Random Opus

8/14/2019 Random Opus

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Pacifism

"What do you think of the pacifists: certain people whobelieve that pacifism is worthy as an end in itself, and thatwe should never fight others no matter what?"

" This point of view does not seem to have much merit, in

spite of the fact that violence too is not worthy as an end initself. Without tribes being willing to defend themselvesform other tribes, the tribes who don't defend themselveswill be eliminated by those who are willing to use force - agood example being the genocide of neanderthals bymodern humans in the colonization of Europe. But evenwithin a tribe, if individuals are unwilling to use force to

fight for the rights and freedoms they want, they will findthemselves being subjugated and enslaved by those whoare more unscrupulous than them. Further, this is not an'honorable act of self-sacrifice' - allowing others to havetheir way through the unscrupulous use of forceencourages them to stick to those methods and thus actsas a disincentive to seek other, more just solutions. Thus,those who are pacifist for the heck of it also share someresponsibility for the spread of unscrupulous violence intheir society. If we want to live in a society where certainkinds of ways of solving problems (eg. through consideringthe wishes of all) are preferred over others (like beating upthose who are weaker than you), then we need to act in away that encourages the means we prefer over the ones


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we don't.

When we realize that many people consider violence totake forms other than physical - eg. mental, psychological,etc. - it becomes even clearer that violence is not alwayssomething to be avoided. Any form of evolution involvesthe breaking down of old structures, and thus would beconsidered to be violence by someone or the other. If we

had this notion of violence in Galileo or Darwin's days, nodoubt they too would have been considered violent.However, perhaps they have been of more 'value tosociety' than others who decided to go along witheverything just the way it already existed becase that iswhat was accepted."


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Non-Violence

"The principle behind non-violence is not that we mustreduce suffering: no matter what we do, suffering isinherent in the struggle for consciousness to establish itselfin the world. It is the birth-pangs, so to speak. Sufferingcauses us to have sympathy for each other and thus can

be said to make us better people. However, what issaddening is when someone willingly causes suffering toanother person or generally another being/thing: becauseonce we accept that consciousness is spread throughoutwith the divisions in it being merely convenient, to believethat causing harm to another is in itself something to takepleasure in - and then to act on that belief - is merely the

will turning on itself. This takes away from manifestingconsciousness in the world. To cause suffering to othersfor the heck of it is essentially the same as causingsuffering to oneself for the heck of it - it does not help solveany problem but is merely a show of helplessness, amisguided attempt by consciousness to deny itself."

"But even to take pleasure in violence in itself can becathartic and thus not totally pointless. For instance, whenwe are faced with a gross injustice, should we just stand byand let it perpetuate?"

"If we take the desire to be violent as a form of catharsis,we must also accept that this violence cannot be an end in


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itself - if at some point we feel compelled to resort to

violence as catharsis due to being unable to deal with theproblem with a view to finding a solution, it can be usefulright then but it is nevertheless a sign of weakness. Wemust also accept that eventually we must learn to go to theroot of the problem instead of trying to depend on th highof cathartic violence. In other words, the desire to useviolence for catharsis is something to be overcome."

"On the other hand, to fight for some concept of justice isdifferent from fighting for its own sake. It is true that peoplewho are fighting merely to quench their savagery oftendress it up as a fight for justice, but that does not makethem the same. Nor does it mean that a fight for justicecannot truly exist. If someone is indeed forced to fight touphold justice, and then acts with the end as upholding

justice and fighting as merely the means (not vice-versa),that is not a case of violence with the will turning on itself."

"Consider the fact that a natural death is considered to bein the due course of things but a murder is much morehorrible than that. What is the reason for this? In bothcases, someone dies. It cannot merely be a case of dieingearlier in one case, because murdering someone on theirdeathbed is still heinous. To sum up, what is heinous is notso much that someone died, as the fact that this involvedthe consciousness turning on itself."

"This is also why suicide is the worst kind of murder:


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because it is the most egregious case of will turning

against itself."


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War

"You know, I often think that we should just take the pathof least resistance, just going our own ways without beingbothered with what others do. In this way, there could betrue peace in the world Perhaps we wil eventually be donewith war too."

"Ahh, just let things slide... the true joy of peace, truepeace and bliss - right?"

"Yeah. I am so glad to have you agree with me for once..."

"Except for the small detail that with some people willing to

kill for their whims and others not even willing to fight fortheir rights, you know very well which group will die out. Inthe past, the ability of people to increase their chances ofsurvival has depended on various factors, includingchance. For the sake of simplicity, we could say that atleast two of these factors would be: 1) How martial youare: being willing to kill your competitors and thus reducecompetition for resources would increase your 'fitness'. 2)Technical and and physical prowess. In short, in the firstway it is the size of the fight in the dog that counts, while inthe second it is the size of the man in the fight - or out of it.But what happens when you become entirely pacifist inyour approach? Since the whole species has not convertedover to non-violence - and even if it did, other species


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would not automatically do so - by being entirely pacifist,

you merely increase the difference in aggressivenessbetween two groups of people. Thus, you increase theimportance of aggression as a factor in survival. Thus, yourelatively reduce the importance of technical and physicalprowess, civility and other such civilization-buildingcharacteristics. This is even more so when you mandatethat the benefits of innovation and individual achievement

in general are socialistically distributed among the wholepopulation. Meanwhile, the advantages of aggressioncontinue to be privatized even as losses caused by itcontinue to be socialized. The net result of this is thatbeing a violent person increases in evolutionary fitness,while actually creating value is ridiculed. As a result of this,while individuals may well keep on pushing the frontiers ofhuman achievement, the benefits of this to the rest ofsociety keeps decreasing - not because the newgeneration grows up with the wrong genes, so much asbecause it grows up with the wrong kind of culture - one ofmindless aggression on the one hand, which is of coursecodependent with passivity in the face of aggression on theother."

"I see your point, but isn't the promotion of violence even inretaliation only going to result in a net increase in violenceamong all? For all people do not always agree on what isproper retaliation. Also, an eye for an eye will only makethe world go blind."


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"First of all, the notion that an eye for an eye will make the

whole world go blind is absurd. Two eyes for an eye willmake the world go blind, as will most ways of taking 1.1eyes for an eye. On the other hand, an eye for an eye willonly cause those who intentionally cause blindness inothers to go blind. While I have sympathy even for suchpeople, this way will in the end cause less harm than'nothing for an eye', where even one man if he wants can

make all the rest of the world blind. This is why I am abeliever in retaliation. I do agree that not everyone agreeson what is acceptable retaliation. But while it is alwaysgood to be moderate in using violence, some kind ofretaliation - even if mild - is needed to deter others frombeing too violent, although I do agree that violence is bestused sparingly and only after other options have beenexhausted."


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Likeness

"I have been thinking about your arguments against purepacifism and passivity. Your ideas seem agreeable as theygo, but I feel that they stop too short. It is true thatremoving violence from our lives, and letting all peopleshare equally in the benefits of progress - only ends up

promoting traits like violence and promiscuity that benefitindividuals over others but harm society as a whole, whileat the same time reducing the value of intelligence,considerateness, willingness to abide by laws - traits thatmay be disadvantageous individually, but are beneficial tosociety as a whole at least unless exploited by people withthe former traits. However, is it really good enough to

merely defend against exploitation by violent people? Eventhough we may thus have more time to develop civilizedbehavior in the short term, in the medium to long term it willonly lead to us having to defend ourselves against strongerand more numerous violent people. This is clearlysuboptimal. Won't it be better to actively pursue a policy ofexterminating undesirable elements?"

"Do you know what a dollar auction is?"

"Yes, it is a good way to find the undesirable elements inany society. We just ask people to bid for a single dollar,starting the bid at 5 cents: the catch being that the second-highest bidder also has to pay but gets nothing. At first,


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people bid because they see an opportunity to make a

profit. But it quickly deteriorates into a question of pride.Most people end up paying far too much for a single dollar.A similar situation can be encountered in almost allcompetitive endeavors. For example, as a child at school,we can see that there is a rivalry among the top few ranksin every class to be the topper each time. While in generalthere are obvious benefits to doing well academically as

compared to not studying, if you start to do it for the sakeof your ego, there is a stage where the added effort wouldnot be worth it in terms of knowledge gained, especiallysince the kind of thing that would make a difference at thatlevel would not generalize to other areas of activity, andthis inability to generalize would kill the basic aim ofeducation. This kind of problem can also be seen in anycompetitive endeavor where being number one has its ownappeal as distinct from what you otherwise get from doingwell. The basic problem here is that as you specializeyourself more and more for a certain area, those whomyou are up against are also people who have thusspecialized themselves for it. So you don't have as muchof a competitive advantage as you may expect. Further,you spend more and more time getting skills that do notgeneralize. This is enough to mellow our praise forcompetition in a harmless endeavor like studies, althoughwe may well point out that when this specialization occursin accordance to the inclination of the concerned individualand not only due to societal pressures, it helps the personinvolved find his niche and like-minded fellows he can be


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comfortable around. However, this becomes a far greater

problem when we are competing with people we dislike, indoing things we dislike, simply because we find them to bedisgusting. The problem here is in violence, as in any othersphere of activity, the better you get at it the better at it arethe people you have to do it with. So the more violence youuse, your habits and inclinations become those of violence,and so the places you go to and the activities you

undertake begin to be those for which comparatively moreviolent people have an inclination. Consequently, you endup dealing with more people who are violent and thus alsowith more violent people than earlier. How does this help?This makes the problem only worse, not better. To take aconcrete example, suppose you start killing off people youdislike. This will only increase your visibility among violentpeople, among whom some will certainly hate you too andwant to kill you. Even if you managed to defeat them, thisvery act would bring to you a new batch of more violentantagonists, and so forth. So, in the end, you only end upmaking things worse for yourself."

"I see, so then this is like the law of karma."

"Except, in the same life. Also, this recognizes that noteverything that happens to people is due to their ownactions or choices. A lot (most?) of what happens to us isout of our control. We could call this luck. Because of this,when we see someone suffering from some kind ofmisfortune, we feel pity for them, instead of hating them for


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some imaginary misdeed they must have done earlier in

life.""But by this logic, why not just remain passively non-violent? If doing this beings us closer to other people whoare also like that, and ultimately that would be better for usbecause we too would like to be among such people."

"An interesting point of view, but this approach has itslimitations in the sense that for it to work, you would haveto completely isolate yourself from others who are notinclined to take advantage of this. At certain points in time,and at certain places - in certain societies - this could bemade to work. So no harm in doing that then. But inpractice, at most times, at most places and in mostsocieties it is simply impossible to thus isolate oneselfwithout someone trying to use violence on you. Thisresidual amount that cannot be avoided, must be retaliatedagainst. There is no escaping that. After all, we wouldn'twant to live in a society which being non-violentnevertheless lets itself get wiped out by more violent ones.However, when we don't just limit this violence to what wedo to protect ourselves, and instead start to initiateaggression or to retaliate against by aggression by evenmore violence - that is when we stop being a part of thesolution and start to be a part of hte problem. With this, westart having to deal with more violent people than initially,and become a scourge not just for others but also for ourown people. Thus, in general, I would think that it is better


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to change ourselves to become less and less violent, but

we have to account for the fact that there is a residualviolence that we cannot escape. Also, suddenly becomingvery non-violent is prone to elicit violent reactions fromthose around us. This is also the case when we don't doanything suddenly, but in general are much more non-violent than those around us. To account for this, it wouldseem that the best path is moderation, where we are less

violent than those around us, but not by a big margin. Also,in addition to the gradual shift to being around less violentpeople that should happen by this method but may be tooslow to be of any actual help, we also have to consciouslyaccount for the fact that we want to be around people thatwe like. So we need to look consciously for places withsuch people, too. Once among them, if we are more violentand manipulative than them, it is then up to us to changeourselves."

"But what if, in such a situation, we find ourselves wantingto exploit and manipulate them, instead of becoming one ofthem?"

"Of course, to avoid such a case is among the reasons tosupport moderation. But if we do find ourselves trying tomanipulate them, rest assured that we will likely findourselves among such violent manipulators in the nearfuture. Thus, we would get to be 'punished for our sins', bybeing around people like ourselves. Once that happens forlong enough, maybe will learn to change our ways from


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that. This is the invisible hand of justice at work."

"I see."


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Assumptions

"This neighbor of mine Ravi - I hate him. He is soarrogant - I want to beat him up and humiliate him"

"If you use those methods on a guy who is not arrogant,will he still get beaten up?"

"Yes, of course"

"Then this is not how I would do it. Consider this: all overthe world, people make a big deal of the scientific method.no doubt you do too. But what is it? Is it not merely theunderstanding that no matter how sure you are about a

conclusion when you first think of it, you could be wrongand it is generally a good idea to seek to disprove ideasrather than make sacred beliefs out of them? Tell me, isn'tthis what lies at the heart of the scientific method?"

"Questioning our assumptions, yes"

"When we look for physical facts, we trust that method. Sowhy not trust it with psychological facts too? After all itseems like a trustworthy method."

"True..."

"Now, according to how arrogant you find him to be, do


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you think he would agree to a game of chess with you?"

"Why would he? He knows that I am a far stronger playerthan him."

"He presumably knows that you are strong, since this is awell-known fact. But, did you not just say that he is alsovery arrogant? Do you think him arrogant enough to

believe that in spite of your claimed strength, you areprobably weaker than him simply because you are you andhe is full of himself?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Also, according to your assumptions, he will be utterlyangry when he loses to you?"

"Yes, because he is arrogant."

"So you see, in order to punish him for his arrogance wehave found a method which relies on his arrogance. If weturn out to be correct and he acts as you think he will, thenit is poetic justice for him to be punished by his ownarrogance On the other hand, what if you are wrong? Whatis you have misjudged him? What if he is not really thatarrogant? What if he is just socially inept, or just met youwhen having a bad day?"

"Then my plan will fail..."


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"But will you be unhappy at it failing?""Frustrated, angry perhaps... well, maybe not much since Iwould have one less enemy to be paranoid about. What'smore, I will probably be relieved on not having acted on mymisapprehensions earlier..."


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Immortality

"Wouldn't it be nice to be immortal?"

"Of course, when we are young we don't think of old ageand death - and thus are frightened of those when theyappear. But simply because we don't think of death does

not mean we assume that we are going to be immortal. Infact, we don't think at all about what will happen in a fewdecades. Since we can now think of death and its horrors,you assume that simply removing death and thusbecoming immortal would be great. But immortality is notmerely the absence of the experience of death. You maynot feel death as an immortal, and probably that would also

imply getting rid of physical degradation due to old age.Nevertheless, you would have to carry the baggage of yourpast forever. The memory of that bad accident, thosepeople who made fun of you - these will never end. Aneternal life can also mean eternal torment, if someonemanages to overpower your eternal self. Had youconsidered these things?

Of course not. I guess I always took it for granted thateternal life would bring eternal joy."

"However, the general experience of life, even withoutdeath, is not one of unadulterated joy. It also consists of afair bit of suffering. It seems reasonable to expect that if a


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limited life brings limited suffering, an unlimited life must

then be a source of unlimited suffering. In fact, as thelifespan increases, we would expect our sorrows toincrease faster than our joys, because new suffering tendsto add to the old unlike joy which stands by itself."

"All of this may be true - but how can we reconcileourselves to no longer existing, which is what death is?"

"Look around yourself: no matter where you see, there isno place where the potential for consciousness is not. Inthis vast matrix of awareness, you are but a drop in theocean. When you die, the memories for this specific life willget extinguished, but the ocean of which you are but a partwill not disappear. The end of memories which also includebad memories is merely a cleansing of this stream ofconsciousness. This ocean does not die, but throughindividual deaths it replenishes itself and gets reborn eachsecond into new individuals. This process of continualreplenishment seems to me to be far more desirable thanthe monotony and infinite suffering of an infinite, immortalexistence as an individual - which would only lead toinfinite suffering in my understanding."


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Growing Up

"Don't you think that the government should take care ofour food, clothing, shelter - and should also protect us fromhaving to interact with people we dislike?"

"Not unless you are a child. Listen, resources are not free.

Resources are never free. Someone always has to paysomething for them. If you don't pay by giving stuff inexchange, you pay by taking care of the resources or ofother resources that generate these resources. There is nosuch thing as a free lunch, at least not for long. Peoplewho don't take care of themselves - who don't make gooddecisions in life - eventually die out. If they avoid dying

because their culture subsidizes them, then the culture willeventually have to support more and more such guys(having supported them earlier) and will eventually die out.If the wider society decides to bail out such a society, thenfor the same reasons it too will die out. Similarly, if youmake a global effort to encourage such societies, thespecies could die out - and beyond that whom do you lookto for help? At each of these levels, the capacity to hidebad choices increases - but so does the certainty of ruinwhen they are no longer able to be hidden. So in practice,if you want to live, then in exchange for something youhave to give something else. If someone helps you, youtoo have to help them. If you depend on a species forsurvival, you have to protect it from other species and


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otherwise work for its welfare. Even if it is a 'lifeless'

mineral resource that you depend upon, you have aresponsibility towards it: if you keep using it blindly,eventually you will run out and then where will you be?Money, goodwill, respect, security - all these have to beearned. if you don't earn, you will die. If you don't die, youwill be responsible for the end of what stopped you fromdying.

But it is insane to think that society should not help out itsweaker sections. Do you really think that abandoning thosein need is truly the way to survival?"

"I am not talking about abandoning the least fortunate -bad luck can and should be insured against by largersocial sections. But why should be the effect of bad luck beminimized?"

"To improve the general well-being of people?"

"This is a shallow way of thinking. do you think that thewell-being of people can be improved without encouragingin them the characteristics that are conducive to well-being? As you are, to such situations will you eventuallygravitate. So the real purpose of subsidizing bad luck is notso that we are able to get a quick-fix solution of handingout goodness. The real reason is that by making luck asmaller factor in people's lives, we aim to make hard-workand good positive choices more important factors in their


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lives. This is how subsidizing bad luck leads to lasting

prosperity in the long term. This is also why, just as wemust subsidize bad luck, we must never subsidize badchoices. It is sometimes hard to distinguish between badluck and bad choices, but at least we can say that gettinghit by lightning is bad luck while refusing to get aneducation (when it is a viable option) is merely a badchoice. In most cases, we are faced with a mixture of bad

luck and bad choices. This is why it is often a good idea tosubsidize most the ones who are yet to make choices andthus cannot be blamed for making bad choices - children. Iam the first to agree that not only have children not yetmade any choices, but also that they are weak enough torequire help in all ways. So children do deserve help. Butnothing should be expected for nothing. If a parent iswilling to do so much for a child, then the child should alsobe willing to do something for the parent. Being obedient tothem, etc. is just part of it because it can never really repaythe debt one owes to their parents as long as they arealive. This is why it makes sense for them to also beexpected to be obedient etc. to their parents and further totake care of them even when parents are no longer lookingafter them. This is where the concept of 'loan' comes from:a child is so weak and helpless that it depends utterly onits parents in very fundamental ways. There is no way foranyone to ever really compensate for it when getting thebenefits, so it must be left to the future when the child isgrown up and has attained some degree of independence


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itself.

But some people do not see how fundamentally differentthe morality of a child and an adult therefore is. A child ishelpless and therefore also dependent. An adult isindependent, so he should also be helpful. Thus, the pointat which, on balance, one starts giving back instead ofreceiving, is the time when one really becomes an adult."

"So what do you say to people who demand a nanny statethat looks after them even when they have becomeadults?"

"I would say that they may be adults in body and mind, butnot in spirit. Everyone cannot be a net consumer.Someone has to produce, or at least take care of thegoods that others consume. If you have not yet becomeprepared to take on this role, you are little more than achild. If you refuse to take the initiative, to work for what iswanted by not just you - but also others who are dear toyou - then you still have a lot of growing up to do."


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Division of Labor

"Why do you people have such rigid divisions betweendifferent occupations? Why must a warrior only be awarrior and not a scholar too? Why must a scholar not be abusinessman? Don't you think that these hereditarydivisions have weakened your society by forcing people

into classes, one above the other?""I agree that the hereditary nature of these divisions hasweakened our society - as has the fact that currently thesedivisions are vertical divisions, putting one group above theother. However, to speak of these divisions as anunmitigated evil is something that I cannot agree with. If

these divisions are seen as horizontal divisions anddepend on the inclinations and abilities of individuals ratherthan on their heredity alone, it is actually a good thing."

"Oh really? Why would you separate warriors formscholars? Don't you think that a warrior who is also ascholar would fight for better things than someone who isonly a warrior?"

"Possibly, but I would argue that this task of gainingscholarly opinions by a warrior may be better done byhaving scholars as advisors than by making warriors intoscholars themselves. In fact, there are various things thatare worth fighting for, and good ideas are but one of them.


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It is also worthwhile to fight for business that benefits all by

efficiently distributiong goods, rather than for the sake offighting. Similarly, natural resources, religious beliefs andtechnological advancements are all worth fighting for. Thelove of your people and acclaim by them is also arguably abetter reason than just the joy of fighting.... however, thisdoes not mean that a warrior needs to be all things that areworth fighting for. On the contrary, while a warrior should

interact with people who all have such admirable qualities,he himself should ideally be dispensable - in other words,he himself should not have those qualities. In real life, whatleads people to become men of war is their unbridled lustfor power. A warrior who also tries to be a hundred otherthings will only confuse his own will. Further, if thesequalities are instead encouraged in people who are notfighters - and the division between fighters and non-fighters is strictly enforced, what that means is that wehave conventions against killings civilians. These becomequickly lost to philosophies of total war when everyone canbe a warrior and a warrior too can be anyone. With cleardivisions between those who are warriors (by virtue ofhaving to a critical degree the urge to dominate), and thosewho are not - we let the warriors satisfy their lust for powereven as others keep working towards the advancement ofcivilization."

"True, but can a similar argument be made for scholars?"

"Of course. Scholars by definition need to spend most of


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their time dealing with concepts at an abstract and

theoretical level. With their training, they are able after longperiods of study to come to reasonable ideas of what isgood and useful, and what is not. At this stage, it makessense for their conclusions to be made known. But whilethe justifications for those ideas and other ideas that wereexplored as abstractions should be accessible to anyonewho desires them or wants to challenge them, it does not

make sense to display them even to people who are notinterested in those subjects. Why is this? The fact is thatthere is so much information in the world that no one canpossibly understand all the reasons behind everything thatworks and that does not work. Consequently, most peoplecan go to the details of the reasoning behind only a fewthings, trusting authorities in other matters - confident thattheir conclusions will hold up against scrutiny. This ismerely a consequence of the natural limitations of thehuman mind. Now, suppose you barrage people withabstract ideas and complex reasoning, not justconclusions, in areas that they have decided not to focuson. If you do this, most people will become annoyed at theextra reasoning that is being demanded of them, or willsimply ignore the whole idea, or will equate what is beingtold to them with some kind of conclusion depending onwhat they want, ignoring any catch or disclaimer. This iswhy it is futile to make an intellectual out of everyone in allfields, when it is anyway so hard for someone to come to areasoned position on even a single field. Because of allthis, the internal workings of scholars are better off being


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Politics of Panacea

"Various people have various political systems that theyprefer: some people find that one political system will solveall the world's problems, while others find some otherpolitical system to be the one that will solve all the world'sproblems. Which of these varied political systems do you

think will make the world a better place?""Many people have this notion that there exists a politicalsystem somewhere which, if taken up by society as whole,will solve all human problems. But no matter what societalrules we have, they ultimately have to be enforced bypeople only. Whether you are in a capitalist or communist

society, people can always exploit others - by paying themless than proportionately for their work when the ability torelocate is less, or by refusing to work and still sharing inthe collective distribution of profit. Similarly, whethersociety as a whole is religious or atheist, people aresusceptible to groupthink - either by belief in supernaturalentities, or by the belief in the overawing ability of scientistsor political leaders you allow to do the thinking for you.Ultimately, those who think to setup a social system whereeveryone will be happy are living a fool's dream because itis essentially impossible for one person to individually evenunderstand the desires of all people, and further becauseof the many ways in which people tend to find joy in thesuffering of others. Thus, while we do have duties towards


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others, it lies primarily in making sure that if someone has

made an investment in us or has expectations form us, weeither repay their investments or their expectations, orotherwise try to make up for our inability to do so. It doesnot consist in forcing them to believe certain things or toact in a certain way 'for their own good' - after all, we arenot their guardians. While I understand that the happinessof one is inextricably linked to the happiness of others, the

happiness of one need not be derived from the samesources as the happiness of others. Thus, if we truly aretheir well-wishers, we are better off seeing them as ends inthemselves rather than as means to an end."


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Government

"Earlier, you told me of your opposition to a nanny state.However, you have expressed your views many timesabout what a government should or should not do. If youfeel that there are some things a government should do -but that it should not aim to do all things for us - then what

are the things a government should look at? What is thepurpose of a government according to you?"

"The purpose of government is not to make things forpeople: that is done well enough in the state of nature, orotherwise by private individuals without government actingas a difficult middleman.

The purpose is to solve the problems arising in a state ofnature: in other words, government must provide 1) safetyfrom other states 2) safety from people inside its own state3) legal enforcement of contracts.

Generally, these things are required for people to be ableto make long-term plans. Once people are ensured theprotections which let them make long-term plans withoutinfringing upon their freedoms (that are found in a state ofnature) so much that they are unable to do productivework, they are best left to themselves to sort out otherissues like what to produce and what is moral.


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Even other than these purposes, governments have been

used to legalize morality: something about which it isquestionable if there should be a monopoly in any largearea. The problem seems to be that all long-term planninggets relegated to government, whereas it should berestricted to providing safeguards to enable long termplanning in areas where the safeguards need to beprovided by a monopoly, rather than by doing all the long-

term planning itself.However, a government which acts merely for the short-term without a view to enabling people to make long-termplans, is no government at all. It is merely a tyrant in astate of nature with its own subjects. Such a governmentserves no purpose .


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Equality

"We keep hearing about how it is a good idea to treat all asthe same, seeing our selves in all. But even seeing ourselves in all, knowing that we are all ultimatelyindistinguishable from each other, should we behave in thesame way towards all?"

"It seems that those theories like marxism and feminismwhich call for equality tend to be dishonest in the sensethat they obfuscate the term 'equality' by taking it to be agiven. Even if you try to specify it as, say, 'cultural andeconomic equality', still what does that mean? If we starttreating women the same way as we treat men now, would

it be okay with them? That would imply the expectation thatthey would take risks, be vilified and occasionally asked todie in wars to protect their relatives. Would it be ok for usto deny maternity leave to women because men don't get iteither? Should they cease to have separate sportingevents, instead being required to compete in a singleunisex tournament? If these are not okay, would theyrather have us treat men like women? But that wouldapparently be mere cruelty to them if we accept thepremise that women have traditionally been oppressed. Ifneither of these, then probably they expect to evolve somenew kind of unisex treatment for both sexes that is differentfrom how both men and women have been treated in thepast? Of course, that would still involve at least the


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following: 1) both sexes playing together in unisex

tournaments and 2) men no longer being ripped off incourts in cases of divorce. Since they tend to oppose bothof these, I assume they are not looking for any kind ofunisex treatment. Thus, even if we are generous in ourestimation of them, we can only assume that they arelooking for specific kinds of equality for two fundamentallydifferent entities (the different genders). Once we realize

that, we can immediately see that the concerned notion of'equality' must be a smokescreen, because if someonereally wanted specific kinds of equality among differententities, they would focus on the domain wherein theywanted equality, not on the term 'equality' itself. Inparticular, the fact that they believe that equality must beachieved in a sense that is entirely determined by womenis an indication that it is merely a special interest group forwomen, pretending to be seekers for justice. To this, theresponse can be made that since women have beenoppressed historically, it should be up to them to determinehow to seek equality. But the premise that women havebeen mistreated historically does not hold up against theobservation that women would not like to be treatedexactly like men, whereas every truly oppressed groupwould jump at the opportunity to have the same treatmentas non-oppressed groups. Of course, we can furtherstrengthen the argument by pointing out concreteinstances like women having longer life expectancy thanmen, less women in jails, women getting lighter sentencesfor the same crimes as men, women not being forced to


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fight and die for their relatives, etc. - however, I believe the

point has already been made strongly enough, and haslittle need of being further reinforced. This is thus a clearexample of a group wanting further privileges without anymoral scruples parading as a group who merely seek'equality', thus conveniently using the fact that when youtalk of equality for fundamentally different entities, you canpick and choose your notion of equality to make it anything

but equitable.Another part of this is communism, where we seek equalityin economic terms among various people. no matter howmuch you work, you got to get only as much as someonewho does the bare minimum. But of course all inequality isnot economic. It could well be that the one who is workingharder is only doing so because he looks and talks in aweird way so no one likes him. The odds are alreadyagainst him, due to factors not in his control. Then again,someone may be good-looking and good at talking topeople and naturally is popular with others. This is not dueto any work on his part, but merely due to good luck.Someone may be good at acquiring political power incommunist politics because he is more ruthless andamoral than others, and can torture people for power. Thisinequality benefits those who are most ruthless andunscrupulous. All these sources of inequality benefit thosewho are merely lucky or those who are ruthless andunscrupulous. None of these are opposed by communists.Of course, people also derive economic benefits form


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being lucky and from being ruthless and unscrupulous. But

there are characteristics it shares with forms of inequalitythat are unopposed or even condoned by communists. Soto find out why communists only oppose economicinequality, we need to look at the characteristics which canhelp people economically but not so much in terms of otherforms of inequality. I think we can put it down to 1) thewillingness to work hard and in things that others are not

willing to do 2) the ability to find creative solutions toproblems 3) the ability to plan ahead. None of these seemso awful that people who benefit from it deserve to havetheir advantages taken from them while those whoseadvantages derive mostly from other sources get to keepthem. Therefore, although communism uses thesmokescreen of 'equality', all it equates to is a war onthose who want to derive advantages largely from hardwork, creativity and foresight - declared on them by peoplewho want to rely more on ruthlessness andunscrupulousness. This is not to say that the latter sort ofpeople generally do worse than the former one in non-communist societies - in fact, due to the general humanlove for ruthless and unscrupulous people, they tend to dogenerally better in any society. It is just that in non-communist societies, the former kind of people at leasthave a shot at a decent life. Communism is basically thedrive to take even that away from them, disempoweringthem, branding them as traitors, imprisoning and killingthem - all under the guise of 'equality'.


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In general, it seems that all movements for general

'equality' among fundamentally different entities say X andY is a smokescreen for trying find 'equality' in the areaswhere X has an advantage, while not bothering with it inareas where Y has advantage. Since complete equalitybetween fundamentally different entities is something of aconceptual impossibility, making a movement for 'equality'seems to be convenient way to pick and choose the kind of

'equality' you want, using the strategy outlined earlier withX and Y, basically acting as an interest group for Y,virulently opposing everything about X - and doing it allunder the guise of equality.

It is tempting to think that if the problem with notions of'equality' is that they act as a smokescreen for being aninterest group, we should be okay with genuinely treatingeveryone as the same. In a way, I do agree with this. Butthe problem with this is that 'treating everyone the same' isa statement that is void of any content. For example,suppose I said that one aspect of this would be that I wouldspeak to everyone in Hindi. The problem with this is thatnot everyone speaks Hindi, and if someone knows onlyEnglish, and I know it too, to speak to them in Hindi wouldseem to be a bad idea. Of course, no language is trulyuniversal, so the same thing can be said about usingEnglish. This is just a very obvious example - and anynumber of less obvious ones can be made - that anynotion of treating people the 'same' must deal with the factthat people have different needs, and in fact different


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values and other preferences. Also, this is not the only

thing that needs to be considered. For example, supposethat I am dealing with two people, A and B. I borrow 100dollars from A for some reason. Then after some time,suppose I had the money to repay the loan. Should I then,having recently made the decision to treat everyone thesame, give 50 dollars each to A and B instead of the wholeto A? Now, some naive guy can say that we should just

wait till we have 200 dollars, and then give 100 to both Aand B. Unfortunately, that solution does not scale to thecase where we have billions of people to deal with, not justtwo. So what I am trying is that any meaningful notion ofdealing 'equally' with people must necessarily deal with thefact that various people have made various kinds ofinvestment in us. This being why it does make sense togenerally give preference to one's family over othercontrypeople, and contrypeople to others - because of theinvestment people have made in them. If someone investstime and money in us and we treat them the same as otherwho have not done so, it is the same as robbing them topay the others - not something awesome. I do find itreasonable that only the needs of people and theinvestment they have made in them should determine ourbehavior towards them - with respect to other criteria weshould have equal treatment, but it is clear that almost anykind of bias can be described in terms of those. So thisnotion of equality is hollow like other notions of equality,not being properly describable as a meaningful concept of'equality'. However, although it may not be a meaningful


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notion of equality, it does seem a reasonable guideline for

our behavior with others. And since the notion of 'equality'itself seems to be hollow, something not being ameaningful notion of equality hardly seems to be anargument against it. Further, while this does not go wellwith 'equality', this is in accord with what made us try for'equality' in the first place - the understanding that we arenot fundamentally distinguishable from others, and thus

that we all can be seen as reflections of a singleconsciousness. To account for dealing with people purelyaccording to what they have invested in us and what theyneed, it seems good enough to see for what reason theinvestment was made in the first place, and then 1) if it wasmade for a specific purpose that is not disagreeable to usfor any other reason, to satisfy that purpose, or 2) if it wasmade without any discernable purpose, or if the purpose isdisagreeable to us, to try to repay the investment that wasmade to us. It seems that this, rather than notions of'equality', are a better way to reflect the notion of ushumans being fundamentally indistinguishable from eachother.


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Leniency and Uniformity

"Look at that man there, violating the parking regulations. Iwish there was a law to shoot people like that."

"Oh, but do you wish for the same thing to happen to youwhen you do so?"

"I may have mistakenly violated some regulationsometime, but I have corrected it whenever someone haspointed it out to me. In other words, I am a law-abidingcitizen. The laws are not made to deal with people like me,but with those who willingly abuse it."

"So, which group do you think that guy belongs to? Hemay well be another guy like you, who has merely made amistake in a hurry. In other words, you and that guy are inthe same boat. But now let me ask you something: wouldyou have been able to make such a statement if theregulations had been violated by a lawmaker?"

"Why bother, they make those laws but are the mostcorrupt of people. Even if I wanted, there is very little tomake him follow the laws he himself created."

"So you take out your anger on other people just like you?"

"It is not a question of anger: I merely feel that it would be


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good to make at least a few people law-abiding."

"I understand your feelings, but you are only one of manypeople who feel helpless in making hotshots follow the lawand yet keep trying hard to enforce them for others. Thiskind of helpless vigilante-ism makes the elites of thesociety have more and more power (by being able to makeany sort of laws and knowing that people would fall over

themselves enforcing them) with no responsibility (byknowing that no matter what laws they make, theythemselves would not be subjected to it). It would be betterto work towards the uniform applicability of laws byshowing your vigilante acts towards lawmakers, instead oftowards random mistake-makers."

"Why do you keep talking about uniformity? Are you asocialist?"

"I don't believe that different people necessarily deservethe same outcome for their efforts. This is because somepeople may have put in more effort than others towardswhat they desire, and giving some people betteropportunities may benefit not just themselves but also whohave put in efforts towards that even though the directbeneficiary may not have done so. Further, some peopleput in efforts more intelligently, thus benefiting othersaround them more - and thus also deserve to be benefitedmore than others who don't do so. Because of these facts,I cannot be called a socialist. However, while I believe


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inequality can be and is justified in a large variety of

measures particularly economic ones, I also believe thatpublic amenities like laws need to see all people equally.One reason for this is that a law which is not universallyapplicable, or applies with less force towards people withmore power - is not a law at all. Instead, it is essentially

just a tyrant's decree. When those who make laws are notaffected by them, they feel empowered to make arbitrarily

ruthless laws. On the other hand, if when making laws oneknows that he and his loved ones too can be subject tothem, it is more likely that such laws would be made thatare reasonable and as lenient as possible. This is becausethe pain of being punished by a too-harsh law is far greaterthan the pleasure you can get by making such a law. Onthe other hand, if the laws are lenient and equitable, thenthe lawmakers too would be less inclined to jump in tosave their near and dear ones from the laws theythemselves make. They may even protest less violentlywhen subject to their own laws."

"So you are saying that this guy who broke the rulesdeserves to not be punished for that?"

"I am saying that if you put in more effort in enforcing lawsfor the lawmakers instead of for such people, it would leadto lesser, more lenient laws. For instance, you would nothave 34 laws regarding how and where to park. Suchlenient laws could be easily enforced. Uniform applicationof laws and the presence of fewer, more lenient laws go


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hand in hand."

"I see."


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Globalization

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was just one world withone language, one culture, one religion, one government?"

"Sure, it can look wonderful to someone who understandsthe misery of war - or even of enmity in general between

nations, cultures, governments. But even if such a worldwas attained, do you think that people would all be thesame?"

"Sure, why not? Maybe they would not all be exactly thesame, but they would become far more homogeneous thanthey are now."

"Would a world where everyone is essentially the same aseveryone else be desirable? Wouldn't you rather die thanlive among many 'you's'?"

"Probably, but they don't need to be exactly the same... just mutually peaceful."

"Is there anything in the history of humanity whichsuggests that? Indeed, the evidence is so much against itthat even if such people did manage to live peacefully witheach other, I doubt if they could really be called humanbeings at all."


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"Maybe, but don't you think that artificial geographical

borders need to be removed nevertheless? Maybe peoplewill differ among each other, maybe they will fight, maybethey will exploit - but at least it won't be for stuff like landand religion that currently drive wars."

"Do you really think that simply because the subjects ofwar change, its effects too will change?"

"Not necessarily, but consider the fact that in the absenceof geographical demarcation among different peoples in aconflict, the parties in the conflict will necessarily beeconomically dependent on each other, and will otherwisebe part of the same social networks as the others. This willprevent escalation of conflicts."

"First of all, these factors haven't worked that well in thecase of say nations that trade with each other. Moreimportantly, in the absence of one world government, whenhard working non-violent guys were oppressed by violentthugs, they have always tried to look for places to escapeto. What this nation-less world essentially does is that itcuts off such routes of escape. What this must lead to is anincrease in violence among people as non-violencebecomes less and less tenable (being unaccompanied bythe ability to leave, which is really all that non-violentpeople have even now). This naturally leads to agovernment which rules with an iron fist to curb thisviolence - once again targeting innocent people since they


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can't escape. Throughout history, civilization has lived

because civilized people could walk away from violentthugs and make their own societies... if you take this away,you are left not with an utopia but with hell on earth."


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Future Generations

"Your children get spoiled and waste away their youth,spending no time in study or learning, nor in cultivatingtheir bodies or friendship. Yet you don't care - you justkeep at your work, trying to make more and more money.Is this really fine?"

"I am going to make so much money that my children willnever have to work in their life. Is this not good enough?Not only will I make the money, I will also developconnections so that they can do whatever they wantwithout suffering, simply enjoying the good things in life. Isthis not good enough? Did I, as a youth, not want to fritter

away my life in endless pleasure? Is it not only perforcethat I have had to work so hard to be where I am today? Isit not good that my children have what I could only pinefor? Why are you envious of them?"

"It is not envy, but pity that I feel towards them. Considerthe fact that the nature of needs change with times, andwhat you have left for them may not suffice when you areno longer alive. Also, consider that even if you have doneenough to let your children glide through life, they will notbe able to do the same for their children without learningany abilities. Also, a life without abilities necessarilybecomes a life without purpose. For all but a few men,such a life may seem pleasant - but only when you are not


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actually living it. What good is it to have nothing to look

forward to each new day? Being listless, bored anddejected is the very opposite of happiness. Even if youleave little for your children in terms of money andconnections, you real inheritance would lie in the qualitiesyou imbibed in them and in the skills they acquired due toyou. It also lies in the memories of happy times you spenttogether. Of course, all these do in fact require money. But

it is folly to regard money as an end in itself in such cases,instead of as a means to an end. You can look at thehistory of any family, any society, any nation - and you willsee that to benefit the next generation through changesmade to their attitudes and skills just works, the other waywith trying to make children useless and then pamper themdoesn't. This is because, at least on average, people getwhat they deserve more often than what they were given.Societies which try to disregard this rule by imposingartificially strong hereditary rules, only weaken themselvesin the process. This is not to say that material things andother benefits should not be inheritable, rather that itshould not be considered a moral prerogative to benefityour children entirely with such inheritances. Mere objectsas inheritance do not count for much in the long run, andthus they deserve to be seen by individuals asunimportant."

"I guess this can be seen as part of a more generalprinciple of: cure the disease and not merely itssymptoms."


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"Yes, and in its direct version, i.e. the one relating tophysical ailments, it is easy to see that. However, it canbecome hard to see in general, especially in situationswhich we don't regard as containing problem areas -'diseases'. But the same principle applies in all thesecases, which is also summed up by the following saying:'Give a man a fish and he will east for a day. Teach a man

to fish and he will generally keep eating'."


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Epilogue

Unknown to Abos, these were the memories of his distantancestors who had founded the Marahi civilization manymillennia ago - if many different people in his dreams hadexpressed ideas that were largely similar to each other, itis because they had widely shared those ideas among

each other in the Ancient Marahi Civilization. As the lastMarahi, it was fitting that he see and understand thebeliefs, the dreams and ambitions that had initially definedthe course of the Marahi Civilization, and had subtlyinfluenced it even after they had left their home planet for anew watery world far away in space.

You may think that these dreams would affect him, inspirehim in some way to keep on living and revive the Marahiempire. But as I have already mentioned, he was out offood and water. So after seeing those dreams, Abos didnot wake up. Rather, he saw other dreams. Then he died.

But it is rumored that Oxer, the king of the Rexans whofinally quelled the minor rebellions in their planet and madethem push towards outer space again, was Abos reborn -and this time, the expedition did not go so badly. But I amsure you knew that already.


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Appendix: Witticism

As part of his last dream, Abos saw his ancestor Geininterviewing the famous theologist Waat D. Faulkmann,from the sect of Witticism:

"But why do you say that stars have no material

existence?""Well it's really simple, little one. If the stars had materialexistence, what would stop them from falling to theground?"

"True, but how else could this light get generated?"

"The more important question is: how could all this darkget generated? It is a well-known fact that all things arenaturally luminescent - this is a prime aspect of ourtheology. So for there to be such darkness, there has to besomething keeping it out, something shutting in the world."

"And what could that be?"

"You see, the world used to be full of light. But then ademon decided to take it away from us. As you know,demons are shaped like humans, think like humans andeven have customs like humans - very large humans, ofcourse. So one day, a demon got jealous of all the


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happiness we used to have, and to make us miserable, put

us all in a discarded old briefcase which he used to carry towork. Since then, there was total darkness for many years,before the great hero Mythzilphtulilack ascended to theheavens and made holes in the suitcase for light to comein from. First he made many smaller holes, then two largerones. The first one, we call the moon, the next one, thoughonly as large, was apparently near some bright object in

the devil's world. This killed Mythzilphtulilack who wasblinded by the light, and consequently put in hell. But itbenefited us greatly."

"But if these are holes, then why does their position keepon changing?"

"That is observed to be the case simply because it is wewho keep moving."

"Doesn't it make more sense to assume that the demonwas actually trying to protect us from being blinded by thelight, and thus from falling into hell? After all, demonsnever share their thoughts with us, so maybe he actuallydid us some good in the end."

"Yes, but then he would have put in some smaller sourcesof light too for our use, if he really wanted to help us."

"Who knows, maybe that's really what happened. I ambeginning to doubt this story of Mythzilphtulilack. After all,


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no one claims to have known him personally, no writings or

sayings by him have ever been found, and no one couldeven have seen him in the absence of light. So I amassuming on one day, light suddenly arose from darknessand people invented a mythical hero to praise for it.Wouldn't it make much more sense to assume thatperhaps the demon was a bit benevolent, rather thanassume the existence of a hero, a hundred of whom could

probably put an end to this cursed darkness once and forall? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that thereforethe stars are actually material objects put in there for ourbenefit?"

"Ah, but that violates the most fundamental aspect of ourbelief, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean? It still presumes the existence of theworld and of the demon."

"Yes, but haven't you read the very first line of our holybook, the Tractatus Religio Philosophicus? This line, ourtestament of faith, very clearly says: The world is all that isin the case. And you better believe it too: The world is allthat is in the case."


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