Human Beings and Nature

Human beings themselves products of nature interact with nature in a wide variety of ways. In today's world this negotiation happens through the instruments of science and technology.

Science and Technology

The Chinese gave proportions. Indians contributed to the number system. Greek philosophy and mathematics was the foundation on which Islamic civilization (the Islamic Golden Age) flourished in the Middle East. The Renaissance gave birth to modern Western science, as we know it today.

The Scientific Method

Traditional, positivistic western science attempts to capture the causative relationships between elements in the world in the form of discernible mathematical structures (abstract, precise concepts that map and model phenomena). Observations become facts when substantiated. Theories are explanatory frameworks that coherently relate a collection of facts in a domain. The logic of scientific discovery is based on the principle that all knowledge we take for granted (as scientific truth) today is subject to revision – it proceeds by falsifying existing theories and constructing new theories based on the light of new empirical evidence (measurements of the phenomena under consideration). Theories are inductively constructed and provide general laws based on a sample of observations. Formal hypotheses deduced from theories are further confirmed as facts or denied by careful experiment. When different theories compete, science undergoes revolutions – new paradigms emerge replacing old ones through a process of contention between different generations of scientists for material resources. However, the scientific enterprise may not necessarily follow a rigorous methodical investigation but can be based on serendipitous discoveries.

Science has dispelled several myths in our understanding. Our worldviews have been revolutionized. For example, we believed that we were the center of our universe and that the sun and the moon revolved around us. But the Copernican revolution showed that we revolved around the sun. As such the scientific endeavor and has contributed to advances in human health (medicine, surgery), transport (ships, railways, automobiles, aircrafts), communication (telegraph, telephony, radio, television, mobile phones, electronic mail) and industry (housing, banking, entertainment, information technology enabled services etc.).

The Reductive Nature of Science

The practice of science is by nature analytical. In order to understand the factors influencing an outcome, science proceeds by isolating the causative components. For example, in order to understand how a plant grows the scientist will identify factors such as sunshine and water as necessary nutrients for plant growth. The process of study normally isolates one factor keeping others constant – ceteris paribus (i.e., all other things being equal or holding other things constant). So the scientist may study the effect of a certain quantity of water on plant growth ignoring the effects of sunshine. While in the domain of scientific discourse this analytical approach is justifiable, the findings, conclusions and results of scientific investigations or inquiry when directly blindly applied in the context of a real world situations spell disaster. This aspect can be amply illustrated in a variety of contexts in which the application of scientific studies have had disastrous effects. The first is an illustrative analogy. A scientist proceeds to study the effects of a hormone on the reproductive mechanism of a particular variety of fish. He succeeds in isolating the hormone. However, when the hormone is produced in large quantities and is introduced into marine ecosystem – that particular variety of fish reproduces phenomenally. The fish absorb more food necessary for the spawning of their offspring, thus upsetting the ecological balance in the food chain. A second case in point, the government with all good intention sends an army of doctors into remote rural areas as part of rural health care initiative. The doctor finds undernourished people and prescribes vitamins. The poor patients have no recourse to or cannot afford the extra supplementary nourishment that their administered vitamins demand. This causes more harm to the health of the rural poor. As a third illustration, India sought to be self sufficient in terms of food grains through Green Revolution. In order to increase the productivity of the land, genetically enhanced varieties of rice were introduced. This required intensive disease control using pesticides, higher levels of nutrients using chemical fertilizers and increased demands of controlled water supply by means of irrigation. This impoverished the soil of its natural nutrients and upset natural pest control systems. The need for water management introduced large dam projects that destroyed tribal habitats and virgin forests.

Scientific Enterprise and Economic Reason

Modern technology, as applied science opens up new spaces of possibilities. Transport and telecommunications have changed the way we live. With advances in shipping the European world expanded to the new world of the Americas. New pathways and sea routes discovered India and the Far East. Coupled with this technological discovery came colonization. The land we know as India today was a fragmented collection of many small kingdoms. The colonial introduction of the railways destroyed the small subsistence economies. Farmers found it more advantageous to grow cash crops like cotton or sugarcane rather than food crops. The automobile and the aircraft have further the shrunk the globe.

Technology has become an instrument that creates value. Modern rational thought enables increasing mastery of the world. The modern human attains practical ends by way of calculation of adequate means (instrumental logic). Having been disenchanted with religious and metaphysical worldviews everything has come to be directed by pure economic reason. Science too, directed by economic reason has given rise to the military-industrial complex. This myopic rational calculus has ignored the costs of industrial development on nature and its sustainability. Costs to future generations have been completely disregarded and have not been taken into account. Consequently, global resources such as our atmosphere and our oceans have become polluted leading to disastrous effects such as global warming and tsunami.

Reconciling with Realities

Very strong emotive and ideological stances are found in religious texts and emerging blogs about justice, equality and peace (“let justice roll down like waters”). While strong emotions are understandable, a lack of understanding about reality and its inherent structures can lead to emotional responses to problems that have to be handled with delicate care and sound intellectual approaches. There is this story of a young man who was walking by the river and he saw someone drowning in the river and the young man immediately jumped into the river and saved the drowning man’s life. And as he was walking by he saw another drowning and he saved his life again. Similarly he repeated saving four people. When he saw the fifth man coming down the river he paused and said now, I must go to the root of the problem and find out why people are drowning and stop them at the source of the trouble and he walked upwards the river to find out what was causing the drowning. Like that while our initial responses when we meet acute pain and suffering is an emotional response to attack it immediately. But the mature response would be to find out the root causes and remedy them at that juncture. The response should be more like a man meeting a patient and trying to give immediate help but at the same time take efforts to arduously study the cause of illness and provide appropriate medical care to the patient. (However, immediate responses should not be shunned altogether otherwise we will be too caught up with the intricacies of the world, forgetting the Good Samaritan kind of intervention which may be more appropriate to the context).

So, having said that here I would like to examine the concepts of equality, justice and peace. Rather than treating them abstractly as to what ought to be I would like to look into the underlying empirical structures and then generalize to wider situations. A scientific approach takes evidence first and based on it uncovers the underlying deeper structures as it is out there that is not obvious to naked eye (looking with the help of a microscope or a telescope). Whereas, a normative theological approach would posit what should be the case. Fist, I would like to treat the concept of equality. To understand this I treat its opposite – hierarchy - how it emerges and is sustained in everyday society. The concept of justice that we look into here is not natural justice (‘an eye for an eye’) rather distributive social justice in the context of a hierarchically structured society. Finally, we examine peace not as mere tranquility but as a dynamic equilibrium where life flows and flowers in its fullness.

Hierarchy and Historical Distance

When new life forms takes the shape of an embryo, it so small and fragile, incapable of surviving in the world on its own. This embryo has to grow and attain a full personhood over several years. Likewise when a novice enters a field, he or she is like an embryo, yet to attain the full status of an expert. The novice and the expert are separated by historical distance, which cannot be bridged otherwise except through a strenuous path in time. There are several milestones in the path well laid out that mark the achievements of a beginner journeying through a field. The steps of successive attainments are achieved through a process of learning skills, techniques, methods and approaches that transform elements in the environment. Differing levels of proficiency are rewarded differently. As several people contend for scarce resources those that are able to succeed with a higher degree of competence are rewarded more than others. This superior technical competence ranks the candidates within a field and is the empirical and structural basis of social hierarchy in a professional field. Theoretically, those who hold responsibilities and positions at higher levels produce work with a lot more complexity, have a deeper field of vision and have a much wider operational base to deal with than those at the lower rungs of the ladder. This justifies their higher incomes and the deference (respect) shown to them in a wide variety of ways.

There can be no society that is not hierarchically structured. While we looked at how different levels are constituted, in a hierarchical system within a professional society, we also need to consider how this differentiates social groups into those with higher status and others with lower status. This is where groups contest for status – men over women, seniors over juniors, adults over children, white races over colored races and the higher castes over the low castes. This status is not something that is accorded to some one because of their individual achievements or failures but because they biologically belong to a particular social group. This again emerged historically due to technical superiority of one social group attaining greater levels of mastery over the universe which other societies have not been able to accomplish. While one group had weapons with gunpowder the others had nothing but bows and arrows. Consequently, those with advanced instruments were able to win wars simply because of their might (in terms of physical force and in terms of technical know-how). Having won over the world due to their insidious science and technology (using abstract, precise concepts that measured the world) they made the subjugated pay for it in terms of taxes, tariffs and indemnities or annexing their territories and resources. This is in terms of recent colonial histories. However, stratified societies like India have used religious dogma (and structural violence) as instruments of oppression to maintain hierarchies between various social groups (castes). Complex socially constructed cultural nuances (identity markers), language idioms, food and dress codes specify one’s position within the stratified society.

Distributive Justice

Nature provides differently to different peoples. Fertile river valleys provide abundant crops to some and barren, dry regions do not produce sufficient food to sustain populations. There is disparity in nature. People are born with different gifts and some are more able than others in certain contexts – some are gifted mathematicians and others gifted musicians and some are not endowed with any kind of rewarding qualities.

Apart from natural disparities there are also structural realities that distribute available resources unevenly. Centre and periphery is one such well-known structure. Most agricultural work is carried out in the peripheral villages and the produce is exchanged in central marketplaces of a ‘district’. Specialized functions, like quality education and healthcare cannot be equally dispersed in all the peripheral points from a centre. This functional necessity creates a set of urban dwellers with access to centrally available resources like health care, education, electricity, water supply and sanitation and a set of rural people with little or no access to modern facilities. Any state run schemes or that of aid agencies cannot fully and adequately bridge this structural gap. Certain aspects of the inequality may be minimized but there is no alternative model to overcome this problem completely.

Peace

Human beings are products of nature and interact with nature. Humans have the ability to create or fashion things out of natural material. They have the power to destroy forms and recreate newer forms e.g., they can melt iron, make steel, build edifices, construct cars and aircrafts. Humans have the power to break and make things. This human potentiality makes them destroyers while at same time being creators (e.g., cutting trees to make furniture). The potential threat while safeguarding an artifact or a possession comes from other humans (and possibly from his or her own self too). A layer of security is therefore necessary to protect an entity from being destroyed accidentally or deliberately. Borders are an essential security feature that preserves the form of an entity and provides an inner secure space (‘privacy’). Borders delineate and define distinct spaces. What is within and what is outside. Humans have the capability to break open ‘security’ features (the husk, shell, case or skin that covers and protects a seed or fruit).

In their quest to attain mastery over the universe humans have developed tools that are efficient in interacting with nature intimately. Whenever humans develop a new tool that is technologically advanced than current level of technology, then the new technology can also be deployed as a weapon. The invention of knives gave rise to swords, dynamite for mining gave rise to grenades, the capability to generate nuclear power gave rise to nuclear weapons and so on. When a certain technology becomes out of date the weapons also become outdated e.g., we no longer use bows and arrows, swords and even firearms – we no longer witness duels or fencing. Security frameworks of yesteryears are no longer meaningful today – castles and fortresses are no longer strongholds, they have been replaced by different types of defense establishments (e.g., the Windsor castle and many fortresses dotted all over India. The security frameworks of a particular time are contingent upon the level of technology that the society has achieved.

As humans have innate violent tendencies as part of their being human – controlling and channeling aggression by coercive means of culture and religion has given rise to peaceful societies (at least for particular periods in history). The family, the workplace and the public space within a nation effectively offer a peaceful environment. This technology of enforcing law without violent force (ahimsa?) needs to be understood as a solution and made applicable globally. The dynamic equilibrium of peace – the flow of music – can become a reality. Let us beat swords into plowshares

Concluding Remarks

The quest for equality as spreading the butter evenly is a misconception. Providing equality of opportunity for all to compete for resources in an agreeable fashion can only be the viable model.

Distributive justice as of now can only be handled using a structure to tax the well to do and feeding the starving millions by means of an efficient public distribution system. Unemployment doles, medical care affordable by all and free education sharing the technical proficiencies with the disadvantaged seems to be the obvious solution.

Diffusing the outdated military apparatuses and instituting different means of control of aggression needs to be explored. If we are able to contain violent human tendencies through culture and religion within nations, we should be able to achieve this on a global scale.

Monumental Splendours

The principle of pleasure is a consumptive principle. Pleasure always involves consuming of resources. The rate of consumption and the rate of production are of different orders of magnitude. A large of amount of energy (say food or fuel) is consumed within a short span of time. To produce the same amount of energy in palatable, edible or consumable form is takes a longer time period and larger resources. Pleasure essentially is negational. Say a million dollars worth of fireworks can be displayed within a short spell of time say within half an hour. Therefore, unrestrained pleasure will exhaust resources of a system very quickly.

The principle of control essentially preserves and conserves energies within a system so that it delays immediate consumption. This natural law makes human beings preserve their their products (capital) so that it may be consumed at a later time period. Also, control enables the formation of products of higher order complexity - the making of an aircraft, automobile, ship or offices and housing apartments, machinery or computing devices, music etc.

Whenever a society has surplus (gained through whatever means - through exploitative social structures like colonialism or or by means of international trade or through abundant harvests) it is spent on building monuments (Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal or th pyramids of Egypt etc.). These monuments though they don't serve any immediate utilatarian value provide the function of social integration and serves to maintain the economy and stabilise the political order of the day (Pax Romana, British Empire or Neo-Colonialism).

The principle of pleasure and the principle of control are essetial ingredients to produce products of higher complexity and sophisticated modern technology. The surplus cannot be distributed freely to the subjects of a kingdom, otherwise the pleasurable activities of a society will not be metered (each according to his ability). Some work has to be executed before some resource can be given. Otherwise, untrammelled hedonistic lifestyles would ruin the very fabric of society. That is why the protestant ethic (a control principle) gave rise to market capitalisation.

Life and Death

When I visited the library of a theological seminary, I was confronted with a stark theme. There were posters of how women suffer the agony of rape, which is ever present in the social atmosphere, emphasis on human rights violations and other forms of oppression that one faces in society. But then, there were no positive contributions to what healthy living ought to be. It was as if you go to a driving school and are faced with accident statistics and depictions of accidents but no information about how to drive safely. Yes, it is true that when we drive accidents are ever present – it can happen at any moment. This analogy is good in the sense it explains the ever-present nature of negative consequences that we battle against in life. Death is a finality that we have to face at every turn in our life. But what would life be without death?

Death is the negation of life. Stillness. Life is a continuity that confronts and negates death. To understand death it is necessary to comprehend the process of negation. Negation can be thought of downfall, ruin, destruction etc. Life should be understood as a process or a cycle wherein negation plays a role. New life emerges out of old life. Life transforms from one form into another.

Death has a life span. That is why materials we use have wear and tear – our clothes become old, our houses go into disrepair, our cars become rusty, our food is biodegradable. Anything deteriorates. But then, isn’t it that only because our food is biodegradable that we are able to digest it – break it into its constituent parts and absorb it? Is it not the reason why we are able to read and assimilate writing? Is it not the reason that we can break cotton pods and weave it into clothes? Or smelt iron and make cars?

We are creative beings – in that we have the ability to destroy something and fashion something else out of it. Because this possibility is there for us, to be able to break anything and make something out of it – death and life have to co-exist. To provide this possibility in real terms – the space of accidents, illnesses and natural disasters have to be accepted as part of the cycle of life.

Judaic, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu thought all foresee that there has to be life beyond our physical death either as rebirth or resurrection. An eternal life presumably exists, and has to be admitted if divine justice has to restore the wrongs of every day life.

Adam, Eve, Mary and Jesus

Myths do have a structure like language has its own structure. Social anthropologists have acknowledged it. Biblical myths also have structures. While essentially a myth may not be a story that is true, it explains a truth. While the historical truth of the story of Eve and Adam or the story of the virgin birth of Jesus may be challenged, these two stories essentially spell out a theological truth. From Genesis, the story is told that Eve and Adam were the first couple to be made by God on earth. They lived in the Garden of Eden with one restriction that they may not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. If they do then they would realize pain and pleasure, life and death and have knowledge of good and evil. Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate the fruit. Eve also gave it to Adam. Both of them were banished from the Garden of Eden. Life then became miserable for this first couple. They had to labour for food, thorns and thistles grew and they became mortal beings. Seen from the life history of a single individual, each is born within a family, which provides for them freely – a Garden of Eden. However, every child is restrained from exploring its sexuality. Once they become adults they have to necessarily fend for themselves i.e. banished from the garden. They become aware of death, the pain of labour and life.

The story of Eve and Adam is used to portray the fall of humankind. However, in the counter story, Jesus redeems humanity from its fall. In order to do this, the counter story is built with the virgin birth of Mary. Jesus had to be immaculate. So the immaculate conception of Mary is central to the birth of Jesus. The fall of man is associated with his sexuality. The knowledge of life and death. Jesus being born not of blood but by the Holy Spirit is pure. The Lamb of God is offered as a sacrifice, as ransom for the sins of all humankind. Those who believe in Him shall not perish and will have eternal Life (?).

Christianity, Guilt and Absolution

I confess to Almighty God

And to you my brothers and sisters,

That I have sinned through my own fault,

In my thoughts and in my words,

In what I have done, and what I have failed to do.

I ask Blessed Mary, ever virgin,And all the angels and saints,

And you, my brothers and sisters,

To pray for me to the Lord our God.

Amen.

Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English

as "my fault", or "my own fault".

The origin of the expression is in a part of a traditional prayer in the Mass of the Western Catholic Church known as Confiteor (Latin for "I confess"), in which the individual recognizes his or her flaws before God. Contrary to what it may seem at first, the "mea culpa," as the Confiteor has come to be known popularly, is not a confession of sins, but rather an admission of one's flawed nature and the willingness to make amends for it.

In the popular vernacular, the expression "mea culpa" has acquired a more direct meaning, in which, by doing or performing a "mea culpa", someone admits to having made a mistake by one's own fault (meaning that it could have been avoided if that person had been more diligent). It may be used even in trivial situations: if a football player, for instance, admits that his team lost a match because he missed a penalty kick, this may be called a "mea culpa", meaning that he admitted his mistake, which he could have avoided (at least in theory), and that resulted in a subsequent evil.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mea_culpa)

Guilt

Guilt is primarily an emotion experienced by people who believe they have done something wrong. From a legal perspective it can also refer to the condition of having done something morally or legally wrong, regardless of how one feels about it.

Guilt is an affective state in which one experiences conflict at having done something one believes one should not have done (or, conversely, not having done something one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling that does not go away easily, driven by conscience.

Some thinkers have theorized that guilt is used as a tool of social control. Since guilty people feel they are undeserving, they are less likely to assert their rights and prerogatives. Thus, those in power seek to cultivate a sense of guilt among the populace, in order to make them more tractable. This was a theme in Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.

Collective guilt is the idea that a collection of humans or a human institution can bear guilt above and beyond the guilt of particular members. Humans seem to have a natural tendency to attribute collective guilt, usually with tragic results. History is filled with examples of a wronged man who tried to avenge himself, not on the person who has wronged him, but on other members of the wrong-doer's family, or ethnic group, or religion, or nation, or tribe, or army. Likewise collective punishment is often practiced in different settings, including schools (punishing a whole class for the actions of a single unknown pupil) and, more transcendentally, in situation of war, economic sanctions, etc, presupposing the existence of collective guilt. Terrorism is commonly rationalized by its practitioners on ideas of collective guilt and responsibility.

Guilt can sometimes be remedied by punishment (a common action and advised or required in many legal and moral codes), by forgiveness (as in transformative justice), or by sincere remorse (as with confession in Catholicism or restorative justice).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt)

What if Christian teachings fill me with feelings of guilt and worthlessness?

No one left the presence of Jesus feeling worthless. And any sense of guilt was immediately healed with his loving acceptance. Christian teachings should leave you with feelings of thankfulness and joy. When you are loved absolutely, infinitely, without qualification or limit, you are healed and forgiven from feelings of guilt, and you are granted infinite worth.

Christianity is a religion of joy that invites every human being to experience liberation from feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and worthlessness.

Jesus surrounded himself with the "losers" of his day: prostitutes, tax collectors (hated because they cheated the public), lepers (their disease made them total outcasts), and the poor and disadvantaged. His primary followers were a group of motley fishermen, whom he promised would learn to "fish for people." These followers often misunderstood Jesus, and when Jesus was being persecuted, they deserted and denied him. Jesus was amazingly patient, always forgiving, always meeting people on their own terms. He was slow to condemn and quick to bring out the best even in the least likely people. Their transformations came as a result of their gradual appreciation for the mystery of God's love for them. If God could accept and love them despite their sins and shortcomings, perhaps they could learn to accept and love themselves!

The Right Rev. Robert Wilkes Ihloff (http://www.explorefaith.org/guilt.html)

A New Humanity

Human life is founded on cyclical processes. Life is born there is growth, maturity, old age and death. When you are young you live in a Garden of Eden, where parents provide food and support. As adults you realize death and dying is part of the cycle of life. Everyday in our bodies millions of cells are born, millions of cells die. The underlying body suggests that life and death have to continuously co-exist in space and time. In this process, human beings experience various emotions that recur cyclically. Recognizing the need to handle emotions, social institutional frameworks have emerged to handle different human emotions – joy, sadness, guilt etc. The Church is one such institutional framework that handles human guilt. Christian theology and liturgical practice stresses, “all are guilty before God”. Existentially one experiences guilt. One needs to confess one’s sins when coming into the presence of God. God forgives and accepts those who repent (the punishment is absorbed through atonement). This is individually as well as collectively. This liberation from sin and guilt is the absolution that God gives.

Emancipation – Activists and NGOs

“I would like to live without legal, social, moral or intellectual constraints”

This seems to be emancipation.

Human beings recreate the order in which they are born. Those who want to create alternative orders find themselves caught in a trap – they have to necessarily recreate the same order in order to express their alternative orders – thus they are caught in a paradox.



On the one hand people with ‘alternative’ ideals espouse a ‘simple life’ but they like middle or upper class lifestyles – they like decent accommodation, good food, good clothing, telephone or mobiles, cars and air tickets for international travel. Social status is determined by how much of these you have or able to acquire.

Negotiating with social status indicators, those who wish to be emancipated necessarily draw upon the same indicators of social status that which they would like to contest.

Individual Units

An individual unit may be a human being, a family, a group etc. Each individual unit needs to forage for itself. However, individuals may collaborate with others in order to negotiate a larger resource collectively. In this case, each individual of the unit is expected to provide a role specific foraging activity for her/her share of the pie.

Since each individual owns what he acquires – it is not possible to just give away what one has earned – one cannot connect source to sink. Alternatively, one may like to give the earning to another in exchange for some service or good that that the other offers. This way even if has surplus, that surplus cannot be freely be squandered away. It has to be given in exchange for something that the other can offer.

In economic exchange two entities have to each produce an equivalent amount of value to be exchanged.

Sources of Surplus

Wealth is decried – only few have wealth and others are in dire poverty.

Marx outline how surplus gets accumulated and becomes capital. How this capital is caught again within the logic where it has to earn more of itself through the market mechanism. It is pointed out that this wealth is ill gotten wealth. The proponents of the Marxian ideologies feel that the wealth or the surplus of the bourgeoisie class is unwarranted. Based on this mode of thinking, one comes to the conclusion that all wealth is a product of an unjust social structure.

It suffices to point out that the sources of disparities that need not arise from a process of unjust accumulation or usury but can also have different origins. It is enough to cite one case against this argument. Consider a geographic area with mountains, valleys, rivers and plains. A seasonal river feeds the valley and there are seasonal rains. The river delta is fertile compared to dry plains surrounding it. Obviously, those living in the river valley are able to cultivate crops and have surplus food grains. People who live in the plains are at a natural disadvantage and they cannot produce enough grains to meet their needs. The valley people are therefore wealthy compared to the plains people. If they have to get food either they either maraud the valley people or enter into a trade agreement to provide protection in exchange for food.

People may be endowed with wealth by means of their geographical location alone or be poverty stricken because of their context.

This does not deny that human made poverty due to unjust socio-economic structures such as caste, gender, caste and race do not exist. Wealth can arise from different sources and it need not be always an unjust source.

Hierarchy

A social unit may be considered as any set of individuals. Families, organizations, castes or classes are examples of social units. Within any social unit there is an ordering relationship based on some principle that assigns a rank to each individual in such a manner that each have different rights, duties and obligations. Hierarchy basically ranks individuals in a society according to some criteria.

Social hierarchy is contested, since the assignment is not static but dynamic. Status changes over a period of time. One may have grown older say from youth to adulthood, one may have been single and became married, from being unemployed one may have become a worker and one might have won an election or have got a job promotion etc. While certain changes in status can be achieved over a lifetime of an individual, certain ascribed statuses like the caste within which one is born, or of one’s skin colour or one’s sex are given at birth. The status comes from being a member of a group or class, and as such the status of individuals can only be changed when the whole group changes status. Of all these the hierarchy due to age is the most difficult to overcome.

One’s position in the hierarchy gives one access to different levels of resources. The claim that ‘all human beings are equal’ seems rather inadmissible when one considers the natural hierarchies within which one is born, lives and dies. Consider age for example, someone who is ten years old does not need to have so much resources at one’s command as a fifty year old patriarch who is responsible for the operations of an organization. Even amongst peers or people of the same rank there will always be disparities in terms of dimensions of abilities and achievements, and therefore different statuses at different points in time. One cannot hope to have a social order where all will be equal whatever be the yardstick of measurement.

Work has different levels of consolidation, if something has to be produced or built corporately. Functionally, someone has to co-ordinate different activities of different people to achieve an organisational end result. This functional head will always have a different status from that of those from whom work is extracted. Without understanding this fundamental truth, people who long for an equal society themselves necessarily operate with similar hierarchical models that which they wish to challenge.

Technology

Technology is a product of the socio-economic system in which it emerged e.g., nuclear technology cannot be seen apart from the military-industrial complex from which it originates.

The worker’s attitude to any advance in technology is that it is an instrument that aids in the process of surplus accumulation for the capitalist. And by far this attitude has led any new technology to be suspect. However, if one examines the adoption and diffusion of technologies closely one observes that what was thought to be a monster yesterday has become commonplace toy or tool today.

The computer was thought to be a technology that would displace the workforce of its livelihood. (The watch, which is more of a threat than the computer, has now become so commonplace that it determines and measures how much labour is produced and exchanged.) But now, computers have become so commonplace that it is as good as a good old typewriter or a sewing machine. Yes, we have the digital divide, the information divide, the rich-poor divide, the north-south divide etc. The possession of sophisticated technology e.g., a car or a computer or a mobile phone is itself an indicator of social status today. The Internet today has become an accepted mode of communication much like the Morse code based telegraph.

It is not exactly technology that is seems to be the problem. Who has possession of it? For end use is it deployed? Technology is like a sharp cutting edge. Is it used as a razor for shaving or as a surgical instrument? Is it used for chopping vegetables? Is it deployed for cutting each other’s throats? Only context can justify the production, maintenance and deployment of a particular technology.