Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-VIII- By Bhagawat Prasad Rath

Seven reputed intellectuals of the world met to discuss the present status of the world   and suggest a theory to guide thinker – activists’ conscious of the ailing humanity.

The intellectuals were Michael Albert, Editor Z Magazine, Leslie Cagan, an organizer who has been involved in hundreds of movements, events and projects particularly in Cuba, Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT in Cambridge and a tireless critic of U.S foreign policy, Robin Hahnel, a professor of economics at American University in Washington D.C. and a participant in diverse anti-war, community, socialist, and anti –interventionist movements.  Mel King is a professor at MIT and director of the Community Fellows program. 

Lydia Sargent edits Z Magazine and is a director, playwright, and actor with the Newbury street Theater in Boston. She has been involved in the feminist and anti-war movements.  

Together they wrote the book Liberating Theory. 

Michael Albert wrote, ‘…..establishing a humane society is the only way to attain lasting liberation.  Nonetheless, in recent years “the left” has largely lost its capacity to project an uplifting conception of human possibilities and a plausible picture of how people’s potentials might be fulfilled.  Since I believe Liberating Theory can help reinvigorate our desires for capacities to achieve a better future, I worked on and advocate its conceptual framework and hope others will do likewise.’         

Leslie Cagan wrote, ‘… I believe it will be possible to bring fundamental, revolutionary change to this country.  Out of the everyday struggles of people through this nation and around the world, we learn new ways to name the problems and define new solutions.  At the same time, our organizing and mobilizing needs a framework that gives direction to our efforts.

………. I hope this book will be read by people active in a wide range of political, social, and economic struggles, as well as those just beginning to think about such issues.  This book does not solve the problem or give us magical formulas for organizing.  What I hope it does do is provoke discussion, open up debate, motivate further theoretical work and play some role in inspiring us all.

Wrote Lydia Sargent, ‘As I drift further from the events, ideas, and goals that contributed to my own radical consciousness- raising, I feel more and more impatience, despair, even boredom creeping into my political work and my life and getting a stranglehold on my lofty reasons.  I am haunted by the fear that I will live out my life as a witness to the continued existence of what I hate, without ever seeing the fruits of a hoped for revolution’.

Robin Hahnel: Functioning separately, movements to overcome racism, sexism, classim, and authoritarianism fail.  Functioning together and sharing aims and methods, they can succeed. 

 I helped write Liberating Theory because I believe that to go forward radically we need to develop a new understanding of society and ourselves suited to human potentials and able to promote solidarity among people with different priorities. …….. I know that life and society can be much better, and that we can make it happen.

Liberating Theory takes into consideration the development in the field of science.

To quote the book, ‘Just as Marx and Engels paid strict attention to “state of Science” in their time, we should keep up with contemporary developments.  Ironically, however, though most contemporary Marxists pride themselves on being “Scientific”, few bother to notice that “state of the art” science has changed dramatically in the last hundred years.   While avoiding simplistic mimicry and misapplication of scientific principles, we should update our methods by seriously examining contemporary science for new ideas relevant to our theoretical efforts.

Modern quantum physics, for example, teaches that reality is not a collection of separate entities but a vast and intricate “unbroken whole”.  Ilya Prigogine comments, “The new paradigms of science may be expected to develop into the new science of connectedness which means the recognition of unity in diversity.”  When thinking about phenomena, we inevitably conceptually abstract parts from the whole in which they reside, but they then exist as separate entities only in our perceptions.  There are no isolated electrons, for example, only fields of force continually ebbing and flowing in a seamless web of activity which manifests events that we choose to call electrons because it suits our analytic purposes.   For the physicist, each electron, quark, or whatever is, is a “process” and a network”.  As a process it has a developmental trajectory ……. extending through all time.  As a network, it is part of an interactive pattern… stretching throughout all space.  Every part embodies and is subsumed in a larger whole.

In Liberating Theory there is in-depth discussion of four interconnected topics.  They are 1. Community (The concept of one world). 2. Feminism (Man & woman equality) 3. State –Abolition (Anarchism) 4. Economic Equality.  No where in the world do we find progress in any one field as visualized by the authors.  In every field the world has remained static or moved in the reverse direction.

It is unfortunate that the world thinkers are ignoring the only civilization which was ideal in all the fields mentioned in Liberating Theory.  This was the Sindhu Civilization.

No king or priest oppressed the people in the Sindhu Civilization (Archeology and the Mahabharata).  There were Yogis guiding the people. 

To quote R. P. Chandra, ‘a group of stone statuettes found at Mohen-jo-Daro in a mutilated condition seems to me to supply this missing link between the pre-historic and the historic civilization of India.  The only part of these statuettes that is in fair state of preservation, the bust is characterized by a stiff erect posture of the head, the neck and the chest, and half-shut eyes looking fixedly at the tip of the nose.  The posture is not met with in the figure sculptures, whether pre-historic or historic, of any people outside India; but it is very conspicuous in the images worshipped by all Indian sects, including the Jainas and the Buddhists, and is known as the posture of the Yogin or one engaged in practicing concentration. 

According to the Buddhist texts Gautama Buddha taught that austerities were not absolutely necessary for gaining perfect knowledge: Dhyana-yoga (the practice of the four dhyanas) was enough for that purpose………

Buddha says in conclusion, “Well, Kevaddha, it is because I perceive danger in the practice of riddhi or wonders (as well as mind and character reading), that I loathe, and abhor, and am ashamed thereof.”

Survival of the prehistoric Civilization of the Indus Valley------ from the book Studies in the History of Indian philosophy Volume-I. Edited by Debiprasad Chattapadhyaya…….

Buddha was against miracles and mysticism.

The elite of the Sindhu Civilization practiced the three philosophies Yoga, Samkhya and Lokayat (collectively known as Aanwikhiki). Most of the women were enjoying sexual freedom (Mahabharata and Jainism up to the period of Mahavir).  There was egalitarianism in the Sindhu society (R. Rajagopalan: THE SECRETS OF INDUS VALLEY; archeologist R. S. Vist). The Sindhu civilization was free from violence (Mahabharata and archeology). The elite of the society were fully rational (Arthasastra).    

Why did the Sindhu civilization develop differently from other civilizations? The answer is that this was the only developed woman’s civilization in the world. No male- dominated   civilization of the world can give so much importance to non-violence by the elite and the absence of wars.  Yoga can only be the discovery of women folk because all its values are matricentric.   The presence of too many female figurines in this civilizations also reinforces the idea that a female –centric civilization developed in this Sindhu valley. Women’s sexual freedom and their choosing the caring and sharing males as the fathers of their progeny was the key factor in development of the human species.  The story of Sulabha in the Mahabharata supports this point of view.  The Vedas tell about Indra’s killing of Vritra and Namuchi.  Both were Yogis (Mahabharata) and did not have wives.  (The Vedas and the Mahabharata)   Sulabha   was a scholar of Samkhya and preferred Janaka as her sexual partner.   Uddalaka episode in the Mahabharata shows that even married women living in families had sexual freedom.  Madhavi,  the daughter of king Jajati spurned kings and preferred to marry Galab, an ascetic. Even great kings and warriors wanted their wives to mate with sages and have children from them.  The great Vedic king Sudas is an example.  He asked his wife, the famed lady Madayanti to mate with Vasista, the sage.

These women –centric societies led to a civilization free from predatory institutions like the military, the priests, the sports-supporting and the ruling classes as mentioned by Thorstein Veblen. Unlike women in the past who preferred caring and sharing males as sexual partners, to day’s women are crazy to marry members of these predatory institutions.  So to day’s competitive societies are becoming more and more violent and cruel as days pass.  Caring and   sharing people are marginalized as twenty first century advances.   

The great –ape species are five in number.  They are Orangoutang, Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Bonbon and Homospecies.  In the past women of the last two species were more powerful than men.  Bonbon women were indiscriminate in choosing sexual partners.  Only among Homospecies women were choosy.  They chose sharing and caring males to alpha males having powerful bodies.  This led to the diminishment of physical dichotomy of males and females only among Homospecies. 

Recent scientific discoveries give credence to the female-centricity of human evolution.                 

The Hindu (11^th December-2014) contains an evolution-centered article named Skulls Reveal the Dawn of Civilization (by D. Balasubramanian). To quote the article.

When and how did we humans turn “modern” and technologically and culturally adept?  This was the theme of a symposium held several weeks ago at the Salk Institute in California.  Dr. Ann Gibbons has given a lucid summary of the main conclusions of the symposium in the 24 October 2014 issue of the journal Science.  The experts attending the meeting suggest that “self-domestication” turned humans into the co-operative species we are today.

………….. Dr. Gibbons mentions the work of Robert Cieri and others…..They carefully measured and compared the features of the skulls of archaeological specimens of the early humans (80,000 years old) with those of more recent (some 10,000 years ago, and some contemporary) ones.  The sheer job of collecting thousands of skulls, measuring their shapes, dimensions, features of individual parts such as the brows, ridges between the eyes, shapes of teeth, size of the cranial part of the skull (which house the brain) and so forth has been a gargantuan task in itself.  But they persisted and found some remarkable differences of the human skulls over the millennia.  The brow ridges above the eye have reduced over the years, teeth became smaller, the cranial volume came down (smaller brains), and the faces shortened over time. 

 They have termed this set of charges in the skull and head itself, as “crania-facial feminization”.  This is because they claim that these changes over the years have made the male faces look more like female ones.  Over the last 80,000 years and particularly after the early, middle and late stone age era), we have become less, “wild” and more “delicate”……….

…….studies on animals, for example dogs, have suggested that the genes that regulate robustness and aggression affect the facial shape.  These in turn lead to lower levels of “aggression molecules” such as testosterone, stress hormones and changes in the action of neural crest cells leading to changes in teeth, muscles, bones and glands.  See how much the skull can tell.

Such changes have not been sudden or rapid, but evolved over time.  Growth in human population size, beginning about 200,000 years age lead to higher population densities, giving rise to the play of natural selection.

Humans started forming groups as early as about 68,000 years ago in Africa and began their long migration across the globe.  In doing so, they formed groups or societies over millennia, settling down in various places across the world.  Languages, customs, social mores, culture, religions and technology began emerging.  The main thread that bound each such society has been tolerance, cooperation and leveling down of aggression.  This, in turn, Cieri and others argue, led to the evolution of technology-tools, taming and using fire, navigation, fishing and birding, water harvesting and agriculture- all over the millennia spanning the early middle and later stone ages (almost until 25,000 years ago) Domestication of horse and cattle occurred.  All this could happen because we ‘self-domesticated’.

To day human brain has lost much of its power of socialization. Families and societies are getting adversely affected.  Violence against women is devastating societies.  Surveys are increasing our worries.

The director of Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness (C.M.C.A) Sadasiva says   “We were not only taken aback by some of the views and answers of the students, but worried for the country, especially about violence against women and about being ‘ok’ with violating rules.”

Among youth (15 to 19 years) 55% say the dresses of women excite them.

36% among girls and 44% among boys think dowry should be given at the time of marriage or later.  

65% among students say that boys and girls belonging to different religions should not gather together in public places. 

Democratic consciousness is decreasing day by day.  The majority of youth is not against military rule in the country.    

(To be continued in Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-IX)

Bhagwat Prasad Rath,

3^rd Line, Roith Colony,

At/PO/Dist. – Rayagada –2

PIN- 765002, Odisha.

Phone No. 06856-235092

Cell No.-08895860598

bagwat_prashad@rediffmail.com

satyabhamajankalyantrust@rediffmail.com

                                                                                                www.samalochana1.blogspot.com

Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-VI--- by Bhagwat Prasad Rath

The Bhagvad Gita (Fourth Canto) calls the Yogis Rajarshees who enjoyed the highest status in society.

‘A much-cited example, depicted on some of the Harappan seals, is that of a big-nosed gentleman wearing a horned head-dress who sits in the lotus position with an erect penis, an air of abstraction and an audience of animals. ‘

(The Harappan World).

He must have been a  Rajarshee.

To identify this figure with Shiva is a mistake made by scholars steeped in patriarchal values.  G. S. Ghurye   in his easy  Epic and Historic Siva, an Indo-Aryan God Shiva, (Vedic India) proves conclusively that their was no Shiva figure in any seal of the Sindhu civilization. Siva, one of the powerful Gods of Hinduism, later identified with Rudra, is a great warrior and hunter. The main value   that Harappan Yogis and Yoginis exhibit is non-violence.  Harappan elite did not believe in any God. Their philosophies (Aanwikhiki: Yoga, Samkhya and Lokayat) stress values based fully on rationality. Devotion or BHAKTI as an over powering emotion, was not present in pre-Christ India.

‘……… doubts surround the female terracotta figurines which are often described as mother-goddesses. Pop-eyed, bat-eared, belted and sometimes mini-skirted, they are usually of crude workmanship and grotesque mien. Only a dust-eyed archaeologist could describe them as ‘pleasing little things’.  The bat-ears, on closer inspection, appear to be elaborate headdresses or hairstyles. If, as the prominent and clumsily applied breasts suggest, they were fertility symbols.……..’

(The Harappan World).

The abundance of female terracotta figurines indicates the presence of numerous Yoginis in society.  More than fifteen hundred years later, the non-violence- value- accepting Joginis were converted into blood – thirsty Goddesses. This happened when the male value of violence over whelmed society in the fifth and sixth century AD.    The hedonistic cult of Tantra became powerful and the SAKTI   cult became prominent in Eastern India.  The Joginis were sixty four in number where as there was one warrior so –called Yogi, Shiva.  Uma, a non- violent Goddess of the Upanishads became Durga, a ferocious Goddess.  Those were the days when the non-violence preaching popular book, the Bhagvad Gita, was converted into a book preaching violence (D.D. Kosambi: he based  his remarks on Hiuen Tsang’s memoirs).  Ancient Jainism speaks against the caste system and the Brahmin hegemony. 

The Mahabharata refers to the Joginis in many places.  They were sexually free and roamed in the land (Sulabha, Jabala, Itara & many others). The Vedas mention two women as chiefs of some communities.  When Indra met them, he laughed and ridiculed them because they were unfit to fight wars.  

‘R. S. Sharma argues that evidence for ‘band’ organization (a pre-tribal stage in which a group of people not necessarily related by blood come together for food-gathering, hunting or fighting) notwithstanding, Rgvedic society on the whole was ‘tribal, pastoral and largely egalitarian’.  The main source of subsistence was cattle and not agricultural products.  Apart from cattle-herding, raids were a major source of livelihood.  He quotes the well known remark of Marx that man-hunting was the logical extension of animal hunting ……….’

  CASTE:  by Suvira Jaiswal

Animal domestication was also the logical extension of hunting because it made the availability of meat through out the year possible.   Hunters soon turned into warriors and made men and women of weaker groups their slaves. Such a situation did not prevail in India during the period of the Sindhu civilization.     

In the book SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY IN ANCIENT INDIA, D.P. Chatterji conclusively proves that the science of healing reached the highest level possible in the world in that age.  The Greek civilization of the later days failed to reach such levels.  ‘The Vedic elite, steeped in superstitions and wrong beliefs, tried to control the flow of free thought in India.   Cosmologists and mathematicians reached a high level in science. The Vedic elite were unable to understand them.’ (Amartya Sen: The Argumentative Indian).  

Lokayat was the best philosophy devised by a matricentric society for the welfare of humanity.  It is desirable to discuss this philosophy which Kautilya thinks will build the best type of society in the world (Arthasastra).   

----- Lokayat is the only philosophy in the world which preaches equality of all species which seems to be the aim and purpose of nature.

-----Lokayat accepts equality in status of both males and females.

-----Lokayat abhors all types of violence.  They treated all animals as their kith and kin.   

  

-----Lokayat opposes all barriers to equality like the caste system, the self – created feeling of superiority of any section of humanity (the Greeks treated non-Greek people as inferior uncivilized Barbarians).

-----Lokayatikas want to be perfectly rational in all their deeds and words (unlike European rationalists, they believe that only a profoundly calm mind, free from self- interest, anger, lust, strong attachment to worldly pleasures can be rational.  The word SUKHA used in this context to convey a state of mind was misunderstood by the philosophers of both the East and West because they failed to seek the true meaning of SUKHA explained in the two famous books, the Gita and Dhammapada.  SUKHA is the pleasure principle of nature confined to the neo-cortex of the frontal part of the mind. The pleasure principle of the reptilian mind and the pleasure principle of the limbic mind (mammalian mind) are different. 

Western philosophers and scientists have not studied the controlling and pleasure –giving- capacity of the pre- frontal cortex on which Yoga concentrates.      

-----Lokayatikas actively preached their philosophy among the people without any fear of death, dishonor or loss of property.  They believed in deeds, not in words.  They risked the wrath of the rich and the powerful to preach their philosophy. Charvak was killed by the greedy Vedic Brahmins with the covert support of the Pandavas, when he condemned the Pandavas for the violence of the Mahabharata war. 

-----Lokayatikas did not believe in life after death.

-----Lokayatikas were out and out materialists.

-----Lokayatikas were against all types of metaphysical speculations.  They believed in what their senses dictated (PRATYAKSHA PRAMANA). Lokayatikas of later days accepted inference (PAROKSHA PRAMANA) also as the basis of truth.  They vehemently criticized animal slaughter in the Yagnas and also the caste system.    

-----Lokayatikas did not believe in supernatural beings.  They opposed the theory of Karma and rebirth. This made them different from the Buddhists and Jains.

-----They opposed sacrifice (YAGNA). They abhorred animal slaughter in sacrifices.  

-----Lokayatika philosophers (Yoginis) were there in large numbers in the Sindhu civilization.  They accepted ‘non-violence’ as the supreme value of life. There was perfect sexual freedom among both males and females.

-----In the Ramayana, Lokayat Jabala places people’s welfare as a higher value than truth. He requests Ramachandra to return to Ayodhya. Adiparba of the Mahabharata places non-violence as a value above truth in the Kausika myth.

-----It is unfortunate that Lokayat philosophers were presented as hedonists by many   scholars of the West and East.  Hedonism was present in Tantra philosophies, not in Lokayat. 

-----The Gita tells that Yoga and Samkhya philosophies are the same.  The Jaina Sutras say that Samkhya and Lokayat are the same (D. P. Chatterji; Lokayat).  Lokayat philosophers were active among the people.  In the Vedic Age, they incurred the wrath of the Vedic Aryans.  In the age of the Buddha, they preached   against Karmabad (the theory of Karma) and the Theory of Rebirth.  The Mahabharata was written by a Lokayat philosopher because 1. It placed the value of non-violence above truth. 2. The Mahabharata contains verses (SLOKAS)  that vehemently criticize the Vedic priests (Activities such as priestly work done in sacrifices, big and small; deity worship by professional priests  in temples  and the use of astrological knowledge  for predicting  the future are nefarious types of work (The Mahabharata: Santiparva).  3. Every type of violence including the so-called just wars was condemned in strong terms (Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah):  killing animals in sacrifices was criticized in the legend of Uparichara Basu in the Mahabharata.

In the days of the Buddha, there was a group of famous philosophers who belonged to the AJIVAKA CULT.   All of them accepted non –violence as their main value. 

In the Modern age, Mahatma Gandhi   proved that non-violent   struggles lead to success without producing ill-will among the opponents.     

Controlling AMYGDALE violence through the pre-frontal neo-cortex and increasingly harboring empathy for all living beings (because of mirror neurons) is the specialty of human beings.  Nature wanted us to serve its aim of the survival of all the species.  When carnivores appeared, nature produced in them the tendency of self-destruction. The same tendency of self-destruction (wars, terrible in-equality, exploitation of weaker nations and climate destruction) is at present endangering human survival because we have forsaken the path fixed by nature which devised the female brain as the motor for choosing non-violence, non-competition and non- hierarchy as  the right path of development (scientist Louann Brizendine).  In the present world we can advocate and stress matricentric values nurturing socialism to save humanity from sure destruction.

Creative individuals are the most important elements in human society.  Creativity only thrives in the social environment of liberty where a fierce sense of individuality exists in extraordinary individuals and is tolerated by the society. Those who think that ‘individuality’ is a gift of the western society are requested to study the following verses of the Mahabharata. 

‘A wise man shuns honour like poison; he always welcomes insults and abuses as nectar.’

‘Neither attachment to wealth nor the fear of losing one’s life should make a man leave the path of Dharma (love for all living creatures of the world).’  All sorts of collective selfishness like nationalism, racism and casteism should be shunned by such a man.  

The Buddha asked his disciples to concentrate their attention on Dhamma alone and not to aspire for honour among his lay followers and also the renouncers. 

Aanwikshiki society of India, by giving the highest place to the value of ‘nonviolence’ in society, created the proper environment for extraordinarily creative persons.  Such environment was not available even in the twentieth century in Europe and the US. The propaganda machine of the powerful media managed by capitalists creates only mass societies dominated by the violent herd in every country, with very few exceptions.  India is no exception. Such societies can not nourish socialism.

‘A socialist society should create the right atmosphere for creativity. Einstein writes ‘Europe today contains about three times as many people as it did a hundred years ago.  But the number of leading personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are known to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements.  Organization has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities, particularly not only in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent in the scientific.’  (Society and Personality: Einstein)’

‘The lack of outstanding figures is particularly striking in the domain of art.  Painting and music have definitely degenerated and largely lost their popular appeal.  In Politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of spirit and the sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined.  The democratic, parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken; dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men’s sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is no longer strong enough.  In two weeks the sheep like masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties.  Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today.’

  

(Society and Personality: Einstein)

Bertrand Russell writes, ‘If a society is not to stagnate, it must contain individuals who think and act independently and there must be sufficient toleration for such individuals to be effective. Galileo was silenced by the Inquisition, and Italian science collapsed to revive only after two hundred years; the work of Galileo was carried on in France and Holland and England, where the tyranny of ignorance was less severe.’

Only a socialist society can give full freedom to the dissident individuals.  Tagore’s songs (Walk alone even when no body is ready to follow you; Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Even if your own people desert you for your ideas, you should not bother about it) can guide the socialists.   Gandhi followed the ideals embodied in these Tagore songs all most to the letter. 

(To be continued 

Bhagwat Prasad Rath,

3^rd Line, Roith Colony,

At/PO/Dist. – Rayagada –2

PIN- 765002, Odisha.

Phone No. 06856-235092

Cell No.-08895860598

bagwat_prashad@rediffmail.com

satyabhamajankalyantrust@rediffmail.com

www.samalochana1.blogspot.com

www.samalochana.blogsome.com

Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-VII ... BY SRI BHAGWAT PRASAD RATH

    Society  changes.  Physical  environment  becomes  different.  Science  makes  new
discoveries and gifts new ideas to man kind. Socialists the world over churn the prevalent ideas
and  struggle  to  bring  new  theories  to  enrich  the  mental  geography  of  the  world.   One  such
socialist  group  is  in  America.  They  publish  the  magazine  ‘Analytical  Monthly  Review’.  In  the
September-2014  of  this  magazine  Fred  Magdoff’s  article  ‘Building  an  Ecologically  Sound  and
socially just Economy’ brings fresh air to the socialist fraternity.
  Environmental problems are ringing a warning bellfor humanity. We can ignore
it at our peril. To quote Fred Magdoff, ‘Not just  climate change, but also pollution of the air,
water, soil, and living organisms, the loss of biodiversity both aboveground and in the soil, the
extinction of species, and the overuse and misuse of both renewable and nonrenewable natural
resources.’ These issues plague the whole of humanity. Unemployment, inequality and poverty
should not be tolerated by any state. Economists plan for constant and perpetual growth. This
is not a sustainable proposition and must be abandoned.
The  Brundtland  Report  (UN-1987)  says  that  ‘development  is  that  which  meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.’
  To-day  illusive  money  is  ruling  the  world.  To  quote  from  the  book  Ecology
Economy,  ‘Money  has  come  to  exist  more  and  more  in  token  form-from  notes  to  electronic
trading. In relation to massive debt, the whole edifice of money stands increasingly revealed as
a colossal illusion. Phantom wealth is created through a phantom mountain of debt. Andrew
Simmas’  Ecological  Debt (2005)  contrasts  the  impossible,  un-repayable  financial  debts  that
Third World governments owe to First World banks with a different level of real debt owed by
the world’s financial elites to the regions whose resources they have plundered.
Felix Padel, Ajay Dandekar, Jeemol Unni
  ‘Since  the  bailout  of  banks  in  the  US  and  the  UK-starting  in  2008  with  massive
injections of government funds –something of the insanity our present world financial system is
based on has become increasingly visible. Could wedo things differently? Are we mortgaging
our earth to pay for a style of living that can only be sustained for a minority of humans, for a
brief period?’
  Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel- winner economist, is alarmed at the World Bank and IMF
imposed policies ruining the world, ‘Economics of the Fund-Bank kind is bad for many reasons.
It  is  intellectually  dishonest,  and  does  not  really benefit  countries  or  reduce  their  poverty;
profits  created  at  human  expense  can  be  seen  as  morally  bad,  specifically  bad  Karma.   The
destructive impact of escalating debt is the essence of bad economics.’
Ecology Economy
  Why  are  the  rulers  of  different  countries  accepting  these  wrong  policies?
Actually, democracy has crumbled in all most all countries of the world. In the US, one percent
of  people  are  deciding  the  policies  and  strategies  of  the  government.  (Stiglitz  says  that
2
American  democracy  is  “of  the  1%,  by  the  1%  and  for the  1  %”).  Both  the  Republicans  and
Democrats are controlled by the leading capital- owners, who are one percent of the public of
the US. In India the situation is not different.  The two leading parties, the BJP and Congress,
are  at  the  beck  and  call  of  corporation  powers.   The  people  of  the  democratic  countries  are
misled by the media owned and managed by the corporation elite.
‘Perpetual  growth’ is  the  formula  constantly  dinned  into  public  ears  by  the
media and the state -controlled economists.’
‘Does  the  world  need  more  growth,  as  mainstream  economists  and  politicians
continually  affirm,  or  a  planned  degrowth,  as  ecological  economists  advocate  (Martinez-Alier
2010; Simms and Johnson 2010)? Does it need a different kind of growth? If so, what, and how
could  his  be  managed?   Herman  Daly  points  out  the  logical  fallacy  in  models  of  economic
growth.’
‘In  its  physical  dimensions  the  economy  is  an  open  subsystem  of  the  earth
ecosystem,  which  is  finite,  non-growing,  and  materially  closed.   As  the  economic  subsystem
grows  it  incorporates  an  ever  greater  proportion  of the  total  ecosystem  into  itself  and  must
reach a limit at 100 percent, if not before. Therefore its growth is not sustainable. The term
‘sustainable  growth’  when  applied  to  the  economy  is a  bad  oxymoron.   (Daly  and  Townsend
1993).’
‘Rather,  it  (GDP  growth)  is  an  economic  system  that has  basic  internal  forcesespecially  the  profit  motive  and  competition  among  firms-that  operate  in  such  a  way  as  to
promote  exponential  growth  while  simultaneously  causing  massive  negative  social  and
ecological effects.’  Ecology Economy.
It is unfortunate that we forget that we are livingin an inter-dependant world.
‘All  living  beings  are  members  of  ecological  communities  bound  together  in  a  network  of
interdependencies. When this deep ecological perception becomes part of our daily awareness,
a radically new system of ethics emerges.’ Fritj of Capra: The Web of Life.
‘Non-violence’  is  considered  as  the  greatest  value  of  the  Yoga  system.   The
Mahabharata  places  non-violence at  a  higher  level  than  truth (Adiparba-  Kausika  Myth).
Violence shatters the web of life and disturbs the normal pace of nature.
Mining companies are making profit only because of state’s support.
‘Out  of  This  Earth  (Padel  and  Das  2010a:  373-95,  with  a  CBA  (cost-benefit
analysis) of Aluminium projects showed that making  alumina and Aluminium can only make a
profit  with  huge  subsidies  on  the  price  of  electricity,  water  and  transport,  and  by  excluding
pollution costs, etc. as ‘externalities’. Also, any mining makes a profit only if the basic cost of
ore is kept abysmally low-far lower than it should  be considering the huge environmental and
social  costs  involved.  Keeping  costs  and  prices  low is  what  cartels  are  about.’   Ecology
Economy.
3
America’s top aluminium expert wrote: Aluminum making is dependent on vast
continuing  grants  of  low-cost  electricity….  (It)  is no  great  maker  of  employment,  uses  little
skilled labor, and adds little to the independent development of an area…. The US cannot any
longer  afford  to  make  aluminium  if  it  can  be  obtained  in  large  enough  quantities  an  on
favorable price terms from other sources. (Anderson 1951:21, cited in Padel and Das 2010a:
278).
Stiglitz writes, ‘Resources should belong to the people and governments should
represent  the  people,  which  means  government  can’t  permit  the  appropriation  of  public
resources by the private sector….’(2011).
In  the  book  Power  and  Morality two  world-level  sociologists  Prof.  Pitirim  A.
Sorokin and Walter A. Lunden write, ‘When the morality and mentality of rulers and the ruled
are  measured  by  the  same  moral  and  mental  yardstick (and  not  by  the  double  standard
discussed above), then the rulers’ morality and minds appear to be marked by a much stronger
dualism-by  greater  mental  and  moral  schizophrenia  than  the  morality  and  mentality  of  the
members  of  the  ruled  populations.  The  moral  behaviour  of  ruling  groups  tends  to  be  more
criminal  and  sub-moral  than  that  of  the  ruled  strata  of  the  same  society.  The  greater,  more
absolute,  and  coercive  the  power  of  rulers,  political  leaders,  and  big  executives  of  business,
labour  and  other  organizations,  and  the  less  freely this  power  is  approved  by  the  ruled
population, the more corrupt and criminal such ruling groups and executives tend to be.
Morality and mentality of Rulers
Sorokin and lundenalso write in the book Power and morality:-
In  regard  to  the  captains  of  finance  and  wealth,  it was  said  long  ago  that  it  is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of
God. The truth of this maxim is well confirmed by the experience of the past as well as by the
careful  histories  of  the  modern  big  fortunes  and  by the  biographies  of  recent  captains  of
industry  and  finance,  go-betweens,  and  some  labour  leaders.(1)  These  histories  and
biographies  show that  in recent times, just  as in the past, there are few, if any, big fortunes
amassed  without  crime,  just  as  there  are  few  captains  of  industry  and  finance,  and  few
powerful labour leaders that are free from criminalviolations of law and morality.
------Other Power elements: Criminality of captainsof finance and industry,
Labour Leaders and others.
Though  computer  scientists  have  discovered  that  nature  moves  in  a  particular
direction  to  produce  the  human  species  on  the  earth (Prof.  Stuart  Kuffman  calls  it  order  for
free), scientists generally accept the idea that man’s appearance on the earth is an accident.
Darwin made the greatest discovery of the 19
th
century but he gave competitionthe key role in
evolution. Male- dominated Euro- centric thinking  biased Darwin. The same bias guides many
leading scientists of the world. Scientists like Stephen jay Gold and Lewontin raised their voices
against scientists having the race bias but they too for got that we would be living in a world
free  from  wars  and  aggressive  nationalism,  had  female  intellect  directed  world  affairs.  Non-
violence  in  the  ambience  is  necessary  for  freedom  of  all  the  species  on  the  earth.  Man  went
against nature’s direction when he gave importance to violence.
4
In the News paper Hindu of December-28, 2014 Harsh  Mander write: - To draw
men into struggles against patriarchy, 1,200 activist from 94 countries converged in Delhi for a
conference titled  Men Engage. “Patriarchy and gender injustice remain defining  characteristics
of societies around the world with devastating effects on everyone’s daily life,” the conference
declared.   Patriarchy  constitutes  “immense  threats  to  human  wellbeing”  because  “no  matter
who we are, and no matter where we are in the world, these forces make our relationships less
fulfilling,  less  healthy  and  less  safe.   From  an  early  age,  they  introduce  suffering,  violence,
illness, hate and death within our families and communities. They strip us of our fundamental
human rights and hinder our ability to live a life with love, dignity, intimacy and mutual respect.
They hamper the development of our economies and keep our global society from flourishing.”
A landmark UNFPA study confirms how closely men andboys in India conform to
these domineering  models of masculinity. Ninety-three per cent men felt that  “to be a  man,
you  need  to  be  tough”;  60  per  cent  of  men  report  that  they  are  violent  with  their  intimate
partners. Nine in 10 men felt that a woman must obey her husband, and three in four that, in
family  matters, a man’s word should be final. Only15 per cent of men involve their wives in
making family decisions.
How  devastating  the  unholy  combination  between  capitalism  and  male
chauvinism can be, comes out in the book  Churning the Earth,  the Making of Global Indiaby
Aseem Shrivastava and Ashis Kothari.
The two authors went to an area which the Government wants to declare as SEZ
(special Economic Zone). An area of 25,000/- hectares will be in this SEZ. The state is displacing
the  farmers  of  number  of  a  villages  with  the  help  of  the  police  and  the  anti-social  elements
created and energized by the think tank of the reliance industry. In the words of Shrivastava
and Kothari:-
To  be  sure,  some  famers  (hedging  their  bets)  have  sold  a  part  of  their  land.
Others  have  made  distress  sales,  given  the  tough  economic  conditions.   But  they  have  not
been able to take advantage of the compensation money.  We asked a farmer in  Pelpa who
was attending a meeting of the village elders (known as taus) what he did with the money he
had received from Reliance. He responded that  he barely got to see the money. We  asked
whether Reliance had paid him. ‘Of course,’ he responded, ‘but the boys took it away.’
Why did you give them the money, we asked. His response caught us totally off
guard.
My  son  put  a  pistol  to  my  head  and  took  the  money  away.   This  is  becoming
quite common here. They (the boys and the young men) are only interested in three things:
gadi, daroo, bandook (cars, liquor and guns). Comewith me one evening after sundown to the
road which bisects the SEZ area. I will be able toshow you the line of new jeeps (SUVs) parked
along the road. Loud disco music blares out of thevehicles. The boys drink and make merry in
them  till  the  early  house  of  the  morning.   Our  bahu-betis  (daughters-in-law  and  daughters)
have stopped stepping out in the evening. It used to be very safe here. Now it isn’t. The boys
return  home  in  the  early  hours  of  the  morning,  sleep  till  the  afternoon,  and  in  the  evening
return  to  their  favourite  hideaway  to  repeat  the  routine.   How  many  months  will  Rs.22  lakh
last if it is being burnt at this rte?
5
The  farmer’s  wife  says,  ‘This  is  not  just  the  forced  takeover  of  our  land  and
ancestral  village,  it  is  also  the  decimation  of  our culture  and  roots.   Alcohol  was  always  a
problem in our villages. Now, with easy money, alcoholism is a daily nightmare. Men are out
of control. Domestic violence is all too common.  We do not belong to the city. And our own
village seems alien to us now. Hum toh kaheen ke nabin nabe (We belong nowhere now)…….
Rural  society  in  Haryana  is  in  a  state  of  moral  breakdown.   A  certain  despair
haunts people here. It is the despair of ‘traumatized communities that have lost control over
their fate………….’
Globalization  has  led  to  lumpenization  of  the  proletariat  and  the  elite  also.
Societies  are  becoming  atomized  as  well  as  herd  –  like.  Human  society  through  millions  of
years developed its intelligence and social abilities. Man lived in band societies. Human bands
consisted of about 148 members. Prof. Dunbar and his colleagues researched and came to the
conclusion that the volume of human mind was proportional to the number of members in a
band.   Gibbons  are  not  so  intelligent.  They  live  in bands  of  five  or  six.   Chimpanzees  live  in
bands  of  50  to  60  members.    They  are  more  intelligent  than  Gibbons.  Socialized  bands  of
humans was definitely the contribution of the females of society. Big bands of humans gave
them  safety  from  the  predatory  animals.  To-day,  within  decades,  we  are  under-  mining  our
heritage  of  millions  of  years.  We  are  going  in  a  reverse  direction  to  evolutionally  nature’s
intention  of  building  a  matricentric  socialist  society  because  we  (the  rulers  and  commoners)
are getting atomized and lumpenized at a fast pace.What to speak of band societies of 148
members? Even families consisting of a few members are breaking in different countries. Man
is  a  product  of  society.  Lumpenization  is  an  enemy  of  social  values.  To-day  economic
Globalization and lumpenization reinforce each other. Economic Globalization is also creating
ecological disturbance. How to prevent both is thequestion that cries for answer among the
social thinkers of the world.
(To be continued in Evolutionary (Science-Directed)Socialism: Part-VIII)
Bhagwat Prasad Rath,
3rd Line, Roith Colony,
At/PO/Dist. – Rayagada –2
PIN- 765002, Odisha.
Phone No. 06856-235092
Cell No.-08895860598
bagwat_prashad@rediffmail.com
satyabhamajankalyantrust@rediffmail.com
www.samalochana1.blogspot.com
www.samalochana.blogsome.com

Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-III.... BY SRI BHAGWAT PRASAD RATH

    Scientific outlook and attitude should guide the social, cultural, political, economic activities and knowledge systems of a socialist society. The law of fallibility accepted by science as its chief hallmark should guide the socialist society.  In the past, scholars made distinctions between social sciences and physical sciences.  No doubt laws discovered by different fields of knowledge are different to some extent. The laws of classical physical sciences   are different from the laws of bio-logical sciences.  But all the fields of knowledge should be governed by the scientific attitude which includes the law of fallibility.  The Buddha declared that his sayings should be subjected to the law of fallibility and the principle of rationality.  That his followers did not follow his advice is another matter. Religions like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism are based on belief alone. Religions which are expected to increase the reign of love and peace collide and bring ruin to humanity.  When rationality is guided by self interest or self-group interest, it creates havoc in society.  This sort of rationalism which boosted nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, racism and patriarchy has demonized large chunks of humanity and brought modem civilization, which is mostly the legacy of the West, to the brink of colossal disasters threatening the extinction of all the living species. Like the Greek Civilization, the Vedic civilization, too, believed in superstitions, racism, de-gradation of the women folk (patriarchy).  Sciences, which should help humanity, are at present endangering human life and happiness in the whole world. When a great scholar like Will Durant thinks that,  in spite of the world wars, humanity has advanced because less number of people died in the wars than were saved from fatal diseases because of the discoveries of science, it smells of European arrogance that places quantity at a higher  level  than values (Is Progress Real?). The elite of Germany were famous in many fields of knowledge including science and technology. Nobody can accuse them of not being rationalists. They were responsible for creating the most heinous and the worst murderous machine in the world. Einstein resigned from the membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He wrote, ‘I gave as my reason for these steps (resignation) I did not wish to live in a country where the individual does not enjoy equality before the law, and freedom of speech and teaching ……..I also call upon all sensible people, who are still faithful to the ideals of civilization in peril, to do their utmost to prevent this mass-psychosis, which manifests itself in such terrible symptoms in Germany today, from spreading any further’.  Is this psychic distemper temporary and skin deep or has it   affected the European   psyche at deeper levels, lying dormant but flaring at times. Truman’s   decision to blow into dust two populous cities of Japan is also an example of this sick psyche.       

Carl Sagan writes in his book ‘The Demon-Haunted World’. ‘(Science) is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking……..Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves’.     

He again writes, ‘The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined.  This is central to its success.  Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.  It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts.  It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything-new ideas and established wisdom.  This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change’………….

‘One of the great commandments of science is ‘Mistrust arguments from authority’.   (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment). Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong, Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.  This independence of science, its occasional unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less- self-critical, or with pretensions to certitude. ‘

Einstein writes,  ‘For whereas formerly it was enough for a man to have freed himself to some extent from personal egotism to make him a valuable member of society, today he must also be required to overcome national and class egotism.  Only if he reaches those heights can he contribute toward improving the lot of humanity’.

Again he wrote, ‘Any social organism can become psychically distempered just as any individual can, especially in times of difficulty.  Nations usually survive these distempers.  I hope that healthy conditions will soon supervene in Germany ………..’

When Gandhi was asked to speak about European civilization, he said, ‘it is a good idea’.   

America exploded two atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and within seconds lacs of people became ash.  Today the US, the world leader in science and technology, is the most dangerous   war- mongering nation in the world.  The Middle East is a destabilized   region in to-day’s world. 

Noam Chomsky says, ‘If some Extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NEW (the nuclear weapons era).  NEW, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy it self, but- so the evidence suggests-not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts.’ (How Many Minutes to Midnight?).

In the essay ‘Approaching Socialism’ (Analytical Monthly Review: July to August-2005) Harry Magdoff and Fred Magdoff wrote ‘The variety of structure and organization of past civilizations is truly striking.  It was not so long ago- in the span of human existence-that the native peoples in North and South America had a very different consciousness than that imposed by the invasions and conquest of the European armies and settlers.  Thus Christopher  Columbus wrote after his first voyage to the West: “Nor have I been able to learn whether they held personal property, for it seemed to me that whatever one had, they all took shares of … They are so free with all they have that no one would believe it who has not seen it; of anything they possess, if it be asked of them , they never say no; on the contrary, they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it.”

The missionary du Tertre writes from the Caribbean in the 1650s, ‘they are all equal, without anyone recognizing any sort of superiority or any sort of servitude…. Neither is richer or poorer than his companion and all unanimously limit their desires to that which is useful and precisely necessary, and are contemptuous of all other things, superfluous things, as not being worthy to be possessed….” And Montaigne wrote of three Indians who were in France in the late sixteenth century.  They explained to him about the common Indian custom of dividing the people into halves, groups with special and separate duties for ritual or administrative reasons, such as the summer and winter people of the various North American tribes.  The Indians were struck by the two opposing groups in France.  “They had perceived there were men amongst us full gorged with all sorts of commodities and others, hunger-starved, and bare with need and poverties begged at their gates: and found it strange these moieties so needy could endure such an injustice, and they took not the others by the throat, or set fire on their house….”

‘We have briefly referred above to societies in which economics was subservient to social relations.  That changed dramatically in the evolution of capitalism as private property, money and trade for gain came to the forefront.  Social relations became but reflections of the dominating force of society’s capitalist economics instead of the reverse’.

(Approaching Socialism)

Indigenous communities teach us about the glory of human relations. The question that haunts humanity is what lies wrong with modern civilization. Have we the will and sufficient time to over come our psychic distempers?  Here we can discuss the topic human nature.    Human nature has not been constant in different countries and different ages.  Harry Magdoff & Fred Magdoff write, ‘…..the consciousness, behavior, habits, and values of humans can be so variable and are influenced by the history and culture that develops in a given society.  Not only has so - called human nature changed, the ideology surrounding the components of human nature has also changed dramatically. The glorification of making money, the sanctioning of all the actions necessary to do so, and the promotion of the needed human traits-“unnatural” and repugnant to Aristotle- is now the norm of capitalist societies. ’

What lies wrong with Indigenous communities is their lack of scientific outlook.  They have their shamans who believe in mysticism, miracles and in a number of deities who guide and guard their lives.  The Aztec society sacrificed human beings to propitiate their great God.   

The tribe of pueblo Indians in Mexico has won the admiration and wonder of the western thinkers. Einstein wrote:-    

‘Under the hardest living conditions, this tribe (pueblo Indians) has apparently accomplished the difficult task of delivering its people from the scourge of competitive spirit and of fostering in them a temperate, cooperative conduct of life, free of external pressure and without any curtailment of happiness.’

Religion and science: irreconcilable?

Pueblo Indian society is mercifully free from sexual jealousy. Unfortunately this society has become stagnant and lacks movement at the social and cultural level.   

Latin America has produced some of the best theoreticians of socialism in the world.  Regarding the urban areas of Latin America Kees Koonings and dirk Kruijt write in their book ‘Fractured Cities’.

  

‘The first issue and the starting point is the long-standing syndrome of urban poverty, inequality and social exclusion.  Although this has been part and parcel of Latin American patterns of urbanization over the past century or so, the new neo-liberal model that dominated the past two decades has intensified this pattern to a considerable degree.’

‘A second issue addressed throughout the book is the withdrawal (if not failure) of the (local) state, especially of its public security functions.  The widening of so-called governance voids and the un-rule of law is now acknowledged as an important element in the relationship between urban exclusion, insecurity and violence.  In many cases, the police and the judiciary are ineffective in dealing with crime and violence, or worse, are among the active protagonists.  This failure is partial or selective, however, roughly following a class colour divide; hence ‘state abandonment’ might be a more appropriate term.  As is clearly demonstrated by Elizabeth Leeds for Rio de Janeiro (in Chapter-2), Wil Pansters and Hector Castillo Berthier for Mexico City (in Chapter-3) and Roberto Briceno – Leon for Caracas (in Chapter-6), local official security forces are often ineffective owing to disorganization, lack of vision, political disputes or an overly militarized approach to law enforcement and public security.  In Rio de Janeiro and particularly in Medellin, the police have even been part of a veritable urban war.  As a result, in many Latin American cities, the police are highly distrusted and often seen as a threat by inhabitants of low-income neighborhoods.’ (Introduction: the Duality of Latin American Cityscapes). Can Latin America become a truly socialist country without a sea change in their urban areas?    Socialist thinkers of Latin America are proposing socialism based on protagonist democracy which is definitely an improvement in the socialist theory; but it does not solve all the problems that bedevil humanity.   

In India the vulnerable sections of the population, women, children and the aged people are being harassed.  This harassment increases from year to year.  Society becomes more and more nuclearized as days pass. In the American Society divorces are ruining families.  Children are becoming more and more anti –social from year to year.  Pornography and war-mongering have become the hall marks of American Society.

Scientists have rightly discarded the theory of gene – determinism but the theory of neural determinism (brain) can not be thrown away dismissively.  When certain areas of the brain are damaged due to accidents or otherwise, the personality changes completely.  Scientists have made the discovery that within the last twenty thousand years humans have lost 20% of their brains.  Prof. Robin Dunbar and his colleagues discovered that social evolution always precedes the increase of intelligence in the human brain.     

Amydale which is responsible for the violence in human nature is controlled by the prefrontal cortex only in the human specie. Mirror neurons which are responsible for empathy are not so many in other species.   This shows the direction in which evolution was moving. Nature wanted to produce a species which would make its task of the survival of all the species easier. Has human nature changed for the worse?  Has humanity abandoned the evolutionary path fixed for it by nature? The questions need answers from scholars.  

Scientists who simulated nature with in computers to study evolution that took place with in millions of years came to the conclusion that in evolution nature follows a particular method and evolution has also a particular aim.   

W. Daniel Hillis is a computer scientist; cofounder and chief scientist of Thinking Machines; corporation editor of several scientific journals. 

He wrote ‘The engineering process doesn’t work very well when it gets complicated.  We’re beginning to depend on computers that use a process very different from engineering- process (evolutionary process of nature) that allows us to produce things of much more complexity than we could with normal engineering’.   “Close to the Singularity”

‘I said to the Computer “Computer, would you please make a hundred million random sequences of instructions.  Now, execute all those random sequences of instructions, all those programs, and pick out the ones that come closest to what I wanted.”  In other words, I defined what I wanted to accomplish, not how to accomplish it.’

Einstein wrote ‘For the scientists, there is only “being”, but no wishing, no valuing, no good, no evil-in short, no goal’.

‘From this it might seem as if logical thinking were irrelevant for ethics, scientific statements of facts and relations, indeed, cannot produce ethical directives.’

Einstein’s question was ‘What is the origin of such ethical axioms? Are they arbitrary? Are they based on mere authority? Do they stem from experience of men and are they conditioned indirectly by such experiences?’

The Law of Science and The Laws of Ethics (Sane voices for a Disoriented Generation).  

From what the leading computer scientists have discovered by simulating evolution in side the computer, ethics does not seen to be an arbitrary system of knowledge. It seems Nature has chosen for us a system of ethics which we are violating at our peril. Scientist like Lynn Margulis, James Love lock, Fritjof Capra, Andrew Glikson (Earth and Paleo-climate scientist)   all have tried to discover the ethical part of Nature’s command to humanity.

The questions and the problems raised by Einstein also troubled J. Doyne Farmer who is a physicist, as well as a leading computer scientist, an internal professor at the Santa Fe Instite, USA.

J. Doyne Farmer wrote, ‘In the last half of this century, the view has emerged that life and consciousness are natural and inexorable outgrowths of the emergent and self-organizing properties of the physical world. This fundamental change in our view of consciousness and life gives us a new way of looking at ourselves and our beliefs, and of understanding how we fit into the universe.’

(The Second Law of Organization)

‘It seemed really important to know why we were here, and to understand the meaning of life.  It was upsetting to me that these question, which seemed to lie at the foundation of everything, didn’t have any good answers.  The easy solutions just didn’t fit.  My brief preadolescent foray into religion left me with nothing but the realization that people have a desperate need to understand these questions. ……….’  

Regarding the artificial world created in the computer, he said ‘It’s a symbiotic system, in which everything co-operates to make the metabolism work –the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  If normal replication is like monogamous sex, autocatalytic reproduction is like an orgy. We were interested in the logical possibility for this to happen – in an artificial world, simulated inside a computer, following chemical laws that were similar to those of the real world but vastly simplified to make the simulation possible.’ 

 The Second Law of Organization

‘The Paradox that immediately bothers everyone who learns about the second law is this: If systems tend to become more disordered, why, then, do we see so much order around us? Obviously there must be some thing else going on. In particular, it seems to conflict with our “creation myth”:  In the beginning, there was a big bang.  Suddenly a huge amount of energy was created, and the universe expanded to form particulars.  At first, things were totally chaotic, but somehow over the course of time complex structures began to form.  More complicated molecules, clouds of gas, stars, galaxies, planets, geological formations, oceans, autocatalytic metabolisms, life, intelligence, societies….’

‘And it’s important to stress that no one is saying the second law of thermodynamics is wrong, just that there is a contrapuntal process organizing things at a higher level…….’

‘Social evolution is different from biological evolution: it’s faster, it’s Lamarckian, and it makes even heavier use of altruism and cooperation than biological evolution does.  None of this was well understand at the time (Darwin’s and Einstein’s time)’

‘Many of us believe that self –organization is a general property - certainly of the universe……..’ 

Scientists became aware that the laws of the physical worlds are different from the laws of the living world.

Fritjof Capra was a physicist. He wrote in his book: - ‘The Web of Life’ ‘………..Physics has now lost its role as the science providing the most fundamental description of reality.  However, this is still not generally recognized today.  Scientists as well as non-scientists frequently retain the popular belief that ‘if you really want to know the ultimate explanation; you have to ask a physicist’, which is clearly a Cartesian fallacy.  Today, the paradigm shift in science, at its deepest level, implies a shift from physics to the life sciences’.

Deep Ecology- A New Paradigm.

Nobel Laureate, Erwin Schrodinger, a physicist, wrote a science classic ‘What is Life?  The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell with Mind and Matter.’ He wrote that the laws of Life Sciences are different from the laws of classical physics. The material world is governed by the second law of Thermo-Dynamics ‘the law of entropy’.  Accordingly   every order changes into disorder, all the heat contained in matter dissipates, all energy disappears leading to a dead world of matter.  In the birth of life and its progress, anti- entropy   triumphs, disorder leads to order, heat and energy go on increasing. He wrote ‘It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic…………..’ How does the living organism avoid decay?  The obvious answer is, by eating, drinking, breathing and (in the case of plants) assimilating. ………..’ (It feeds on ‘Negative Entropy’).

Christopher G. Langtion is a computer scientist; visiting professor at the Santa Fe ‘Institute, director of the institute’s artificial-life program; editor of the journal Artificial Life. He wrote:-

We don’t specify the selective criteria externally.  Rather, we let all the “Organisms” interact with one another, in the context of a dynamic environment, and the selective criteria simply emerge naturally.  To any one of these organisms, “nature,” in the computer, is the collective dynamics of the rest of the computerized organisms there.  When we allow this kind of interaction among the organisms- when we allow them to pose their own problems to one another – we see the emergence of a Nature with a capital “N” inside the computer, whose “nature” we can’t predict as it evolves through time.

‘If you look at the architecture of most of the complex systems in nature- immune systems, economies, countries, corporations, living cells- there’s no central controller in complete control of these systems.  There may be things that play a slightly centralized role, such as the nucleus in a cell, or a central government, but a great deal of the dynamics goes on autonomously.  In fact, many of the emergent properties that such systems get caught up in would probably not be possible if every thing had to be controlled by a centralized set of rules.  Nature has learned how to bring about organization without employing a central organizer, and the resulting organizations seem much more robust, adaptive, flexible, and innovative than those we build ourselves that rely on a central controller.’

A Dynamical Pattem

Stuart Kauffman is a biologist; professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor at the Santa Fe Institute.  This highly –talented   Professor almost summarized the findings of the computer scientists who simulated the process of evolution in the computers    

He wrote, ‘Although Darwin presented natural selection as an external force, what we’re thinking of is organisms living in an environment that consists mostly of other organisms.  That means that for the past four billion years, evolution has brought forth organisms that successfully coevolved with one another.  Undoubtedly natural selection is part of the motor, but it’s also true that there is spontaneous order’. 

 Stuart Kauffman devised the phrase ‘ORDER FOR FREE’ to explain evolution.

To quote Kauffman, ‘But if there’s order for free then some of the order you see in organisms is not due to selection.  It is due to something somehow inherent n the building blocks.  If that’s right, it’s a profound shift, in a variety of ways.’ Using his ideas, he hoped to devise processes for making new genes. He said, ‘within five years, I hope we’ll be able to make vaccines to treat almost any disease you want, and do it rapidly.  We’re going to be able to make hundreds of new drugs.'   

All the computer scientists interested in evolution agree on one point.   Nature should be left free to move in the direction it chooses.   Socialism is a natural product and will prevail if we do not interfere in the work of nature. Matricentricism is nature’s choice. Matricentric values constitute the core of evolutionary socialism. We can not have true socialism if male-values dominate society.  The addition of a few needed patricentric values to the core matricentric values leads to creativity (Ashis Nandy: Self-Images Identity & Nationality). This is ideal for a development – oriented socialism. 

AS Kauffman says freedom is the base on which evolution stands.  Freedom is another word for non-violence. In a group no member can enjoy freedom if there is violence.  Violence leads to domination and domination leads to control. In the process of evolution order comes only if there is no controller.  Evolution is self- organizing and spontaneously leads to order.        

In the News paper Odisha Post (24.01.2012) there was an article titled “Male Sex Drive, the root of all evils”.  In that essay it is written, “The Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology claim that it is actually the male warrior instinct which has helped men evolve to be aggressive to outsiders (philosophical trans-actions of Royal Society ‘B’) ‘……. In contrast, women are naturally equipped with a ‘tend and befriend’ attitude, meaning they work to resolve conflicts peacefully in order to protect the children.’

We have interfered with the processes of nature.  The evils haunting human society are only because of our interference. Nature was using female brain as a motor of human evolution.  That led to a matricentric society where aggression and hierarchy were absent. Aggression and hierarchy are present in the male brain only, not the female brain. (The Male Brain by Louann Bridzendine, MD). Males and females enjoy equal status in matricentric societies.

In Frontier August 24-30/2014, Saral Sarkar writes in the essay ‘PC’s Critique of ‘Socialism’.

“Paresh Chattopadday (PC) is right in almost all points (Frontier, August 3-9, 2014).  The question that must now be asked is: Does it make any sense at all to still try to create socialist society that Marx and Engels had envisioned?..........  Also, PC’s awe-inspiring scholarship is of little use unless he presents his conclusion as to the question “What is to be done today”.

‘Drawing our attention to the book LIMITS TO GROWTH (1972), he calls for a paradigm shift in our thinking and activity.’

‘As for revolution, I would like to quote Walter Benjamin.  He wrote: “Marx says revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is entirely different.  Revolutions are perhaps the attempt of humanity travelling in a train to pull the emergency brake.”

If it was not true when Benjamin wrote this, it is true today.  In the same sense, another German author, Carl Amery, wrote in the general sense: ‘Political activists have till now tried to change the world in various ways.  The point however is to preserve it.’ 

What is to be done? Our task is to preserve the biosphere and change the world’.

(FRONTIER August 24-30, 2014).

 If it was not true when Benjamin wrote this, it is true today.  In the same sense, another German author, Carl Amery, wrote in the general sense: ‘Political activists have till now tried to change the world in various ways.  The point however is to preserve it.’ 

What is to be done? Our task is to preserve the biosphere and change the world’.

(PC’s Critique of ‘Socialism’:  FRONTIER for the month of August 24-30, 2014).

 Nature needs the existence of all organisms to act spontaneously.  Some may fade away without any interference by other organisms because they fail to find the proper ecological niche for their nourishment and existence.

Andrew Glikson is Earth and Paleo-climate scientist of Australian National University. He wrote:- 

‘A good death is often envisaged as a slipping away, in advanced age, surrounded by family.  In such circumstances, society goes on undiminished.  We can think of a good extinction in similar terms.  A species slowly flickers out, surrounded by newer, better adapted species.  This is not the kind of extinction that is occurring at present. .. These extinctions destabilize ecosystems in the way that such deaths destabilize society.’

Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropceine Climate Event Horizon: Andrew Glikson.

 “If the bee disappeared of the face of the earth, man would be left four years to live”.  Nobel winner Maurice Maeterlinck ‘the Life of the Bee’ The Hindu young world 01.07.2014.

 (To be continued in Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-IV)

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