One more scrap . Sufi

Just thought of putting down lines we keep on humming. So here they are .. Quite self explanatory.

"tasbi baati pher na baahu ee tasbi da ki karna hu, jedda saadde naal hisaab nahin karda oddey naal hisaab ke karna hu"

"in waison ne muft ka ilzaam liya tasbi ke he daanon se abas kaam liya, ye naam toh wo jo anginti le kya gin gin ke jo tera naam liya"

"padh padh aalam faazal hoiyan kadi apne aap noo padya nahin, jaa jaa chad da mandarwa seedi kabhi dil apne tu vadya nahin, bulle shah aasmaani ud-deya fadna hei jedda ghar/man which baitha onnu fadya nahin"

"padh padh ilm kitaaban da te naam rakhaayo kaazi, makke gaye te haj kar aaye naam rakhaayo haaji phad shamsheer mujaahidan waali te naam rakhaayo Ghazi Ghulam Farid onu kuch nai kitta jina yaar na kitta raazi"

Reason and Belief …the argument continues

It’s a coincidence that I get to write sequel of a blog so early. In fact I have never written any sequel to any of my entries but could not resist myself writing this one. I had earlier written the blog on reason and belief and coincidentally I attended a discourse on 17^th Chapter of Sri Bhagwad Gita by the well renowned speaker Swami Parthasarthy in Mumbai.

The discourse was nothing much to write about as most of the tenets are quite general and if you are someone who believes in the google punchline of “do no evil” you would not find much content in these discourses. Like in Sufi teachings finally most of the tenets boil down to “look within for happiness, help people, spread happiness, pursuit knowledge etc” and this discourse was nothing much different.

However what struck me in the discourse was an inherent superiority assigned to reason over belief. The Swami talked about blind faith, being tamasik (lethargic), ridiculed vastushastra (not that I am any fan of it), had condescending attitude towards people wearing sacred threads around etc. I believe as he is from the “Vedanta” school of thoughts he has an inherent propensity towards reason. Problem is that people do not realize their trust on reason also come from a belief on reason. The dictum that reason is supreme impacts the lives of Vedantis and hence its obvious that they give it more value. However paradoxically not realizing that there is an inherent dichotomy that there is no reason why they should consider reason to be supreme. Apart from the fact which I had earlier pointed out in my blog that what we understand we appreciate. Reason we understand, so basically what our limited cerebral competence gives us as understandable we take it as reason and things beyond that we do not comprehend. However that does not make those things inferior or worthy of ridicule.

The problem is when we start ridiculing belief of someone as “childish” and have a sarcastic and condescending attitude towards it. I am unable to understand why it is difficult for the Swami to understand that the behavior he is considering childish has belief system of other person behind it. And it becomes all the more difficult to fathom that a person of his caliber, so much learned and giving discourse on how perspective change when we see things from the top and from higher cerebral and philosophical standing, cannot rise above prejudice of seeing this so called “childish” behavior from a colored perspective of blind belief or superstition.

It was very difficult for me to understand that how come learned people like him (and the others) fail to recognize that their faith can be termed as blind and ridiculed equally by the same people whose faith they are disparaging. So when he ridicules other when they follow vastushastra or say tie many sacred red threads around their wrist, the Swami forgets that his faith or belief (which they say is reason driven) of say getting up at 4am as the guna “satva” is very active and should be leveraged to connect to a higher being, can also be ridiculed. In those scenarios people like Swami would again bemoan the ignorance prevalent in the masses which are ridiculing their “scripture driven” lifestyle. Point is any belief can be ridiculed equally and supremacy of one over another cannot be demonstrated by force unless someone following a belief wants to learn more and then rectify those things in his life which he believes are not in synch. But till then should his belief be considered downtrodden and not worthy? It’s a tough one to answer. Finally it boils down to one’s own choice. Like Krishna after 18 chapters of Gita still tells Arjun, this is what it is “now do what you want to do”.

What do we mean by blind belief? I am not sure but it seems that people think blind belief is something not backed by a “reason” or something which appears stupid to a third person. Moreover this argument makes me most uncomfortable as it gives precedence to reason over everything. And this argument wants to analyze everything from the perspective of reason, a perspective I do not subscribe. The argument is whether it’s the problem of the person being considered as “superstitious, blind faith holder” or the person who are thinking him as “superstitious and blind faith holder”. Reading stories about Sufis like Bulle Shah you could realize how badly people of those times treated him and how in the coming generation he was considered a Sufi saint. Therefore reasoning is just a cerebral level of thinking and it may fall short for many people. What Bulle Shah could think his peers thought to be “stupid and crazy”. But once the generations following understood what Bulle Shah was speaking he was deified.

So if a person thinks that changing the position of a table in his home (vastu shastra) would bring him good luck, why can’t the so called intellectuals and apologists of logic consider this to be a reason (if that pleases them). I come from a school of thought that we should not assign superiority to any one of them. We should not analyze belief from the perspective of reason and should not dissect reason using belief.

The Swami also talked about how come people do not understand the real reason of doing a yagna (hawan) or prayer and just do it as a ritual. He also talked about a bank Chairman praying for 3 hours daily and then while in office making the lives of his reportees hell. I failed to understand whats the connect here? It seems the Swami wanted to convey that prayers should be used to seek knowledge, to think good of people etc. But then in his office the person is doing his work (in line with the Bhagwad Gita) and this argument of bank Chairman defies the fact that Gita tells us to do what is our work without thinking about its repercussions.

He also talked about people doing hawan but not imbibing its spirit of doing good to others and living in peace. Though I do understand its better to imbibe the real spirit behind a ritual but then doing the ritual in itself may give peace to people doing it. Hence they may not feel any need to imbibe hawan in its true spirit. Problem is when the Swami thinks that imbibing is the best thing to do and just doing hawan does not suffice. I understand after reading so much scriptures and being so knowledgeable people would like to share their perceived wisdom. However what I am uncomfortable with is when these people tend to ridicule those people who are not performing rituals the way they want. However if someone is an authority of a subject then he must intervene if he finds that the subject is not being followed the way it is.

I also had similar feelings towards people who used to call them Ghazal lovers and used to consider Ghulam Ali or Jagjit Singh as the Ghazal singers to follow. I used to ridicule them or had a condescending attitude towards them but then I relinquished that thought. I used to never touch feet of elderly people under the pretence and stupid argument of “unless it comes from within its not respect”. But then I realized I may not be really respecting those elders but then if they feel good when I prostrate before them or touch their feet while greeting them what prevents me from doing that. Why can’t I do this if that makes them feel good? Therefore we can and should do those things which make others happy (as long as it does not violate our sense of self respect and value system).

That is where I think “to each his own” thought comes into picture. What people think and what makes them happy which could be termed as “ignorance, blissful negligence” etc by the esoteric elite, should be done. Though I am a staunch supporter of being good to people and performing more acts of goodness than plain rituals, I do not force my arguments on others and would consider people also not forcing their belief/reason system on others worth appreciating. Moreover knowledge seeker should be humble and should have communion with the God. I found these to be lacking in the Swami.

Reason and Belief

“What’s the reason for this”? This is perhaps one of the most repeated and often heard questions in the modern world. However when we make this inquiry we forget that the acceptability of the answer for this question depends on the listener’s maturity, thinking level and his perception about the other person. Some listeners may take the answer as reason some may take that as an excuse or fanciful story.

The moot point is that reason in itself is self limiting as it depends on the cognitive and mental abilities of the listener as well as the belief of the listener in that reason. That belief may be driven by the past record of the other person, what kind of impression that person has on others, how serious and committed is he etc. In fact people who are reasonable and believe in reason a lot, also understand its shortcomings especially in those matters where belief and human emotions are involved.

A whole lot of philosophical thoughts be it Falsafa of Islam or the Plato doctrine are based on reason yet they do not generally eulogize its supremacy as they are aware of its shortcomings. Taking the argument ahead we can always ask the reason brigade that if they believe reason is indeed supreme what is the reason for that? So what’s the reason to believe that reason is supreme?

One could be that we can understand reason, well most of the times! Therefore just because we can grasp what is being reasoned which essentially means something which can get into our head is given supremacy over belief which perhaps does not have any “reason” to be followed. Which also means we are hiding our shortcomings of understanding an argument (reason based or belief based) because our mind lacks that grasping ability. One reason may be acceptable to one listener but may not be to another.

So just because we understand something as it emanates from a reason based argument, does that mean something which is belief based becomes peripheral and less important? May be something which is belief as we see, could be an extreme reason for someone else. I think the people who give too much importance to reason forget that belief can itself be a reason (if it pleases them that way). So when someone says “I think when a cat cuts my way it’s inopportune for me” people would term it as superstition. But why can’t we say that as the person believes that cat cutting his way would bring bad luck for him, this belief of the person is a “reason” in itself? We forget that particularity of the reason is also very important. What we term as superstition in case of the cat we forget that for that individual believing cat cutting his way brings bad luck, is a reason. It may not be universally applicable but that does not dilute its importance for that person concerned.

May be because his “reason” of cat cutting his way bringing bad luck is not applicable universally though a “reason” as we know it, generally has universal application. But here we need to differentiate between scientific reason and a generic reason. Therefore when a ball is thrown up it would come down due to gravitational force that is a scientific reason. However a “reason” about how come twins going to same school, living in same locality, having same friend circle turn out to be poles apart is not universal, yet it could not be termed as superstition. Though the apologists of reason would keep on trying giving false research and fanciful retrospective distortion to force fit some data and come out with some reason based argument even for the twins problem.

We would do all kind of scientific studies to prove that placebos work. Placebos are nothing but fake medicines which just make the patient believe that these medicines would cure him. Now without scientific studies this is as good as a so called “superstition” of cat crossing the way bringing bad luck. However now when studies are done which implies “reasons” are given for this placebo effect linking it with some biological process, ability of mind to conceive placebo bringing positive effect etc, the normal reader would understand placebo’s importance. Placebos work in those circumstances where the body can still develop immunity towards a disease and therefore its universality is doubtful. However as no scientific study can be done when cat crosses our way (as the impact is highly individual specific) it is termed as “superstition”.

Therefore again we are hiding and camouflaging shortcomings or grasping ability of our brain in understanding something which is beyond normal comprehension as superstitious or ridiculous.
If someone says “I do not watch this program on TV as I believe this brings me bad luck”. Isn’t this belief reason enough? Just because we believe there is no “reason” for the person to believe that the TV program indeed brings him bad luck we rebuff him as superstitious or term him a fool who believes in these “unreasonable” thoughts. In these extremely politically correct times we tend to support arguments which are mass based which generally implies so called reason based as masses can understand reason (which is nothing but shortcoming of their mind). So if we are not understanding belief system of someone we should accuse the inability of our mind and should not ridicule the person. This would also bring humbleness to our perspective.

I am not supporting any argument on superstition not because I believe in them, but I believe there is nothing what we can or should term as superstition. Superstition of one is belief of other, belief of one is reason for other and reason for other could be superstition for someone else.
Therefore we should be kind of ashamed that we have invented terms to hide the incompetence of our mind in validating those things which are beyond comprehension. Hence if there is an argument which is outside human thought, that is termed as belief (generally unfounded belief) or superstition. The problem lies with understanding of a person and not necessarily the belief system of someone else.

Many of the people who take pride in their reason based attitude do not see a dichotomy between them believing in the God as well as believing in reason. Taking extreme reason would negate the existence of God, but these people overlook this argument most of the times. Even if they believe in God, they would laugh at so called superstition of other people without seeing the argument that their belief in God could be a superstition or an “unreasonable thought” for an atheist. Even for an atheist what’s the reason for not believing in God, it’s nothing but his belief of God’s non existence. Then he would please himself of his atheism by inventing reasons to justify his disinclination towards the God. So it becomes a circular argument where sometimes reason gives rise to belief (like a very good hospital can be believed to provide best services) or a belief can give rise to reason (I believe in cat crossing my way to be a harbinger of misfortune and hence that is the reason for it as well).

The apologists of new thinking would condemn this line of argument saying it promotes superstition and disbelieve in scientific argument. However the purpose of this line of argument is not to promote superstition (as earlier said that I do not believe there is anything called superstition) or destroy belief on scientific truth, the purpose is to communicate that reason is limiting and there are things beyond human comprehension which are belief driven and if the proponents of reason want to find a reason for this belief, then the belief in itself is a reason.

Natural evolution of culture ..or is it?

In the long list of the problems associated with free speech, one is when to reverse the direction of support? And this is not only with freedom of speech but with any other kind of support we give to any cause. Most of the times as long as these so called democratic ideas suit us we are supporting them and one day we realize something wrong is going on however it becomes too late to change anything then.

For example when vulgarity entered reality TV the pseudo intellectuals and like minded buffoons gave “there is a demand there is a supply” kind of ridiculous arguments. Then when Jane Goody’s death was supposed to be telecasted live, the same guys had cold feet and clamored that it’s gross and disgusting. Now being a human being we are bound to support those ideas we believe in and oppose those which we do not. However things are never that easy as once you take a position it becomes a trap of escalating commitment. So if a lip locking couple is manhandled by some people the “educated class” like us, come forward bemoaning the “cultural and moral policing”.

Now as culture and moral are not written down anywhere and evolve based on the social needs, it’s very easy to play with them. However in this argument of natural cultural evolution (or may be decadence) we forget that a particular custom or subtlety or cultural aspect in a society evolved because when it was evolving it was not opposed.

A profound example is the development of religious beliefs across the globe in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. We would find how much important the inherent belief of the King of those times played in evolution or destruction of some ideas in these religions in a given region. Therefore these Kings intervened when certain sects like say Sufism in Islam or Methodist in Christianity or Hadism in Judaism were evolving and suppressed these ideas and they never caught public imagination in the way they might have had, had the King not intervened.

The argument above is to make a case that saying culture evolves naturally and in itself, is not entirely correct. You would see kissing couples at Bandra Banstand in Mumbai (India), Carter Road in Mumbai and many other places and it has been broadly accepted. However if these couples start kissing in trains what are the co-passengers supposed to do? Should they keep silent or report the matter to law? If they do nothing then next time the couple may be having sex in the local train and then what would you do? You never intervened when they were kissing near Bandstand and it got accepted as “Mumbai Culture” and now what, when they are kissing in the train? Again if there is no intervention it would become “Mumbai Culture”. Arguing whether any kind of culture is good or bad is not the issue here. Issue is development of a so called culture more often than not is dependant on inaction of the general public.

Now if you are traveling in a train and do not approve of this kissing and public display of affection would you take the trouble in reporting this to police or taking matter in your hand? 99% of people would simply move on to their work as they have other things to look after. And this tacit acceptance is taken as “public acceptance” and no one attempts to understand that it is due to “compliance or acquiesce by force or apathy” and not by choice. In these circumstances if some other organization takes matter in its hand and handles the matter well without violence should that be condemned?

Tomorrow if you do not believe in some idea then you would want the same organizations to take matter in their hands as yourself cannot take protest to the intended people. When a 13 year old boy became father in UK, UK media and people were shocked out of their consciousness. However they have to blame themselves as when moral decay was creeping into their society they chose to remain silent under the garb of “new age evolution”. But where do we draw a line between evolution and a complete lack of any sense of right or wrong? Now the argument could be “what is right and what is wrong”?

Problem comes when we tend to answer these questions of right and wrong and quibble around the niceties of a civilized argument rather than doing anything. I am sure many so called moral policing instances would have had significant mass support, may be tacitly. A typical example would be development of authoritarian regimes. As long as the dictator is doing things which we approve of his approval rating sour, but then one day the tide turns.

So how to decide which social development needs to be opposed at mass level? The foremost question is who should decide what to oppose and what not? One thing for sure is the law and the Government. If these agencies believe in opposing or supporting something that idea generally develops or is nipped the way these agencies want. But the question is what about the idea of general public? How should the general public, say one person convey his or her acceptance or rejection of an idea.

Being a democracy ideal condition would be those ideas should prevail which have acceptance (tacit or explicit) of the larger pubic. But the issue is the one stated above that general public hardly cares for any idea apart from perhaps something which is developing in their immediate vicinity.

So how to generate a broader consensus over certain issue which is really important. Now there are certain issues which are of national importance (like say reservation, nuclear deal etc) which are generally raised and resolved in the parliament. However the problem is with those issues which are very local in nature or those issues which are indeed national but perhaps could not be taken in the parliament unless a critical mass of support is there (for example opposing vulgarity on reality TV like Shweta Tiwari bathing almost naked in some Sony TV’s reality show).

In these cases how a single individual register his opinion to those social institutions which matter. May be first of all that person should have that kind of illuminated drive which forces her out of the slumber so that she can act. So feeling reprehensive about a development is one thing but getting a drive to register a formal legal protest (say by a PIL etc) is an altogether different issue. This kind of activism needs serious drive and is different than drawing room criticism of some television program.

Right Decision, the illusion continues ….

The title of this blog does not represent the broad nature of what has been written here. Primarily it’s a diatribe which many other people have already done, numerous times earlier. The article is basically about demonstrating the talent of human beings in displaying wisdom in hindsight. Therefore when we say it was a good decision or it was a bad decision we do not realize that there is nothing called good or bad decision. It’s just that the given situation and circumstances of a person makes him feel that if he had taken some other decision earlier, he would have been possibly in a different state. Therefore it’s more of a speculation rather than certainty about the present condition if some other decision was taken in the past. Hence if someone is happy he would think “if I had taken some other decision I might have been unhappy now and hence would have repented that decision”. At the same time if someone is unhappy about the current state of affairs he would have thought “if I had taken other decision I would have been better off”. However whether these persons would have been better off or worse off in current situation if they had taken a different decision in past is a matter of speculation. The good thing about history is we can write anything about it as it cannot come back to defend itself. Therefore we may go on saying anything about any decision as it would never come telling us “had you done this you would have been better”. It’s all delusion which inebriates us and we assume that we would have had different current situation than what is actually present.

However extending this logic may be dangerous as people may take this explanation as an excuse of not doing any due diligence or ignoring some hard facts available to them while making a decision. At the same time it does not mean that current negative hard facts about something definitely imply bad future for it or current good facts necessarily imply good future. Hence things become unexplainable and to a large degree random and imprecise. However we should not abuse this argument and start doing things which are seen as absurd from current perspective under the premise that as future is unknown no one can foretell the future outcome of whatever actions/decisions we are taking right now. Therefore it may become good excuse for incompetence and complacency. It could also derail and put in danger the “planning” and “strategy” development.

However thinking from a broad perspective if we take this argument of “unknowability” of future before hand then the predominant work of top management in an organization (which is primarily fuzzy strategy based) would appear to be of no consequence and hence the top management would lose the importance it generally has in an organization. Therefore the larger question is can this argument be inflated to make top management irrelevant? I think it may not. This is due to the reason that the final success or failure of a decision is different than the actual decision. The success or failure depends on execution, external factors and lots of unknown and random factors. For example a financial product distribution house may decide to open a branch in Gujarat, but whether that branch does well or not is a different issue. At the same time for that branch to do well or not, it has to exist and hence the decision of opening has to be taken. Therefore that decision of opening the branch is actually different than its success or failure which is determined by various factors. Though this explanation can also be abused as any decision can be taken (either by taking current facts into account or just going by plane hunch) and then when the intended outcome is not achieved, “execution” could always be blamed (though most of time execution is the real culprit but separating execution with the decision which has to be executed is almost impossible. On hindsight execution can always be blamed). We confuse the decision with the outcome and that is where the problem begins. However as I have said earlier it may be improper to extend this argument to a level where people can use that for hiding their incompetence or making stupid decisions (decisions which appear stupid from current perspective, as future perspective is unknown). Therefore perhaps what Keynes had said “When I see facts I change my opinion, what do you do Sir?” makes a lot of sense in these scenarios where the management may have some hard facts in front of it which it cannot simply ignore. Though in the future when the decision of the management would be analyzed about whether the actions/decisions taken were “good” or “bad” (which I have earlier argued is indeed misplaced), the analyzer would at least give benefit of doubt to the management that it actually took care of the hard facts presented at that point of time. That does not anyway means that these hard facts are relevant to the future state of the company (which cannot be seen as of now). However they are important from the perspective of not ignoring hard facts and hence not doing things in unplanned and casual way.

This again brings us back to the same argument that how could we right now tell that if we do something casually, without planning or we do something with lots of planning and care, taking all facts into account, which route to the future would be better. Perhaps it’s just the human psychology to please itself that it took care of the hard facts and took a decision based on “serious deliberations, discussions and analysis”. Our mind does not pardon us for doing things in haphazard manner without any planning, though the outcome of these haphazard actions could be better as compared to the planned actions (better when we evaluate the future in hindsight as currently the future condition is unknown). May be taking a planned, fact based, analysis based decision prevents us from getting scathed by attacks if something go wrong in future due to our decision (again this is impossible to know whether what so called wrong had happened is actually due to our actions or due to a complex maze of interconnected events which may have been irrelevant or vague while we were making that decision).

Therefore like many arguments this also falls under the realms of human psyche. Its our inherent and natural appetite to please ourselves of our “decision taking abilities” using tons of data (which may be irrelevant), analysis etc which has ingrained so much over the years that it comes naturally to us and we have started believing that these analysis actually matter (they may or may not).

However sometimes from the current situation and hard facts some forecasting may be done for future which may actually come true. Now it would depend on which camp you are to believe whether the future which turned out to be the way it was forecasted was actually due to the planning and decisions taken earlier or you believe that many uncorrelated, undefined and nebulous factors interacted with each other to create a future which somehow matched the one which was forecasted. Therefore there is never one camp which would win in the scenario where future events or data actually turns out to be similar to what had been forecasted. However human tendency would generally rate higher that camp which would claim that it had forecasted the future and it actually turned out to be what they had projected.