The Playing Field

The Playing Field                                    

Based on David Korten’s new book Agenda for a New Economy :From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth (Berrett-Koehler Publishers,Inc. 2010

The World Bank, Wall Street and the Washington Concensus  players wearing black suits and boiled white shirts, ( others in local indigenous clothing, i.e. Developing World leaders).

Versus

The man in the street.

A Brief Introduction

The world is in a state of dysfunction. The planet is in a state of dysfunction. Human societies are crumbling under the steamroller impact of a juggernaut called the Global Economy. Environments everywhere are shattered from the dried up Aral Sea to the melting Himalayan glaciers. An enormous calamity awaits the human race within the century when the IPCC itself puts the possible rise of temperatures within this period to  a possible 6.4C . The history of the Planet is very long but we haven’t seen anything like the extinctions we are presently witnessing for the past twenty million years (i.e. End Permean extinctions).

The atmosphere contains twentyfive percent more carbon dioxide than it has for the past 1,60,000 years. This has been accumulated through unchecked industrial carbon emissions, mainly from burning of fossil energy, principally, coal. We have since the Industrial Revolution been following a system of development based upon burning fossil energy and turning wheels, which is in itself a Revolution. Experts expect energy consumption to rise 60% due to population growth which will make matters worse. Meanwhile, food supplies will fall due to climate change and extreme weather events will offset economic expansion. Energy sources are unsustainable and all fossil energy pollutes, with further dangers caused by global warming such as melting ice sheets over tundra causing huge release of methane gases into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times worse than carbon dioxide. Governments seem oblivious of the fact that carbon dioxide traps solar infrared rays and causes warming within the Planet’s atmosphere. Either they do not know or are not willing to see the fact. They are against mitigative strategies and offer adaptive strategies. There has to be a reason for blindfold leadership, which is what the Playing Field is all about. Warming since 1981 resulted in annual combined loss of 5 billions dollars a year for cereal crops and this is going to grow as heat waves cross 4C by mid century. Change in rainfall patterns will destroy rice farming in South Asia and change of rainfall patterns threaten Brazil and Central African rainforest. The world’s fourth largest inland water system the Aral Sea has dried up and become a desert meaning the collapse of the regional economies it supported. The causes for this have been traced to human environmental mis-management resulting in an economic catastrophe for local people. Climate change negotiations have been dictated by the US  and collective responsibility in international law has collapsed. The monopoly of the twentyseven European Union states and US have benefited  hugely from the new economic policies prevalent in today’s world. With half India’s population the EU generates thirty percent of the gross world product ($18.4 Trillion in 2008). The wealthy nations represented by the G-8 and G-20 nations represent the council of the world’s wealthy nations and the latter is the principal forum of discussions on international economic issues. These economic issue are deeply connected with climate change in the Planet’s atmosphere and the exploitation of resources of the weaker nations. The time has come for the weaker societies everywhere (and the weaker nations in particular) to wake up to the fact that something terrible is happening in our once harsh but comfortable world. We need to wake up to what Sigmund Freud called “the deep inner needs of our nature”, the decision must come from our individual and collective unconscious that something has gone terribly wrong,  and is continuing to become worse. We have to wake up to the fact that there is no future for our grandchildren in a world such as we now inhabit. We have to identify the devil that is crushing human enterprise and survival skills with a powerful weapon of destruction – the Economy, modern economics which is based upon Gross Domestic Product, in the name of development. The Third World or “the South” is where things will go most cruelly for populations due to the escalating crises of climate change and industrial development ( read mining of minerals, dumping of toxic waste, massive deforestation, utilization of cheap and expendable human labor Etc.) I would have added “big dams” but soon there will not be enough water for such projects. And where climate change causes excessive rains the problem will not be big dams but big floods. Wherever in the world we look today and see what is happening we find a clear paradigm, the pleasant northern climes well off to a greater degree than the South in economy and Weather, some times harried by extreme weather events; and the torrid South stewing in its poverty and human and environmental degradation as it is picked clean of its last natural resources by the economic vultures, big lending institutions and so called “Aid” given by wealthy nations not without small print. This was the gift of the post World War II Economy when the embattled superpowers of the then colonizing nations decided to reap back the costs of war as well as the losses in freeing their erstwhile colonies from the clutches of colonialism , that most debased form of piracy known to man.

Corporations in America had been given the right of “personhood”  and they thereby enjoy the constitutional protections given to humans through the Bill of Rights, 1886 and the Equal Protection Amendment even though  right uptil that date the US Supreme court held that corporations do not have the same right as humans. They became powerful through the great powers of freedom given to US citizens by the Constitution. America was unique in the creation of personhood for corporations (English, Dutch, French and Spanish law did not recognize the personhood of corporations). Today American corporations are among the most powerful economies in the world, worth more than many nations. Developing countries are the target of exploitation by these corporations. We have a government that counts everything in gross national product (GNP) As Robert Kennedy said in March 1968,

“Our gross national product (GNP) is now 800 billion dollars a year. But that gross national product, if we judge the USA by that,  counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic squall. It counts napalm, and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifles and Speck’s knives and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes  life worthwhile.”

Kennedy could have added that the GNP  does not count the loss of our forests and water systems, the cleanliness of our air and rivers, or the destruction of the natural world which holds the climate together and produces our agriculture agriculture. Perhaps in 1968 that would have taken a lot of foresight for a politician. But the fact remains that his observations are valid. The GNP today in the twentyfirst century is crushing ever more fragile natural systems such as the climate and the weather and the costs of extreme weather events and mass human tragedy as a result are not calculated in the GNP. Today rising sea level atmospheric temperatures will make human life unlivable within a couple of decades and rising sea levels will inundate coastlines. This is the result of global warming and climate change.

Theodore Roosevelt said at the Ohio Constitutional Convention in Columbus Ohio in 1912, “We stand for the rights of property, but we stand even more for the rights of man… We will protect the rights of the wealthy man, but we maintain that he holds his wealth subject to the general right of the community to regulate its business use as the public welfare requires.” The same stands for corporations and governments. Roosevelt here identified the key distinctions and without knowing it pointed directly to the present global situation  where corporations have become so big and powerful  that common citizens and their governments around the world are no longer able to control or restrain corporations  when they endanger the common good. The present ecological crisis is an expression of this imbalance  between corporations and the common people in a world filled with toxic pollutants, acid rain, species extinction, strip mining minerals and fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere , destroying the forests, polluting the river systems and killing the oceans and marine life.

Today we stand at a pivotal moment in the process of human evolution when all indicators say that we must not hope for a collective human future beyond the twenty-first century because the unfortunate will be sacrificed in a larger Holocaust than the imagination of man can provide, while the wealthy few will survive – either on the Planet in guarded citadels of survival where controlled climatic conditions, food and water security will be available, or in bastions in space. The unfortunate millions will disappear along with the Planet’s natural resources into an Inferno which is already being modeled by science. The unfortunate truth is that we are at a very late hour in the series of events leading up to this calamity for the Planet and its un-provided poor. But the absence of hope even in the darkest hour is contrary to the genetic order of survival of any species and we must not – we cannot afford to – give up. Therefore we have to chalk out a strategy for the immediate and future action, a Charter if you wish, which shall divide the friends of Man from the enemies of Man. This will constitute the Playing Field. Then we must get as many cheerleaders as we can in support of the human family. I have before me the Seven Points devised by David Korten to identify the sides of the Playing Field and I shall strive to work within this framework. I shall give the two playing teams descriptive titles as proposed in the title of Korten’s book    Phantom Wealth and Real Wealth. The first represents the corporate world and its subsidiaries and benefactors, the latter represents  the threatened societies and social groups worldwide who are not the beneficiaries of wealth but the targets of exploitation by the former group (i.e.Phantom Wealth). So let’s start by seeing how the game may be played on this Playing Field, not forgetting that Real Wealth has nothing but its supporters to rely upon  in this game to the death.

The destructive dynamics of the old Wall Street economy, Washington Concensus centre-forward players, and IMF in the wings have played a good game with the team comprising corporate captains and charming  developing world champions trained in the art of money-ball.

Today the saving of Planet Earth seems to be left to Civil Society. Can Civil Society face up to governments ? This is a big question and I would say, individuals directly attacking governments will lead to counter attack. Therefore strategy must move to masses in Civil Society responding to a call for action to save the planet. Bill McKibben was successful in doing this with his 350.org campaign which woke up the planet to the threat of global warming. It could go to sleep again if the movement is not raked up again and again. We need a similar type of mass involvement mass action campaign through the World Wide Web. I have pointed the way through Intellectual Satyagraha which calls for users of the web to get involved in what is happening to our world.  There are no clear pathways as yet but the idea is running on its own steam and will require channeling. I will revert back to Korten’s points.

(1.1)We have presently financial indicators to assess economic performance for social and environmental health, BUT

(1.2) Living wealth indicators. This will mean replacing financial indicators like gross national product (GNP) and gross domestic product (GDP) for defining natural and human health and putt in place an estimation of the real needs being met. The economy alone cannot be the arbiter of peoples needs and fulfillment being met, nor can it be seen as improving the Planet’s environment in any way. Wherever economic indicators are set up they are booby-trapped. Moral: Money does not make the mare go.

(2.1)The present economic model requires control  of the creation and allocation of money: by financial institutions, corporations, government, Wall street, Dalal street, etc.

(2.2) We need to change to Living wealth money system: The whole money system will have to be turned on its head, and will require to be decentralized and democratized (which will mean we will lose a lot of our supporters!) How is this to be done ?  It will mean redirecting money from government, corporate, and bank control to the people on the commons, grass-roots societies, public interest groups, health of the planet, Etc. It will mean in effect dismantling Wall Street and putting in its place

Main Street

businesses, cooperatives, community undertakings, Etc. Rebuilding community banks, mutual savings, and credit unions. In short it means making the great river of capitalist trade reverse its flow. How ?

Won’t be easy but it will have to be done. From the top of my head I liken it to global warming. Cannot do anything much personally but we can have ideas which find common concensus, such as move from adaptive and ameliorative strategies to Mitigative ones. Moral: Attack the cause of the  problem rather than adapt to the problem.

(3.1) The money economy requires  highly centralized fiscal policies that support extreme inequality in the distribution of income and ownership  create a power imbalance which is contrary to democratic values.

(3.2) We need to change to Equitable distribution of wealth  Redistribute income and ownership to achieve an equitable distribution of power and real wealth (here again I think that we will lose a lot of our supporters!) How does one achieve the impossible objective ? Answer: By walking. That’s how mountaineers climb mountains, and that’s how scientists got astronauts on the moon.  There is a good old Indian method: Dialogue. The WWW is ideal for this. Our campaign will need a Dialogue Society. We all know that “equitable societies are  healthier, happier, more democratic, and avoid the excesses of extravagance and desperation”  (Korten) Moral: Let’s find out what makes us really happy.

(4.1) The destructive dynamics of the old Wall Street economy requires a system of absentee ownership that separates the power of decision-making  from its social and environmental consequences.

(4.2) We really have to get away from this top down selfish model to Living Enterprises as Korten calls them – These favour”local rooted living owners who have a direct stake in the social and environmental consequences of the firm’s operation” This will mean favoring cooperatives and their workers  in community owned enterprises which discourage absentee ownership of publicly traded companies which the backbone of the present corporate system. Moral: While money makes the world go ‘round  its got to be spread on everybody’s toast.

(5.1)The present economic dynamic is” the use of corporate charters  to create legally protected  concentrations of global-scale economic  power under unified management devoted to narrow and exclusive private interests.” (Korten)

(5.2)         This has to change. We have to rediscover the true meaning of democracy and the real meanings of markets where people can exchange goods.  We have to “Free both the market and the democracy from corporate domination  by breaking up concentrations of corporate power, eliminating public subsidies for large corporations, and limiting political participation to real people.”(Korten) Phew ! How on earth is that possible ? One way to start is to know on which side of the Playing Field one is.Unless one has decided that how is one to begin to hunt the Dragon ? The next step is to join the Movement of the underdogs (which includes the whole population of the planet minus the 0.1 percent corporate-political nexus cartel). Moral: Search and search until you find.

(6.1) We have all now become aware that local economies are being eroded systematically to create space for outside corporate, political and private outside interests that seek only short-term financial profit for themselves and are completely unaccountable to the people and their environments which they brazenly exploit and destroy. These people formerly depended upon local economies supported by these environments. Huge extinctions are being created which can only go from local to global in scale while these select privately controlled outside interests succeed in gobbling them up.

(6.2) The answer is naturally as korten says to “build diversified, self-reliant, energy efficient, democratically self-organizing economies that are comprised of living enterprises devoted to serving local needs functioning as subsystems of their regional ecosystems.” Well here is a gameplan.

The moral here is: Try, try, try again until you succeed.

(7.1) We have to fight the global rules created by Globalization which attack individuals and local economies everywhere and which increasingly target unprotected environments and weaker societies – an extension of the piracy first witnessed in the Age of Colonialism” which was economically, morally and socially justified by the society that created the Enlightenment in Europe and lauded itself over the colonizing of Africa, Canada, the Americas , Australia Etc.

(7.2)         The Playing Field is unbalanced and we need to restructure the rules and institutions of surviving genuine democracy and peoples’ interests if we are to save what’s left otherwise there will not be a second chance. Globalization has created a minefield of the planet and things can only get worse. Society must organize itself to face the challenge of Globalization which comes as a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing. The further these facts can be disseminated and people made aware the better The moral here must be: Five sticks tied together are stronger than one.

GROWTH – AT WHAT COST ?

GROWTH – AT WHAT COST  ?     

Larry King said, “Nobody cares about fifty years from now”.

                    

                     -- Quoted by James Hansen in Storms of My Grandchildren

Intellectual Satyagraha  -  the need of our hour                8.6.2011

When you look at the vast social deception and ecological destruction taking place in the whole world today one has to be honest that the good guys are losing. The loss is one upon which the future of humanity rests.  The trend must be reversed, the battle for information must be fought with the aid of the Internet (which I have called Intellectual Satyagraha),  and this desperate last hour for humanity has come because our species, while evolving dramatically since the industrial revolution / age of enlightenment  a little over two centuries back  (on the loot of South America and the age of colonialism and its loot) has evolved rapidly in technology  but not in human intelligence or compassion, or those areas of development recognized as attributes in the classical world  -- spirituality and humanism. As the result of this one-sided development of the human environment the planet has been fuelled to fulfill the industrial growth economy, and the planet has been ecologically destroyed until today a point of No Return has been decisively reached.

We are creating a fictitious future for our grandchildren and even our adult children since the scientific concensus gives ourselves and our once blue-green planet at most a couple of decades before terminal survival conditions ensue. The challenge we face is greater than that of the free world in 1939 from Nazi Fascism. In the war we are to fight bombs and aeroplanes are not our weapons but our enemies. We have to turn to Reason and to the Internet as the ultimate source of global information and communication and connectivity between ourselves to challenge the monstrous masters of GROWTH.  This struggle to hold to the truth is Intellectual Satyagraha which must increasingly become an international movement for change.It is the response of organized intelligence against the seemingly unlimited economic and military power of organized destruction of the planet we live on, and which is our only home we have in space which is presently accessible to us.

Economics and Development

“In secret postwar planning, each part of the world was assigned its specific role.Thus the “major function” of Southeast Asia was to provide raw materials for the industrial powers. Africa was to be “exploited” by Europe for its own recovery. And so on, through the world.”

  (Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People,1999, p.22)

As long as India follows the present government’s path of economic industrial growth it will perforce employ Neo-liberalism in politics and growth of the nation’s economy without consideration of the nation’s social and environmental welfare. This is because Neo-liberalism is growth oriented (Chomsky, 1999 Profit Over People) . Only when a government’s policy is returned from economic growth to social growth  will the government listen to the people’s voice, and which neo-liberals contemptuously refer to as “street democracy”.It is expected by the Establishment that it must be with the people as it is with the order Canis that submission implies consent, and if this is not so in fact, then it must be attained for the smooth functioning of “democracy” and national “growth”.

Today India is forging ahead with neo-liberalism and the people have to be displaced to get at the nation’s oil, mineral and ores wealth which are rapidly being exploited for economic gain both by India and the foreign banks which loan to the nation and dictate terms, and of course the corporates and middlemen involved in  industrial exploitation and negotiation.  These have become the new masters in an age of new colonization  and have become wealthy even as the nation and its peoples have become commensurately poorer. The worst affected have been India’s tribals who live in the mountains and river valleys of forested India where the natural resources essentially lie in the ground. They have been ruthlessly displaced and  have become a large drifting mass of identyless peoples within the gigantic mass of this ancient, slumbering nation unable to identify the relationship between its past and its future, like a boat leaderless and rudderless on the surface of a great flood surging towards the open ocean. It is a tragedy of classic proportions, one vastly magnified in the context of Global Warming.

Global warming

“Models indicate that warming over Greenland is likely to be of a magnitude that would eventually lead to a virtually complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, with a resulting sea-level rise of about seven meters (23 feet).

                                                                       -- (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2004)

“The peak rate of deglaciation following the last Ice Age was … about one meter (39 inches) of sea-level rise every 20 years, which was maintained for several centuries. 

                 --(James Hansen, director, Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA), 2004)

The hype about calculating gross domestic product (GDP) is that it does not consider costs to the natural environment in destruction of natural resources, nor does it consider costs of pollution of natural resources – for example pumping vast industrial emissions of carbon dioxide into the planet’s atmosphere.

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency  industrial energy-related carbon emissions  into  the atmosphere topped 30 thousand billion metric tones ( or, 30 Gigatons) which represented a 5% increase since the last figure recorded three years back in 2008. Energy investments in oil and coal are the cause of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which are leading to terminal state of the planet and human societies everywhere in the opinion of scientific experts (James Hansen, Storms of my Grandchildren, Nicholas Stern, The Final Century). Continued  release of increasing quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere caused by burning of coal and oil is no longer justifiable even on national growth economic grounds. It is well proven that trapped atmospheric carbon dioxide captures the heat of the sun’s infra-red rays and warms the  planet’s sea level temperatures causing changes in the natural wind currents, monsoonal currents, and extreme weather conditions such as evidenced by climate change. Record breaking heat waves will be normal  and searing droughts will rage and  underground water  reserves will evaporate. With rising tropical sea surface temperatures relentless super- hurricane intensity will increase, hurricanes, tornadoes and Tsunamis  will become common. Even violent volcanic eruptions are increasing and Deniers refuse to link this with global warming and climate change. Melting of glaciers will result in drought in great river valleys and the salination of the remaining water system. A further hazard caused by this “global warming” is the melting of the Tundra beds in the Arctic region beneath which there is so much methane gas that if released  it would almost instantly double the greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere and with the loss of the oceans and Amazon sinks could lead to a tripling of carbon dioxide levels in a very short time leading to  terminal weather and climate conditions for our planet and its inhabitants. A continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide at present rates even if not increasing ( as statistics say it must according to present industrial growth rates) will anyway lead to such terminal conditions within the middle of the present century. The world’s oceans and the Amazon forests were the world’s great carbon sinks. The Amazon is fast disappearing with other rainforests due to logging for pasture and plantations and the oceans have already warmed 44% according to scientific reports turning them into deadly carbon emitters as the life forms in the seas slowly die… Ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic are rapidly melting presenting the certainty of predicted sea-level rise at the rate of one foot per year al coastlines will inundate coastal cities and societies and reshape continents. Human displacement due to extreme weather is estimated at half a billion within the next two decades. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is presently nearing 500 parts per million which is enough reason to panic now. This is double the pre-industrial level. And another 50 ppm will be a terminal scenario. The big question is “Why have governments hidden the truth from the citizenry, and why has the all-intrusive media been silent about global warming and the end of life approaching the world ?”  This is a classic case of “diplomacy”. After the industrial machine dies of its own accord it has been estimated that it will take a quarter million years before life as it is known could return to the planet. Why is humanity not responding ? Because science and technology have taken from the common man the power of implementing change and given this power to the vast corporate, political and economic leadership. Whichever way you look at the problem it is the growth of liberal economics, or, the economics of liberal growth. The selfish are out to save their skins and side with the winners despite the fact they are ignoring the truth that  their actions are dooming the lives of present and future generations en masse on a planetary scale within the next four decades.

This is where the Internet can be the salvation of our society. It can give information and transfer information, it can unite peoples everywhere and awaken them to the relentless attack upon  “the undernourished, the impoverished, and the poor”. The average educated person must realize the dangers ahead and learn for himself or herself the extent of the danger to their family. They must go to the Internet and study, or buy a book on the subject.Arthur Rosenfeld, himself a leading environmentalist, has written about Joseph Romm’s book HELL AND HIGH WATER (Harper Perennial2007, N.Y.) “If you buy only one book about global warming, make it Hell and High Water.”

                                                                                      BULU  IMAM

The idea of Development as Growth in Nehruvian modern India

The idea of Development as Growth in Nehruvian modern India

In The Discovery of India (1943), J.N.M.F., O.U.P., New Delhi, Foreword by Mrs Indira Gandhi 4^th November 1980, Eleventh Impression 1991, p.226),  at the end of Chapter Five, Jawaharlal Nehru is incisive in observing,

"The Indian Social structure (and I shall consider this more fully later) had given amazing stability to Indian civililization. It had given strength and cohesion  to the group, but this came in the way of expansion and a larger cohesion . It developed crafts and skill and trade and commerce, but always within each group seperately. Thus particular types of activity became hereditary and and there was a tendency to avoid new types of work and activity and  to confine oneself to the old groove, to restrict initiative and the spirit of innovation. It gave a measure of freedom  vwithin a ceretain limited sphere, but at the expense of the growth of a larger freedom  and at the heavy price of keeping large numbers of people permanently at the bottom of the social ladder, deprived of the opportunities of growth. So long as that structure avenues for growth and expansion , it was progressive; when it reached the limits of expansion open to it, it became stationary, unprogressive, and, later, inevitably regressive... Because of this there was a decline all along the line -- intellectual, philosophical, political, in technique and methods of warfare, in knowledge of and contacts with the outside world, and there was a growth of local sentiments and feudal, small-group feeling at the expense of the larger conception of India as a whole, and a shrinking economy. Yet, as later ages were to show, there was yet vitality in the old structure and an amazing tenacity, as well as some flexibility and capacity for adaption. Because of this it managed to survive and to profit by new contacts and waves of thought, and even progress in some ways. But that progress was always tied down to and hampered by far too many relics of the past.""

So here Nehru had an idea: he would revolutionize the old system. This was the beginning of the industrial revolution in modern India made to run on the tracks laid by the British but with new vision and dimensions of growth as development.

This is a summing up of Nehru’s philosophy for the development of modern India. He was dismayed by India’s ancient traditions which he felt kept the masses backward. In his Glimpses of World History, (1934), (J.N.M.F., O.U.P., New Delhi, Foreword by Mrs Indira Gandhi, 4^th November 1980, Fifth Impression 1988, p.68-69) Nehru praises the Chin Emperor Huang-Ti also known as “The First Emperor”, who in 246 B.C.  had all books in China giving an account of the past history and Confucian classics etc. burnt and destroyed. He writes, “A nice kind-hearted and amiable person he must have been, this First Emperor !  I remember him  always, and not without some sympathy, when I hear too much praise of the past in India. Some of our people are always looking back to the past, always glorifying it and always seeking inspiration  from it … But it does not seem to me to be healthy for any person or for any nation to be always looking back.”

To understand modern India it is necessary to understand Nehru’s vision  for independent India. The Nehruvian vision has remained through India’s journey from Independence in 1947 uptil today built on the view that growth of the economy through industrial development is the only way forward. A series of Five-Year-Plans designed upon targets of expenditure rather than achievement accompanied this model of growth and development and continues to do so. Conservation of natural resources or the fate of those societies which had for generations  protected them – India’s Adivasis or Tribals – was not taken into consideration even though the nation’s growth and development was ostensibly undertaken for their development. Vast areas of India have been mined, deforested, desertified and laid barren, millions of the poorest people have been displaced This has remained the conundrum of modern India and its plans for development of the nation.  

      25^th June, 2011                                                                              Bulu Imam

The Mind and Satyagraha

MIND, INSTINCT, INTELLECT                                  

The mind, like the body, is the result  of evolution. It too has traveled down the ages with our DNA from the beginning of time, with each bodily birth, from parents to child, it retains the memory of the universe in its unseen depths. It is never thought only, but also instinct. Reason is the greatest faculty and far above conditioned ideas like law and morals, but Reason is even then only a part of the mind. Instinct it is my belief is higher than reason because it is not conditioned and is evolved through instinct into a higher form of intelligence . Instinct is beyond  reason and is impelled from within, or inwardly driven. Rather than being irrational it is supra-rational and is directly linked to the growth of the mind since primordial times and possesses an animal nature in its innermost depths. Scientists such as Einstein  claimed that instinct was the guide to the greatest scientific discoveries. Instinct is that part of our mind which regular conditioning destroys, and realizing this fundamentalists attack this centre of understanding and change thinking patterns especially in unconditioned ethnic societies.

Birth and motherhood are the products of instinct. When a human being is born he or she inherits the mind of their parents which is a continuing collection of thoughts and experience of generations of parents back to the first human. Instinct is born out of this long chain of thought and experience. In our materialistic and unnaturally conditioned modern world which is the product of the industrial revolution,  instinct is our most threatened faculty and more particularly in this present time when forced conditioning and scientific thinking is all but killing the reality of a metaphysical world. Conditioning kills instinct as surely as lack of water kills a plant. It is the seduction of human intelligence into robotic conditions which could, if unchecked, mean the end of humans. We choose to challenge this before we lose the faculties to challenge this danger.

Physical existence itself is the result of  instinct and our biological machine is kept alive by instinctive actions and reactions through our daily lives from birth to death, from breathing and that inner cave into which breath withdraws at the end of life. Instinct comes  from the same invisible cavern  from where both spirit and matter emerge and from where the mind itself emerges. Conditioning of the mind according to set ideas kills the instinct which is born of primordial intelligence, and when conditioning of the mind deprives it of instinct it becomes the robotic servant of its master and today the world is threatened by the conditioning of science and materialism and where it is all to easy to use humans is senseless robots. We saw this in the first great war of the last century and before it in the  rape of the Transvaal by the British, when soldiers were sent to their certain doom and could do nothing about it. More people were killed by conditioned thinking by their masters in the last century’s two wars than the whole of human history’s little wars. And yet, it was expected of them to die for their country. And it was expected of their leaders to kill for their country. Those who condition men and women towards their own ends – be it their faiths or their agendas , even to the point of killing them – are expounding a great violence against humans in whatever name it may be.  It is toward this end our institutions of learning and higher learning have been developed to bend green branches into whatever shape they like killing the inner genius of life and twisting it towards their own ends as if they are slaves.

The world is a greater mystery than we know and our minds an even  greater mystery than we may understand, and this is the great lie of science which is unable to measure the metaphysical and hence denies it. It is a denial in order to ensure its own survival. It verges on a fanaticism which in political times will countenance even genocide.  When societies develop such forms of intolerance even when they will put up with the unscientific beliefs of their own faith – then things become very dangerous. Materialism has become a creed, forgiven its effects by faith. It has led to the present ecological crisis the planet faces.  The planet has been changed by human intervention from a blue to a brown planet. Today ever greater numbers of humans are being threatened by climate change than  predicted. The future of the world’s livable environment has been predicted by that self-same science will become in the next few decades an inferno of heat waves and drought due to steadily increasing carbon dioxide emissions from industries trapping solar infrared rays. But still current economic and industrial development agendas ride over future hazards and continue to pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the greatest threat being from carbon dioxide from industrial burning of coal..

In these times of conditioned thinking imagination and instinct have been confused  and novelty is seen as creation and inventiveness understood as imagination. Instinct is portrayed as a dark spirit of a tribal underworld. The old order by which reality and unreality were comprehended have been erased from the minds of modern infants and the younger generation is unable to tell the unreal from the real.

The link between intellect and instinct

Modern psychiatry has identified a link between intellect, the highest faculty of the trained mind,  and instinct, which is the highest faculty of the primordial mind  (or what some would like to call the primeval or primitive mind). The latter as I have pointed out is the genius of our ancestors which was used in facing the unknown in harsh and changing times. The faculty of instinct was in the primates which preceded the human and indeed which is in all living things. Instinct is in all life, it is a part of life’s survival mechanism itself. It was understood in past  pre-Enlightenment society as perhaps the highest faculty in man apart from mystic spiritual consciousness. Ever since science became the arbiter of truths instinct became an embarrassment! Today in the dying hours of our race  it is more than ever important to realize the place of instinct as a faculty of the intellect before the vast stores of past wisdom contained in the instinct are destroyed by modern  mental conditioning. This instinct is vital in discriminating the validity of the products of the intellect and intelligence . Today we are seeing the destruction of natural resources and atmospheric pollution on such a vast scale by science supposedly for the good of humanity. On the other hand we are told that these activities are reducing the livable atmosphere and environment to a few decades. Have humans lost the power to recognize truth from untruth ? Food and water security face us on our door-steps, vast environmental calamities shake us from our stupor almost every day – heat waves, droughts, hurricanes ,tornadoes, escalating effects from seismic caused tsunamis and volcanoes. The scientists shrug and say they aren’t connected with global warming induced climate change. Which is right, the Deniers or the Accusers ? Huge unnecessary wars and justification of nuking civilian populations are considered  maintaining the status quo. We have been forced to accept these as a necessary part of civilized life. We are not supposed to question them.

Modern educated human society has lost the wisdom which caused the ancient world to develop great philosophies and arts, the highest glories of  architecture and  obeisance to the metaphysical among the very elements; even the very primitiveness of the simplest human societies which had developed a higher intelligence than our literate world can offer. The world has entered into a world of new laws of its own causing, --diminishing returns, endless need for lebensraum, hierarchical despotism, hierarchical  higher standards of living for the few at the cost of the impoverishment of the weak multitudes, loss of environmental security, --the list is endless. The planet and a few powerful rich are becoming a threat to the survival of the weak. Society as it was understood uptil only yesterday no longer has a future environment left  to survive. The time has come for the worm to turn. Society may no longer become into a plaything for the exploitation of the rich and powerful. The old order recognized the good of the maximum to be conserved for the good of the whole of society, which is the same as even distribution of natural resources between all for a just and sustainable society. This planet we live on has no credit cards operating in outer space. We are facing an unprecedented loss of species and changing climate. We have to all live on whatever we have left.

In this quest for a right balance between what can be had and what is needed for fulfillment, the instinct will be an invaluable guide, even more so than the intellect or intelligence. Even though this knowledge has by its nature declined in conditioned urban materialistic society it has nevertheless been preserved in the underdog primitive ethnic society wherever it has survived. India is one of the last great polytheistic tribal civilizations of the world even if it has been mauled by economics, industrialism and materialistic greed of a few. It is important to find out very quickly, in the very near future, whatever it takes humans to survive on very very little without destroying the means and resources of survival itself. And here we must turn to this vital knowledge bank in countries like India and Africa and South America which have been exploited for forests, ores and minerals  and torn apart by the politics of colonization. It is in this disappearing world that we will find the answer.

An intellectual renaissance is needed which challenges the shibboleths of economic growth. The divine rights of politicians and corporations will have to be challenged.  The primacy of the filthy rich and the filthy powerful, even the prelates, will have to be challenged. (This has already started happening).The forced stratification of society through levels of education into social classes separating the Haves from the Have-nots and the exploitation of resources for their benefit at the cost of the deprived, these will have reached certain limits beyond which they cannot go. Human rights will only be found in the archives of their institutions.  And then people will try and figure out what went wrong.

Intellectual Satyagraha

The internet today offers the possibility of such a communication network as a new age of discovery requires, a new age in which resources like food and water rapidly diminish and even disappear, in which natural resources become rare commodities and will have a higher price than any industrial products, heralding in a new economy. The human tragedy caused by a rapidly changing planet – heat, thirst, and inadequate food will stalk the future generations unless they are very wealthy and the ordinary will become extraordinary and the once easily available will become rare. There will be an increasing hegemony by military superpowers in the interests of their own populations. Globalization is not about a better globe but the exploitation of the planet by certain superpowers. The meaning of democracy will change. How to bring these visions to the common man and how to appeal for sense to the powerful elite who rule the nations. How to express our fears for the future and try and bring change to this juggernaut of incessant change, incessant Growth, incessant economic growth ?

Futuristic in concept, practical in application  the concept of intellectual satyagraha  -- clinging on to the truth – through the powers of reason and logic (logos), with unwavering faith in the collective good sense of our common humanity, calls upon the World Wide Web, the greatest weapon of the twenty-first century, or any century, because it allows the mind of humanity to address itself. The moral and social development of human societies has been dependant upon  information and communication, and today the World Wide Web brings to humans across the planet the possibility to join into one great democratic harmony, to join in the making of a new world order, one based on justice and sharing and not on Growth and War. The internet enters both as a tool and a weapon in deciding the way forward for human progress as humans everywhere would like to have it, not at gunpoint of some selfish greedy people.  The massive destruction of the planet’s natural resources, the growing massive pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases especially carbon dioxide heralds the certain brutal  living conditions and premature deaths in our future generations, these all must be immediately addressed and stopped. We are in a time when our actions will shape the future of humanity. Humanity has not the way to find a common voice against a common oppression, and to my mind the practice and application of intellectual satyagraha is just such a way.  It is a reaffirmation of faith in our collective will as a race, of our common needs as humans. What future generations need is not economic Growth but survival conditions, not money and material goods  but food and water, and any act or acts which deny these to future generations are crimes against humanity. It is a reaffirmation of the collective will of our race at a turning point in our evolution. The decision making ability of a global internet population is awesome even as the internet and the World Wide Web reaches into the darkest corners of the planet and allows more and more voices to be heard. It presents the scope for a global democratic voice.

The World Wide Web has changed our world in more ways than great civilizations of the past have done. Its influence is everywhere – in politics, laws and the arts. Why should it not be an effective tool for the world to talk to the masters of global Growth, to the leaders of nations  --

to the human spirit and heart and mind ?Why should not people everywhere have their say in a world still governed by selfish feudal interests, by cartels and juntas and totalitarian regimes functioning in the name of economic growth and democracy and relentlessly exploiting nature and humans for Profit. Profit is the step-child of Growth. Intellectual satyagraha and the World Wide Web together offer limitless possibilities if they can be organized as a new  democratic voice , a world wide voice of global society. The idea sounds revolutionary and it is, -- a peaceful revolution through communication and reasoned protest against injustice to humans and nature. It is a revolution of thought and action.

Writing and Expression

The difference between instinct and intellect is that the instinct came first. The intellect proceeds from the development of writing and knowledge as separate from wisdom. Instinct belongs to the pre-literate mind, the so-called savage mind, the mind of our primitive ancestors. As I have pointed out the industrial age built on the economic foundations of Loot developed into an age of so called “enlightenment” which challenged the norms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and successfully wiped out the glories of twenty thousand years of creative intelligence. We are entering an age of counter enlightenment. Our race has developed destructive technologies far in advance of our anthropological evolution to control weapons of mass destruction. We have become more powerful than is good for us. Technology has outstripped human evolution itself. The children of tomorrow will be robots with intelligences primed by the then ruling disposition – which appears to be materialistic and non democratic for the masses –and highly democratic for the few. It will be a tomorrow of survivors and their obliterated generation. I am talking in the context of the imminent hazards of global warming and climate change within the next  thirty years when the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be four times pre-industrial levels (at 60 Gigatonnes), with sea level rise  around seven metres, and with atmospheric temperature 3C higher than today  in the tropics and 6.5F higher in the northern latitudes. Certainly these will not be livable conditions. Human life will only be possible under controlled conditions --in air conditioned cubicles. The methods of production of energy will have to change radically to meet these conditions. The numbers of deaths by this new plague – Global Warming – will not be countered easily simply through technology, it will be impossible to manage to save human beings in a  world scorched by heat and denuded of  food and water resources. These will indeed be extraordinary times. Robotic intelligence and mechanical assistance will be required even for decision making and the human will have to take a back seat (if it is there). The priorities of being human will be with only a very few in controlled laboratory conditions.  This transition of human to non human  operation will very likely happen suddenly after a certain point has been reached and no alternatives will be any longer possible. Mankind is accelerating towards this point and this very acceleration is slowing down the process of our realization of the reality.

I have spoken above of the pre-literate mind and the literate mind. Abrahamic scripture begins with the mission statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The meaning of Ecology becomes suddenly God-defined by the followers. It isn’t plain logos (Gr. Logic), now it means Word. Church and  Theocratic State apply ecology to their actions as if all its concerns are defined by them and not by logos or Reason, i.e. ecological considerations  do not require to be logical.  Economy on the other hand is law-directed – nomos (Gr. Law), and economic considerations depend upon the law, military, police, etc. Its become a very dangerous law since economics depends on unlimited growth in a world of diminishing resources. That’s why thinkers have started despairing if we’ll ever make it beyond the present century.

Growth is dependant on subsidies by governments to corporations, kickbacks from corporations to governments, the destruction of natural resources without their being calculated in the production costs, the GDP. The abuse of economics and environmental resources  is paid for by the defenceless landscapes which are industrialized and the equally defenceless poor who live in these landscapes. Growth, growth, growth – that’s what economic growth is all about – and in an economic world what else can be done ? The divides between the poor and the rich, the Haves and the Have-Nots is the  essential outcome of Growth. This Growth is represented in the flawed Gross Domestic Product. And both are out of the reach of the common man to affect in any way. An economic despotism holds the world in thrall and growing military control of the planet escalates with escalating Growth. Totalitarian political regimes and their corporate cartels control the business as usual planet we live on. The last isolated ethnic environments are ready to be exploited through neo-colonial carnage. Hope is dead since  modern neo-liberal  economics is a deeply criminal fetish for the world’s leading economists and politicians and it is backed by police brutality and military power.  Displacing the last ethnic societies and taking over their natural environments is government policy in developing countries  unlike established economies which have a slow growth rate, such as Japan (1.5%). The old method of  judging a nation’s health on the basis of its fine products,  arts and crafts, the genius of its creative people, etc. is over. Now it is money, money, money – and more money -- which is the cri de coeur of the present economic global structure. In an age of global economy following an industrial revolution, a so called age of Enlightenment, and two world wars which left eighty million dead, we have the option of adopting the status quo or being left out in the cold.

It is no longer possible to ask any government riding a growth economy to be considerate or reasonable, honest or caring, since growth – economic growth, highly competitive economic growth – is based on corruption. Greater the corruption, greater the growth. That’s why a new system of morals is emerging in today’s world, one which condones the most immoral and colossal corruption. And the problem which arises in highly moral souls is that this is not right. But of course it is not. Clinton called a spade a spade when he charmingly observed “It’s the economy, stupid!”

We are globally at a stage of great danger. As the glaciers dry up – as they are doing in the Himalayas – and as the northern rivers dry up in time water is the potential cause of the next great wars between India and her neighbors; as the climate changes and affects food production in South Asia with increasing heat waves in the midst of growing populations; as more and more forest land is cut down or turned to plantations to increase growth; as the poor will die by the wayside, even so more people will be flying Spice-Jet and talking of champagne and caviar. And this is Growth, big bad Growth. The leaders understand the game perfectly. Which great general could afford the luxury of caring for the safety of society or his troops ? No, that luxury is not possible in quest of victory.

Everything else the Sage said is poetry, and poetry doesn’t buy food, or for that matter even water. The age of poets is over. The poet says “Helping the masses to return to the ancestral genius of the land, to help them bring up their children according to the old craftsmanship traditions, and to allow them to plough the land and reap a bountiful harvest” well, that’s all over. We’ve changed the playing field so fast and so permanently – or rather, the They who have done it, are tuned into a whole new dynamics for survival. Ruined rural India and her masses toiling in the sweltering, waterless desert India is fast becoming, they have read the writing on the wall: Join the bandwagon as the slogan says ! So the government plays to the audience. Chocolates and television, fine linen underwear and condoms, fulfilling the dream of simply riding on a train… this they say is what the simple ethnic societies want ! And they have created dangerous survival conditions which probably makes them right ! There is little place here for “ simple living and high thinking”. It is a fact that lower organisms are tougher than higher ones and that primitive societies are better adapted for survival under extreme conditions.  I believe that the masses are tougher, more resilient to change than the seemingly higher human types formed through wealth and education’ and these more primitive types will enter the ecological crisis for survival  well armed.” The poor shall inherit the earth” was the observation of the wisest man the world has seen – the gentle  Nazarene. Surely they will inherit the ghastly future we are going into! Till it lasts.

                             ---------------------------------------

Bulu Imam

Sanskriti

Hazaribagh

Jharkhand, India

The Mind and Satyagraha

MIND, INSTINCT, INTELLECT                                  

The mind, like the body, is the result  of evolution. It too has traveled down the ages with our DNA from the beginning of time, with each bodily birth, from parents to child, it retains the memory of the universe in its unseen depths. It is never thought only, but also instinct. Reason is the greatest faculty and far above conditioned ideas like law and morals, but Reason is even then only a part of the mind. Instinct it is my belief is higher than reason because it is not conditioned and is evolved through instinct into a higher form of intelligence . Instinct is beyond  reason and is impelled from within, or inwardly driven. Rather than being irrational it is supra-rational and is directly linked to the growth of the mind since primordial times and possesses an animal nature in its innermost depths. Scientists such as Einstein  claimed that instinct was the guide to the greatest scientific discoveries. Instinct is that part of our mind which regular conditioning destroys, and realizing this fundamentalists attack this centre of understanding and change thinking patterns especially in unconditioned ethnic societies.

Birth and motherhood are the products of instinct. When a human being is born he or she inherits the mind of their parents which is a continuing collection of thoughts and experience of generations of parents back to the first human. Instinct is born out of this long chain of thought and experience. In our materialistic and unnaturally conditioned modern world which is the product of the industrial revolution,  instinct is our most threatened faculty and more particularly in this present time when forced conditioning and scientific thinking is all but killing the reality of a metaphysical world. Conditioning kills instinct as surely as lack of water kills a plant. It is the seduction of human intelligence into robotic conditions which could, if unchecked, mean the end of humans. We choose to challenge this before we lose the faculties to challenge this danger.

Physical existence itself is the result of  instinct and our biological machine is kept alive by instinctive actions and reactions through our daily lives from birth to death, from breathing and that inner cave into which breath withdraws at the end of life. Instinct comes  from the same invisible cavern  from where both spirit and matter emerge and from where the mind itself emerges. Conditioning of the mind according to set ideas kills the instinct which is born of primordial intelligence, and when conditioning of the mind deprives it of instinct it becomes the robotic servant of its master and today the world is threatened by the conditioning of science and materialism and where it is all to easy to use humans is senseless robots. We saw this in the first great war of the last century and before it in the  rape of the Transvaal by the British, when soldiers were sent to their certain doom and could do nothing about it. More people were killed by conditioned thinking by their masters in the last century’s two wars than the whole of human history’s little wars. And yet, it was expected of them to die for their country. And it was expected of their leaders to kill for their country. Those who condition men and women towards their own ends – be it their faiths or their agendas , even to the point of killing them – are expounding a great violence against humans in whatever name it may be.  It is toward this end our institutions of learning and higher learning have been developed to bend green branches into whatever shape they like killing the inner genius of life and twisting it towards their own ends as if they are slaves.

The world is a greater mystery than we know and our minds an even  greater mystery than we may understand, and this is the great lie of science which is unable to measure the metaphysical and hence denies it. It is a denial in order to ensure its own survival. It verges on a fanaticism which in political times will countenance even genocide.  When societies develop such forms of intolerance even when they will put up with the unscientific beliefs of their own faith – then things become very dangerous. Materialism has become a creed, forgiven its effects by faith. It has led to the present ecological crisis the planet faces.  The planet has been changed by human intervention from a blue to a brown planet. Today ever greater numbers of humans are being threatened by climate change than  predicted. The future of the world’s livable environment has been predicted by that self-same science will become in the next few decades an inferno of heat waves and drought due to steadily increasing carbon dioxide emissions from industries trapping solar infrared rays. But still current economic and industrial development agendas ride over future hazards and continue to pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the greatest threat being from carbon dioxide from industrial burning of coal..

In these times of conditioned thinking imagination and instinct have been confused  and novelty is seen as creation and inventiveness understood as imagination. Instinct is portrayed as a dark spirit of a tribal underworld. The old order by which reality and unreality were comprehended have been erased from the minds of modern infants and the younger generation is unable to tell the unreal from the real.

The link between intellect and instinct

Modern psychiatry has identified a link between intellect, the highest faculty of the trained mind,  and instinct, which is the highest faculty of the primordial mind  (or what some would like to call the primeval or primitive mind). The latter as I have pointed out is the genius of our ancestors which was used in facing the unknown in harsh and changing times. The faculty of instinct was in the primates which preceded the human and indeed which is in all living things. Instinct is in all life, it is a part of life’s survival mechanism itself. It was understood in past  pre-Enlightenment society as perhaps the highest faculty in man apart from mystic spiritual consciousness. Ever since science became the arbiter of truths instinct became an embarrassment! Today in the dying hours of our race  it is more than ever important to realize the place of instinct as a faculty of the intellect before the vast stores of past wisdom contained in the instinct are destroyed by modern  mental conditioning. This instinct is vital in discriminating the validity of the products of the intellect and intelligence . Today we are seeing the destruction of natural resources and atmospheric pollution on such a vast scale by science supposedly for the good of humanity. On the other hand we are told that these activities are reducing the livable atmosphere and environment to a few decades. Have humans lost the power to recognize truth from untruth ? Food and water security face us on our door-steps, vast environmental calamities shake us from our stupor almost every day – heat waves, droughts, hurricanes ,tornadoes, escalating effects from seismic caused tsunamis and volcanoes. The scientists shrug and say they aren’t connected with global warming induced climate change. Which is right, the Deniers or the Accusers ? Huge unnecessary wars and justification of nuking civilian populations are considered  maintaining the status quo. We have been forced to accept these as a necessary part of civilized life. We are not supposed to question them.

Modern educated human society has lost the wisdom which caused the ancient world to develop great philosophies and arts, the highest glories of  architecture and  obeisance to the metaphysical among the very elements; even the very primitiveness of the simplest human societies which had developed a higher intelligence than our literate world can offer. The world has entered into a world of new laws of its own causing, --diminishing returns, endless need for lebensraum, hierarchical despotism, hierarchical  higher standards of living for the few at the cost of the impoverishment of the weak multitudes, loss of environmental security, --the list is endless. The planet and a few powerful rich are becoming a threat to the survival of the weak. Society as it was understood uptil only yesterday no longer has a future environment left  to survive. The time has come for the worm to turn. Society may no longer become into a plaything for the exploitation of the rich and powerful. The old order recognized the good of the maximum to be conserved for the good of the whole of society, which is the same as even distribution of natural resources between all for a just and sustainable society. This planet we live on has no credit cards operating in outer space. We are facing an unprecedented loss of species and changing climate. We have to all live on whatever we have left.

In this quest for a right balance between what can be had and what is needed for fulfillment, the instinct will be an invaluable guide, even more so than the intellect or intelligence. Even though this knowledge has by its nature declined in conditioned urban materialistic society it has nevertheless been preserved in the underdog primitive ethnic society wherever it has survived. India is one of the last great polytheistic tribal civilizations of the world even if it has been mauled by economics, industrialism and materialistic greed of a few. It is important to find out very quickly, in the very near future, whatever it takes humans to survive on very very little without destroying the means and resources of survival itself. And here we must turn to this vital knowledge bank in countries like India and Africa and South America which have been exploited for forests, ores and minerals  and torn apart by the politics of colonization. It is in this disappearing world that we will find the answer.

An intellectual renaissance is needed which challenges the shibboleths of economic growth. The divine rights of politicians and corporations will have to be challenged.  The primacy of the filthy rich and the filthy powerful, even the prelates, will have to be challenged. (This has already started happening).The forced stratification of society through levels of education into social classes separating the Haves from the Have-nots and the exploitation of resources for their benefit at the cost of the deprived, these will have reached certain limits beyond which they cannot go. Human rights will only be found in the archives of their institutions.  And then people will try and figure out what went wrong.

Intellectual Satyagraha

The internet today offers the possibility of such a communication network as a new age of discovery requires, a new age in which resources like food and water rapidly diminish and even disappear, in which natural resources become rare commodities and will have a higher price than any industrial products, heralding in a new economy. The human tragedy caused by a rapidly changing planet – heat, thirst, and inadequate food will stalk the future generations unless they are very wealthy and the ordinary will become extraordinary and the once easily available will become rare. There will be an increasing hegemony by military superpowers in the interests of their own populations. Globalization is not about a better globe but the exploitation of the planet by certain superpowers. The meaning of democracy will change. How to bring these visions to the common man and how to appeal for sense to the powerful elite who rule the nations. How to express our fears for the future and try and bring change to this juggernaut of incessant change, incessant Growth, incessant economic growth ?

Futuristic in concept, practical in application  the concept of intellectual satyagraha  -- clinging on to the truth – through the powers of reason and logic (logos), with unwavering faith in the collective good sense of our common humanity, calls upon the World Wide Web, the greatest weapon of the twenty-first century, or any century, because it allows the mind of humanity to address itself. The moral and social development of human societies has been dependant upon  information and communication, and today the World Wide Web brings to humans across the planet the possibility to join into one great democratic harmony, to join in the making of a new world order, one based on justice and sharing and not on Growth and War. The internet enters both as a tool and a weapon in deciding the way forward for human progress as humans everywhere would like to have it, not at gunpoint of some selfish greedy people.  The massive destruction of the planet’s natural resources, the growing massive pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases especially carbon dioxide heralds the certain brutal  living conditions and premature deaths in our future generations, these all must be immediately addressed and stopped. We are in a time when our actions will shape the future of humanity. Humanity has not the way to find a common voice against a common oppression, and to my mind the practice and application of intellectual satyagraha is just such a way.  It is a reaffirmation of faith in our collective will as a race, of our common needs as humans. What future generations need is not economic Growth but survival conditions, not money and material goods  but food and water, and any act or acts which deny these to future generations are crimes against humanity. It is a reaffirmation of the collective will of our race at a turning point in our evolution. The decision making ability of a global internet population is awesome even as the internet and the World Wide Web reaches into the darkest corners of the planet and allows more and more voices to be heard. It presents the scope for a global democratic voice.

The World Wide Web has changed our world in more ways than great civilizations of the past have done. Its influence is everywhere – in politics, laws and the arts. Why should it not be an effective tool for the world to talk to the masters of global Growth, to the leaders of nations  --

to the human spirit and heart and mind ?Why should not people everywhere have their say in a world still governed by selfish feudal interests, by cartels and juntas and totalitarian regimes functioning in the name of economic growth and democracy and relentlessly exploiting nature and humans for Profit. Profit is the step-child of Growth. Intellectual satyagraha and the World Wide Web together offer limitless possibilities if they can be organized as a new  democratic voice , a world wide voice of global society. The idea sounds revolutionary and it is, -- a peaceful revolution through communication and reasoned protest against injustice to humans and nature. It is a revolution of thought and action.

Writing and Expression

The difference between instinct and intellect is that the instinct came first. The intellect proceeds from the development of writing and knowledge as separate from wisdom. Instinct belongs to the pre-literate mind, the so-called savage mind, the mind of our primitive ancestors. As I have pointed out the industrial age built on the economic foundations of Loot developed into an age of so called “enlightenment” which challenged the norms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and successfully wiped out the glories of twenty thousand years of creative intelligence. We are entering an age of counter enlightenment. Our race has developed destructive technologies far in advance of our anthropological evolution to control weapons of mass destruction. We have become more powerful than is good for us. Technology has outstripped human evolution itself. The children of tomorrow will be robots with intelligences primed by the then ruling disposition – which appears to be materialistic and non democratic for the masses –and highly democratic for the few. It will be a tomorrow of survivors and their obliterated generation. I am talking in the context of the imminent hazards of global warming and climate change within the next  thirty years when the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be four times pre-industrial levels (at 60 Gigatonnes), with sea level rise  around seven metres, and with atmospheric temperature 3C higher than today  in the tropics and 6.5F higher in the northern latitudes. Certainly these will not be livable conditions. Human life will only be possible under controlled conditions --in air conditioned cubicles. The methods of production of energy will have to change radically to meet these conditions. The numbers of deaths by this new plague – Global Warming – will not be countered easily simply through technology, it will be impossible to manage to save human beings in a  world scorched by heat and denuded of  food and water resources. These will indeed be extraordinary times. Robotic intelligence and mechanical assistance will be required even for decision making and the human will have to take a back seat (if it is there). The priorities of being human will be with only a very few in controlled laboratory conditions.  This transition of human to non human  operation will very likely happen suddenly after a certain point has been reached and no alternatives will be any longer possible. Mankind is accelerating towards this point and this very acceleration is slowing down the process of our realization of the reality.

I have spoken above of the pre-literate mind and the literate mind. Abrahamic scripture begins with the mission statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The meaning of Ecology becomes suddenly God-defined by the followers. It isn’t plain logos (Gr. Logic), now it means Word. Church and  Theocratic State apply ecology to their actions as if all its concerns are defined by them and not by logos or Reason, i.e. ecological considerations  do not require to be logical.  Economy on the other hand is law-directed – nomos (Gr. Law), and economic considerations depend upon the law, military, police, etc. Its become a very dangerous law since economics depends on unlimited growth in a world of diminishing resources. That’s why thinkers have started despairing if we’ll ever make it beyond the present century.

Growth is dependant on subsidies by governments to corporations, kickbacks from corporations to governments, the destruction of natural resources without their being calculated in the production costs, the GDP. The abuse of economics and environmental resources  is paid for by the defenceless landscapes which are industrialized and the equally defenceless poor who live in these landscapes. Growth, growth, growth – that’s what economic growth is all about – and in an economic world what else can be done ? The divides between the poor and the rich, the Haves and the Have-Nots is the  essential outcome of Growth. This Growth is represented in the flawed Gross Domestic Product. And both are out of the reach of the common man to affect in any way. An economic despotism holds the world in thrall and growing military control of the planet escalates with escalating Growth. Totalitarian political regimes and their corporate cartels control the business as usual planet we live on. The last isolated ethnic environments are ready to be exploited through neo-colonial carnage. Hope is dead since  modern neo-liberal  economics is a deeply criminal fetish for the world’s leading economists and politicians and it is backed by police brutality and military power.  Displacing the last ethnic societies and taking over their natural environments is government policy in developing countries  unlike established economies which have a slow growth rate, such as Japan (1.5%). The old method of  judging a nation’s health on the basis of its fine products,  arts and crafts, the genius of its creative people, etc. is over. Now it is money, money, money – and more money -- which is the cri de coeur of the present economic global structure. In an age of global economy following an industrial revolution, a so called age of Enlightenment, and two world wars which left eighty million dead, we have the option of adopting the status quo or being left out in the cold.

It is no longer possible to ask any government riding a growth economy to be considerate or reasonable, honest or caring, since growth – economic growth, highly competitive economic growth – is based on corruption. Greater the corruption, greater the growth. That’s why a new system of morals is emerging in today’s world, one which condones the most immoral and colossal corruption. And the problem which arises in highly moral souls is that this is not right. But of course it is not. Clinton called a spade a spade when he charmingly observed “It’s the economy, stupid!”

We are globally at a stage of great danger. As the glaciers dry up – as they are doing in the Himalayas – and as the northern rivers dry up in time water is the potential cause of the next great wars between India and her neighbors; as the climate changes and affects food production in South Asia with increasing heat waves in the midst of growing populations; as more and more forest land is cut down or turned to plantations to increase growth; as the poor will die by the wayside, even so more people will be flying Spice-Jet and talking of champagne and caviar. And this is Growth, big bad Growth. The leaders understand the game perfectly. Which great general could afford the luxury of caring for the safety of society or his troops ? No, that luxury is not possible in quest of victory.

Everything else the Sage said is poetry, and poetry doesn’t buy food, or for that matter even water. The age of poets is over. The poet says “Helping the masses to return to the ancestral genius of the land, to help them bring up their children according to the old craftsmanship traditions, and to allow them to plough the land and reap a bountiful harvest” well, that’s all over. We’ve changed the playing field so fast and so permanently – or rather, the They who have done it, are tuned into a whole new dynamics for survival. Ruined rural India and her masses toiling in the sweltering, waterless desert India is fast becoming, they have read the writing on the wall: Join the bandwagon as the slogan says ! So the government plays to the audience. Chocolates and television, fine linen underwear and condoms, fulfilling the dream of simply riding on a train… this they say is what the simple ethnic societies want ! And they have created dangerous survival conditions which probably makes them right ! There is little place here for “ simple living and high thinking”. It is a fact that lower organisms are tougher than higher ones and that primitive societies are better adapted for survival under extreme conditions.  I believe that the masses are tougher, more resilient to change than the seemingly higher human types formed through wealth and education’ and these more primitive types will enter the ecological crisis for survival  well armed.” The poor shall inherit the earth” was the observation of the wisest man the world has seen – the gentle  Nazarene. Surely they will inherit the ghastly future we are going into! Till it lasts.

                             ---------------------------------------

Bulu Imam

Sanskriti

Hazaribagh

Jharkhand, India