in ‘safe, protected’ places defying distance and physical barriers. The very fundamentalist sentiments that ISIS harps on indeed were conveniently channelized by the colonial powers for their own parochial gains in the 19th and 20th centuries. John Stuart Mill, who laid the solid, theoretical foundation of democracy in modern times, was a supporter of colonial rule, strangely enough, for the betterment of humanity, and actively engaged himself in shaping and strengthening the British colonial domination of India for a good part of his life. In history, the fundamentalist strand of Islam came in handy for British effectiveness in tightening her colonial grip with practice of the policy of divide and rule. When measures are launched to address today’s unique phenomenon of global terrorism threatening the whole world, which, paradoxically, does not spare even the ‘own people’ in the land of the perpetrators of fundamentalist attack, they certainly must be tough, and military, too, even though that may not be all. Certainly the measures must not be racially biased, nor just the open arm policy of the politically correct liberalism of the opposite extreme. They must incorporate an honest, realistic attitude sympathetic to the well-being of all, while those taking the measures must look honest in their own turn.
Gandhi and Tagore
When Gandhi initiated his movement against the colonial rule, he didn’t direct it against the British, the ruler, but against the system. He knew that in the process of colonial exploitation, both the exploited and the exploiter suffered. He wanted to put a curb on the greed that led on to the institution of global colonial exploitation, thereby turning the way around to peaceful coexistence with fellow humans as well as nature around us, in sympathy and respect. In this he did not succeed. Greed has continued unabated till today, and the western civilization has done itself severe damage riding virtually unhindered on its wings. Unhappiness consequently is rampant in society, even when money is at hand, and the epidemic of depression is killing us in the grand new system we have built for ourselves where humanity is captive in the divisiveness created within and around. Tagore in his own poetic and thoughtful ways had cautioned the West against the greed that had taken possession over her before World War I broke out. He wrote a letter to President Roosevelt just after World War II started. No reply, however, ever reached him.
Now there is need to bring about a change within, a change in our way of looking at things, as reflected in the modes of effective pursuit of satisfaction in life based on a psychology that does not propagate myths in the name of science. This is a stride not to be contained within the rigid limits of religion that often is harshly exclusive, and fails to accommodate science, although a broad spirituality, in a secular setting outside of the confines of religion seems called for to bring about the needed change. The value contained in the broad spirituality is not dependent on positing a transcendent entity, as in the case of most religions. Pursuit of this value keeps our expectations of science in balance. An invitation to building harmony within ourselves is a broadly spiritual call not to be confined to the realm of scientific pursuit. It goes hand in hand with science, as poetry and music do, though poetry, music and spirituality cannot be reduced to science. The process is existential, and operates at the macro level, although there is a micro dimension to it in that the society must see to it that the value takes root in individuals, and becomes a pervasive trend. The administration needs to see that measures are based on human dignity where rights have their proper foundation.
Is Swami Vivekananda’s Approach More Insightful Than of Modern Critics of Religion?
Swami Vivekananda emphasized this broad spirituality during his trips to the West in the late 1890’s, taking his cue from the spirituality in India. He, however did not ever preach his religion Hinduism as a proselytizer, but rather preached the essence of it, which is spirituality as such, on the basis of which all religions can mingle together, making the world a better place to live in. His talks were not theological, based on scriptures, but rather philosophical instead, based on reason and universal human feelings. Nikola Tesla got so inspired as an academic scientist by the talks of the Swami on the Samkhya philosophy of the Hindu tradition, that he attempted to produce a mathematical proof of the thesis the Swami enunciated in his talk. The Tesla website, maintained by the Tesla Memorial Society of New York says: ‘Unfortunately Tesla failed and the solution did not come till ten years later, in a paper by Albert Einstein … .’ In ‘Is Vedanta the Future Religion?’ delivered in San Francisco in 1900, the Swami talks about a spirituality without scriptures, and no personal God for support, which has found its place of respect in the Hindu system. When Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and others today are vocal against religion in favour of science and rationality, they tend to ignore the spiritual dimension that is in need of cultivation, away from the dogmas to which religions fall prey, for becoming better human beings and toward sustenance of the world and humanity in our times. Intellect, though important, is not the saviour after all, on its own, unless it is grounded in harmony within which belongs to the spiritual dimension.
Sam Harris hopes to base normative ethics on science, while the full-fledged nature of well-being that ethics is supposed to outline as the culminating end, and the general, broad way it highlights as leading to the end, may both be shown as spiritually grounded in Virtue Ethics. Here secular philosophical reasoning comes in handy, instead of the scientific kind as Harris claims, pointing to the spiritual dimension in ethics where giving the virtue harmony within a rounded shape in life gets its proper emphasis.
The Corporate World May Take the Lead
It is a far cry to expect that the political world will venture today promoting harmony within as a value at the macro level even when taking oath in the name of God, with scripture in hand, is a long-standing custom in some political spheres. However, we might expect the corporate world to provide us leadership here. A negative attitude against smoking has been built successfully at the macro level in course of the last couple of decades. Harmony within is a positive value. It is key to the sustainability of the environment and the human race in so far as humans treat nature with respect imbued with the virtue, and are in a friendly mood among themselves as mutual enmity disappears considerably under its effect. We know, the corporate world emphasizes sustainability. If people there believe in circulating words like: ‘Sustainability starts with harmony within,’ this will go to promote the value. However, the first, and the most important, step in the right direction is being convinced that the change is needed. There are indications that leaders in the corporate world are rising lately to the demands of ethics as incorporating the key human values. Azim Premji, Chair, WIPRO, mentions the two greatest risks the world presently faces: viz., ‘the fast unfolding environmental crisis, and the acts of forces to turn this world into one filled with conflict and suspicion.’ He recognizes four principles to guide our actions in our quest for a better world: finding a common ground, having concern and respect for others, staying connected as a society, and committing to values such as integrity and honesty. He indicates that the ‘greatest fulfilment’ he has in his personal life ‘is in knowing that [his organization] has some role in shaping confident, thinking, caring and ethical human beings … .’ (The Times of India, January 3, 2017, p. 18). To repeat, the ethical human being is not a function of a thinking mind per se, but of the mind in so far as it has been brought to a state of harmony, which transcends the narrow bound of rationality of science, in the world of poetry, music and spirituality in the broad sense of the term, thereby helping enrich the human attainment of science. With harmony within achieved to an extent, humans are properly motivated to ensure that harmony is maintained without, in nature and in society.
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