ali--javed

[ali--javed]

Evolutionary thinkers suggest that the consciousness of thought developed in the humans only a short while ago and in a very short period of evolutionary time. What these thinkers fail to realize that the biggest principle of intelligent design is evolution itself. Why the need of evolution? Why is the existence just not static? What is the need for adoption? Who can actually adopt? Is it not that adoption is the foremost principle of intelligence. If this is so then every organism that has ever lived is and has been intelligent. Even the universe then exhibits an intelligent design.

Ali Javed

[ali--javed]

Philosophic Calculus

All my readings in different domains of study have led me to discover a very clear pattern of the design of the algorithm that powers our conscious thought process. Human consciousness has a definite algorithm. It represents the capability of classifying the experience into a broad but definite spectrum. What we call subjectivity in ideas is basically the position of information on a particular point of the spectrum of consciousness. If we consider the distinction in the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, we find the extremes of this spectrum. Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s empiricism lie at the opposite ends of this spectrum. Same can be said of Berkeley and Locke. Immanuel Kant tried to dissolve this distinction or partition in the understanding of the reality through his ideas of ‘categorical imperative’, ‘analytic a-priori’ and ‘synthetic a-priori’.

This spectrum does not just exist in philosophy. A similar spectrum exists in economics. At one end is the selfish capitalism while on the other end of the spectrum is altruistic communism. In terms of social behaviour, at one end is individualism, while on the other hand is collectivism. In terms of governance, there is democracy and dictatorship at opposite ends. In terms of market, monopoly and perfect competition lie at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The spectrums therefore span from the purely idealistic realm of ideas to the purely empirical realm of experimental experience. Everything else lies in between these extremes on the spectrum. For example, Oligopoly and monopolistic competition lie in between the extremes of monopoly and perfect competition on the spectrum of market. Along with the horizontal spectrums, there are also vertical spectrums. For example, market is studied under economics, while economics is studied under social science. There may also exist cross relations between different spectrums. Therefore, a dynamic equilibrium between the positions on these spectrums may help in better predictions in a model.

If laws of physics have shown us anything, it is that the description of concepts that seem to be complex is almost always simple. If human thought process is a product of a reality that is physical, then the laws governing these processes must also be simple, or at the very least emerging from simple processes. Also, it is important that a theory that explains certain phenomenon must explain it in the widest possible instances, even those that are yet not known. Philosophy as a theory of knowledge has failed to achieve this more than any other field. The reason is that we don’t have any one framework of philosophy but many competing frameworks. If the inconsistencies between these frameworks are not resolved, then the problems of epistemic relativism will continue to negatively affect our understanding of human nature.

But why do relative interpretations of one reality exist at all or is the reality itself fundamentally relative? These are the questions that have plagued philosophers from the very early days of philosophy in almost all the traditions. But this distinction has lately become more prominent in the domain of human culture as is evident from the wildly different philosophical paradigms that have taken root in the common space occupied by different people. This has caused wide intellectual as well as social conflicts and divisions in schools of thoughts leading to different directions that development of knowledge has taken. The philosophically opposite positions of inequality being a characteristic of every system and that of inequality being unnatural and part of the power structures has led to many conflicts between humans on different sides of the ideological positions. This is not a small problem to any extent as it has been responsible for millions of deaths in the 20th century alone and continues to plague the world. The question then arises that how the problem of inequality can be solved under one epistemic framework rather than appealing to frameworks that are built on assumptions that are competing. The real question then is that what is the common framework for these assumptions themselves before they contribute to any philosophical and/or theoretical framework.

What we need to build now is the theory for relationship between most fundamental human concepts of which all the other concepts are a product. This is a Lockean distinction of difference between simple and complex ideas. If a complete set of simplest human concepts can be conceived and collected, then these concepts can act as elemental degrees of freedom in the human algorithm of thought. Ever elemental concept can be treated as a dimension. Another feature of these elemental concepts or degrees of freedom is that like any other human concept, they exist on a spectrum. For example, goodness. If goodness is taken on a single dimension, then the characteristic or the abstract concept of goodness can be conceived as to lie between absolute badness represented by negative infinity and absolute badness represented by positive infinity. If, similarly, other elemental concepts are treated as dimensions in human thought, then, the coordinates on each dimension and the multi-dimensional qualitative space occupied by these elemental concepts define the unique ideology of any individual or group. These ideological shapes on qualitative space are not point-like as every individual and group operate between a range on the elemental concepts and therefore the higher dimensional shape that is generated also occupies a larger area than a single point. Also, these shapes are dynamic and change as the individual or group whose ideology these shapes describe changes when subjected to new information and new knowledge. Therefore, by adding the element of time, philosophic calculus becomes path dependent and evolutionary.

Philosophic Calculus and Qualitative Space

Philosophic calculus is therefore the qualitative space-time of all the possible thought processes and ideologies that are possible within the framework of human thought. Now the relevant question is that whether each and every human being occupies or has the potential to occupy the complete set of all positions on the Philosophic Calculus. The answer to this question requires a bit of neuroscience. If the answer is to be given philosophically, then the answer is no. Although even through neuro-scientific evidence we reach the same conclusions, but, we focus first on the philosophic argument. Philosophically speaking, every individual is subject to three notions of space-time[1], one of which is purely objective, while the other two are subjective in nature. They are as follows

The qualitative space-time of inner thoughts of every individual (First-person perspective).The qualitative space-time of thoughts of humans as a collective (Second-person perspective).The objective space-time of which all the qualitative space-times are but incomplete products (Third-person perspective).

The size of complete sets of all the three space-time is not the same. This is due to the assumption of limits to human knowledge and ‘Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems’. If the power set of objective space-time is represented by P(S_O) the power set of qualitative collective space-time of humans by P(S_C) and the power set of qualitative individual space-time by P(S_I), then the following relationship exists between the three.

P(S_O) ⊃ { (P(S_C) ⊇ (P(S_I) }

What this relationship implies is that the qualitative space-times are the subset of objective space-time. Philosophic Calculus takes into consideration the qualitative space-times because there is a possibility of certain knowledge in these categories. On the other hand, the knowledge of objective space-time is fundamentally uncertain as argued in the arguments for limits and limiters to human knowledge, the two fundamental limits that can never be transcended.

In the above equation a paradoxical condition arises if the concept of infinity is taken into consideration.

Let us suppose that infinity is not part of the objective space-time. If infinity is not objective, then infinity is purely subjective. If it is subjective, then, subjectivity must either only partially intersect with the objective set or objectivity is the subset of subjectivity itself. The relationship between the power sets then reverses.

(P(S_O) ⊃ { (P(S_C) ⊇ (P(S_I) }<</font>

If it is assumed that infinity is the property of objective universe itself, then the relationship changes as following.

(P(S_O) ⊃ { P(S_C) ⊇ P(S _I) }<</font>

Philosophic Calculus attempts to find the best possible theory to describe the data at hand, and because the elemental concepts exist on a spectrum, the ultimate theory should also account for these differences. Therefore, Philosophic Calculus is first and foremost a theory about the elemental concepts which I call the “First Principles of Philosophy’. The philosophic schools of thought that we are accustomed to accept as the basis for our philosophies are only special products of these first principles. I call these higher order philosophies, the “Secondary Principles of Philosophy”. These secondary principles are inconsistent with each other because they emerge from stronger assumptions regarding some elemental concept than are necessary. For example, perfect competition. It is a complex concept made of two elementary concepts, perfectness and competition. The dimension of perfectness can lie between complete imperfectness to complete perfectness. Any change in the coordinate of this dimension will change the entire theory altogether. This means that there are infinitely many theories possible even by changing positions on the spectrum of a single elementary concept. Similarly, we can choose to change the degree of competition from complete collusion to complete competition. This is how we come across one of the basic assumptions of capitalism, communism as well as other economic doctrines, i.e., that of the nature of competitions. All other assumptions are also a product of the elemental degrees of freedom and their combinations.

What we have achieved in laying out the theory of knowledge and its epistemic landscape is a foundation from which all of the existing school of thought can emerge as its special cases.

Philosophic Calculus and Contextualist View

>

The contextualist view that there can be no absolute truth in most situations is wrong when viewed in light of the theory of Philosophic Calculus. The contextual view arises because the subjective experiencer constructs a representation of reality for himself/herself that is dependent upon the information they have. As argued in the Philosophic Calculus, these points of view are second principles. The contextualists, therefore, are concerned with the second principles and, therefore, come to an unsettling conclusion that there is no absolute truth to most propositions. The propositions not only have subjective context attached to them but also have perspectivally blind context attached to them. The sum of subjective context and the perspectivally blind context make up the total context of the individual. This distinction between two kinds of contexts, one which the individual is aware of, and second, which he has the potential to be aware of, but has not construed in his representation of reality. Now it can be argued that there are local truths which are contextual in nature, but, according to the theory of Philosophic Calculus, a case for global truths can also be made. As such, a case against epistemological contextualism can be made.

Philosophic Calculus and Mathematics

It is a priori assumption in the traditional physical sciences that mathematics is the language of nature. Others argue that it is a special case of metaphysics applied to the concepts of numbers. Whatever be the case, mathematics has proven extremely useful in modelling theories into logically consistent frameworks. Only when the most fundamental assumptions of these frameworks are challenged do the systems break.

In my attempt to scale the elementary degrees of freedom of human concepts, I have proposed a framework in which all of human thought can be organised onto a familiar higher dimensional space-time, where all the laws of mathematics can be used to treat these concepts. As mentioned in the last section on qualitative space-time, the elementary degrees of freedom are treated as independent mathematical dimensions that provide a cartesian like intuition on human thought process.

Philosophic Calculus and Physics

It has been the case historically that physics has been the field that has utilized the complex of mathematics in describing its theoretical systems. There are two reasons for that. First, mathematical intuition was first developed to explain physical concepts. Secondly, it is easier to construct mathematical concepts around physical objects as they are comparatively easy to conceptualize as against highly subjective human phenomenon.

But as the academic world has been changing extensively from the past century and more to accommodate subjective factors, mathematics as a subject has evolved to model uncertainties and subjective behavior. The tools that were developed to describe physical nature came to be utilized in subjects related to human nature and the tools that were developed to model human decisions started being used in physical sciences.

The marginal revolution in economics came about as a utilization of rules of calculus to model human decisions. Similarly, probability theory started being utilized in the quantum mechanics to model uncertainties observed in physical phenomenon.

Its a work in progress for my research.

[1] For similar treatment of the first-person, second-person and third-person perspectives, see, Przyrembel, M., Smallwood, J., Pauen, M., & Singer, T. (2012). Illuminating the dark matter of social neuroscience: Considering the problem of social interaction from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00190

[ali--javed]

What have we lost?

What have we lost ? What have we gained ? What do we desire ? Who have we tamed ?

We have lost the human who was born with us. We have gained the evil that surrounds us and assumed it to be our basal nature. We desire to get more and more of what the world has in store for us. We have tamed ourselves to think in the way of the existent zeitgeist. Humanity has lost the way of the Christ.

Humanity is no mood of becoming who it is supposed to be: a community of widespread opulence. We have learnt to steal and remember not of giving. We dream of the wealthy and have pushed the dreams of the poor into obscurity. We know not of the morality that fits for all but we have tailored it to suit our guilty proclivities. We have fashioned ourselves to think for ‘me’ and despise thinking for ‘us’. Or shall I say that the system pushes this strong sense of individual self indulgence onto us. Despite the truth in this the wheel of personal ethics has always revolved in our hands constantly nudging us to take fair decisions. But our manufactured tendencies towards selfish indulgence obstructs us from developing the concept of individually social nature of our true self. I hope we find it soon in us before we vanish into ethical oblivion.

[ali--javed]

A future for everyone

I often I ask myself a simple question: What is that I live for? At first glance, the answer may seem simple, but the more I think about it the more denser it becomes. To answer such a question one requires the understanding of the meaning of life itself. To be able to find the answer has been the greatest quest of humanity. I do not claim myself to be one of those eccentrics that understands the meaning of life as it is, but I sure feel that I get glimpses of it from time to time. These glimpses strengthen my resolve to understand more about it and share my experiences with people I know. Lately, that list of people who can really understand my feelings or my state of mind is narrowing down.

 My motivation to understand life has driven me to a point where I find only a handful of people I can convey my thoughts to. Others seem to be incapable of understanding what and how I feel, as they are right now. It will take them long reflections on the nature of life and existence to even get the glimpse of my pains and my sufferings. Sometimes I ask myself whether it is possible to feel the pain and pleasure I feel at the same time. Will I ever make others realize my disappointments with the people around me who are living a lie. These people who have become pawns in the greater scheme of events, exploited to heart’s content by their exploiters without even giving them the slightest of hint. I sometimes ask myself if it were exploiters or the exploited that are at fault. Who is really responsible for this dark and gloomy reality where millions of people are suffering from war, death, poverty and disease? Is it the people sitting at the top of the human pyramid who have been preying like hungry wolves on the sheep which is the common men? Who is ultimately responsible for the state we are in. A world large enough to fulfill everyone’s need and yet people die from starvation every day. If this is the future we have been working to build from thousands of years, what good is knowledge and its quest? 

I may be too naïve to understand all this, but I feel that the rest of us are not even in the position to sincerely ask these questions to ourselves. We have been so much entrenched in the world of false ideas and ideals that we have become a slave of the system without even consciously agreeing to become one. I think that this is our biggest achievement. We have created a new breed of individuals that are actually happy being rigged and exploited. The breed that is convinced and content in being a pawn and reluctant in assuming a more powerful and influential role in our small and petty lives. In our meetings with our friends and family members we take pride in glorifying our slavery in front of our minors and inspire them to imitate the path of cowardice, reluctance and slavery. We are training our future generations to remain mentally ruled and colonized. Such are most unfortunate events for the majority of our species from the time we remember. Only in short periods of history have we experienced true revolutions where the balance of power had tilted towards the common man. These periods were short because their life came from the truly passionate leaders who constructed these revolutions with their passions, but as soon as they passed away, so did the passion that drove the revolution. Anything wonderful and worth admiring is the result of passionate people in this world. These passions may be for the good or bad of other people no matter, but they are passions nonetheless. I believe that it is this lack of passionate belief in something bigger than ourselves that has led us to the state we are in now. No matter of artificial remedies can get us out of this sorry state until and unless we take it upon ourselves to change our path to future. The path that will lead us to a future that is accommodating of all of us. If we could achieve this we can truly call ourselves a true civilization. Until then I am afraid we can only convince our hearts and minds to yearn and work for that future where everyone can live happily. A future that will be for everyone. Until that time comes, I believe we may not be in a position to answer the question: What is that we live for?

[ali--javed]

Subjective Objectivity

Everything is absolute yet everything changes. The substratum of the universe and its quantity remains the same. In this sense everything is absolute. But yet everything is changing. The permutations and combinations of this base substrata is changing all the time manifesting in the transitory nature of the universe as we perceive. Similarly thinking in humans has two aspects. One aspect of thinking or better said gnosis is absolute and yet the other part is ever changing. This means that the rules that are used by human while thinking are fixed and absolute and yet all these rules can be used in various combinations resulting in the subjectivity in human perception.

[ali--javed]

Bounded Creativity

It is ironic that the people who are most aware of the inherent beauty and design of the universe and use it for bounded creation are the ones that are most contemptuous of the idea that they can be created. The very idea of the ultimate creator just feels competitive to them when they have themselves tasted the power of creation, although bounded. Whatever little creation they are able to do is the just given to them by the ultimate creator. They fail to realize that what they have been terming creation is merely innovation combined with discovery of the nature’s laws, the laws created by the ultimate creator. On the other hand of the spectrum are the blind followers that are limited in their understanding of the creation, yet believe religiously in a creator. These inherent dilemmas and paradoxes fascinate me.

[ali--javed]

What demonetization means for us

There have been many things that have disappointed me when reflecting upon the actions of human beings as a whole, but there is nothing more disappointing than watching more than 95% of the population as de facto slaves of the established order. We have comforted ourselves in the idea that the wrongdoings have existed from the beginning of civilization and are thus a natural and integral part of our society. 

We tell ourselves that history proves the dominance of few over many, what right, power or chance do we have against the order of the mighty. We are comfortable with the Utopia of the few but not with the idea of Utopia for many. Is it not true that for the richest 1%, the present order is Utopian, as they have to expend the least to get the most out of the rest of the humanity. But yet again we prove to be the slaves of the system we so much suffer from that we have become incapable of understanding the schemes of the existing order. What is more unfortunate than the slavery of the mind? A body can be freed from the enslavement by the other, but how does one free himself from the captivity of his own mind. The dogmas that it has accepted as truth, how can he free himself from those dogmas, when he does not even realize that he is the victim of his own dogmas. People tell me that I am negative, maybe pessimist, more favorably critical of everything I come across. But I find it the false optimism of the masses that overshadows what can really be termed as optimism. This false optimism based on the information provided by the ruling classes is responsible for the majority of the problems all of us face.We are living in a world where nearly 1/2 of the its population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. Where 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Where 805 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat. Where more than 750 million people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. Diarrhea caused by inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene kills an estimated 842,000 people every year globally, or approximately 2,300 people per day. [1] In India, In 2011, less than 22 percent of Indians lived under the global poverty line.[2]. More than 50% of the world population still suffers from the backwardness that has engulfed humanity from centuries. What greater travesty than the impotence of the nation states, existing on the principle of serving their citizens, exploiting the same citizens for their unending desires.

One of the recent manifestations of this psychology of being deceived by the ruling classes became evident in the policy of the present government to demonetize the 500 and 1000 currency notes. The people were told that the policy was being initiated in order to destroy the flow of black money in the economy while at the same time rendering shadow banking, supporting illegal activities throughout the country, disabled due to the declaration of the intended tender illegal for transaction and other monetary purposes. I had on the very day after a few minutes of PM Modi’s speech written a short intuitive criticism of the sudden initiation of the policy. To my surprise all the four points I had made are now visible country wide. And not to my surprise, not one of my fellow students criticized the policy initiative as something which will adversely affect them at its outset. Even now they cling to lies sold to them by their revered leader. I said to myself, “How could I expect something that is almost impossible in present state of affairs throughout the World, where we topple one party of oppressing elites in favor of the other party of equally oppressing `elites.” What I have realized is that we as a majority of the subjects of the established system are fundamentally incapable of critical analysis. This is because we have never trained our faculty of critique or more suitably we have never been taught to do so. In cognitive neuroscience there is a very fundamental principle often cited with respect to brain neurons — You either use it or you lose it [3]. If an individual does not use one of the faculties of brain, he will be unable to call upon it when the situation requires for. Simply stated — One learns from practicing. Similarly, brain requires practice of its own. The practice of the faculty of criticism. But I am afraid we are only taught to solve pre-established solutions without ever being allowed to find one of our own. I was disappointed in my colleagues who could not without the assistance of anybody else do simple money market equilibrium analysis of the policy implications at hand. After a few days when many have already written articles about the problems associated with the existing policy, everybody has started assuming them to be obvious. What worst crisis than the crisis of the intellect? Even this will offend them because they have created for themselves elaborate castles where they have erected for themselves pseudo-intellectual pillars and feel proud seeing their image reflecting on them. What they have assumed to be the pillars of intellect are unfortunately the pillars of monotonous labor. The troubling part is that we are trading originality with efficiency at a mass scale.

Immediate Effects on Economy

I had argued in my previous article that due to the reduction in supply of money in the economy, equilibrium in the market will settle at a lower level than the market had presently allowed. This will decrease nominal levels of production while real production will remain the same. The GDP will fall in the short run. During the past week we have witnessed this happening all around the country. Markets are shut down because consumers do not have the cash to buy the products and the producers lack the cash to pay back the remaining amount to the consumers. What would one expect when 15% of the currency notes are rendered useless in the economy which makes 86% of the total value of the money supply. Essentially, the government has cut 86% of the value of money supply and replacing it with a much slower rate than is needed to protect the economy from collapsing. Although the money can be exchanged at banks, but the limit to the withdrawal of cash has made the transition extremely difficult. The economy at this point of time is bleeding. Unfortunately, the so called intellectual class is unable to feel the pains of the people dependent upon their analysis and guidance. Either they are incapable of understanding the real damages caused or they benefit from such damages. More than 30 people have died because of sudden demonetization. Sick people who had to stand in the ATM queues and people who did not have enough cash to sustain themselves for a day among others. If this many deaths would have been the result of a terrorist attack, media would have covered the story with an overly nationalist zeal. But that zeal is completely absent when the attack is from within the borders, within the system.

Demonetization has practically destroyed the economy. Markets are shut due to the lack of liquid currency which is the preferred mode of payment in most Indian markets. According to an RBI note from March this year, only 53% of Indians have bank accounts. For all practical purposes the other half seems to be doomed. But PM Modi would not as much recognize the real problems caused to the economy by his under calculated move as most would say. He is too proud to be held accountable for his inefficiency. He should tell the reason to the public for introducing a higher denomination note. Is it not true that the introduction of a 2000 rupee note will make it easier for the black money to be held as it will require half the space for keeping it. It appears 2000 rupee note has a special purpose for helping the people accumulate back money. If not, there was no reason to introduce it. Only 500 rupee notes should have been reintroduced. But Modi will not answer these questions as they will only unveil his treacherous plans if answered.

Modi should also answer the loss of wealth that has occurred due to people buying goods for prices more than the market prices. Gold was sold as high as Rs 90000 per 10 grams. As the gold prices are resettling more than half of the value of the gold is lost. People are in the end left with less money than they initially had.

Benefits to the Banking System and the Super-rich

One of the other aspects I had discussed was the choice of payment that will be promoted in the near future. I had suggested that online transactions will be preferred by the government. All the newspapers were covered with advertisements from PayTM and other online payment services the very next day. It felt as if their heartfelt desire had been fulfilled and the policy was especially designed to benefit them. Some would even go at lengths to say that it was designed for a second banking revolution where banks will have a much greater role to play than it does today. When an economy is transitioned towards a cashless economy, more and more high powered currency is held in the banks. Combined by the slab in daily and weekly withdrawals from the banks the result is that banks are practically forcefully holding public money. This means that these banks will have more money to loan out. Unfortunately the banks are much more favorable towards the business elites than they are towards common men. This inherent skewness forces people like me to have a suspicion towards the banking sector when we know that they are suffering from bad loans given out to the wealth hungry business elites like Ambanis and Adanis. Jahangir S. Pocha in his article ‘It’s time to talk about the bad loans scam’ writes

“A staggering Rs 2.5 lakh crore of public money has been lost by India’s public sector banks. The extent of these “bad loans” is greater than the loss to the exchequer from the 2G scam (Rs 1.76 lakh crore) or Coalgate (Rs 1.86 lakh crore). Yet, no one is talking about this. Worse, the bad loans scam is continuing to unfold. Another Rs 75,000 crore will disappear under the innocuous entry of “bad debts” this year, says rating agency Icra. With that, 5% of the loans made by Indian banks will have gone bad. In layman’s terms, this means the balance sheets of most public sector banks are in as much of a shambles as their branch offices.” [4]

In another Indian Express article George Mathew wrote

“Banks, which are racing to clean up their balance sheets have come out with a whopping 96 per cent jump in non-performing assets (NPAs), or loans which remain overdue for a period of more than 90 days, to Rs 6,29,774 crore as of June 2016 as against Rs 3,20,553 crore in the same period last year. The sharp rise follows the Reserve Bank instruction to banks to classify around 130 stressed accounts as NPAs and make adequate provisioning for them.” [5]

Clearly the state banks are suffering from the crisis of their own. To escape the self-created crisis demonetization was their best bet. All the new replacement currency is flowing back to the economy through the commercial banks. Due to the limit on withdrawal money stays in the banks for a longer period of time than would have otherwise. This money is available to the banks for loaning out for short terms. Simply stating, the loans will be extended to the same people who are responsible for the bad loans of the banks, expecting them to recover the old loans too through their profitable investments. The risk being taken is greater than they can ever manage. If the new loans also go bad for some unconceived reason, the economy will plunge into a recession.

It is the blind public blinded by their trust on the people unworthy of trust who become the instrument of their own destruction. What was being planned by diminishing the supply of money in the market and accumulating them in the banks is far from the understanding of a common man. How would they know? They do not understand how banks and their systems really work. They are only led to believe that banks are the safest haven for their money when in reality they have been responsible for the worst crises in the human history.

Black Money Vs Black Wealth

What is being targeted through demonetization is estimated to be only 6% of the total black money. So much trouble for accounting only 6% of the black money seems to be impractical for all intended purposes especially when the real black money exists in the hands of a few billionaires the government is happy to be serving [6]. They do not keep their money in the form of cash stashed away in some basement of an abandoned building. They keep them in the form of precious metals, offshore accounts, foreign currency, land and other intangible assets. These greedy billionaires then take up loans against these assets and thus get more money for investment in their activities. I believe this is the really black money in the economy which I call ‘Black Wealth’. The black money which the government has targeted will only hurt the economy more. This money used to flow back in the economy in one way or the other without depleting the overall welfare of the state. On the other hand, the money that the banks create against the black wealth of the rich transfers the welfare from the poor to the rich. This is because

The holders of black wealth already hold the black money in the form of intangible assets which exits the economy.

They then take up loans against those assets effectively crowding out the currency available for the common man.

The two activities combined causes the wealth to transfer from the rich to the poor that they would not have owned otherwise. This newly created money will then be used by the rich elite in various commercial projects. This further multiplies their wealth. They invest their money when the market prices are low. Due to the increase in demand, other people soon follow, thus buying the same assets for a higher value. A vicious circle is initiated which at every node, every economic transaction causes the wealth to trickle up. Is this not plutocracy? We were only fed false dreams of democracy when what we were actually receiving was a renovated form of slavery which we willingly accepted. What greater travesty than the acceptance of oppression? But speaking the truth only yields contempt and harsh remarks from the oppressed. If we want to fight against corruption and oppression, we will first have to fight against the dogmas of the oppressed. Dogmas that have been cleverly fed by the oppressing elites and their governments. If we are able to understand the machinations of the economic devils lurking in the shadows, we will be able to establish justice in the society. In a collection of brilliant essays ranging over a number of disciplines, Hume reflects on the key aspect of the state — why people obey:

“Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.” [7]

It is the opinion of the masses that needs to be swayed in favor of the masses than in the favor of the few. It should be made clear to the Prime Minister that if he is serious about his conviction of rooting out the problem of black money, he should first target his friends who are its biggest hoarders. Black wealth rather than black money should be the target of the government.

Demonetization as a policy to target black money has more adverse effects than positive ones. It seems as though these effects were kept in mind when planning it. The result will be the concentration of more power and wealth in the hands of the few. If welfare of common man is the final goal, then Black Wealth rather than Black money should be targeted.

Other Sources

[embed]http://muslimmirror.com/eng/what-demonetization-means-for-us/#comments[/embed]

Related article

[embed]http://muslimmirror.com/eng/what-demonetization-means-for-us/#comments[/embed]

[ali--javed]

What will change after the 500 and 1000 bills are discontinued

Modi’s decision for discontinuation of 500 and 1000 bills to crackdown the black economy has come as a surprise to most, but to me it appears to be a more elaborate plan to organize the economy into a structure which will be more friendly to the corporates. As somebody who takes immense delight in the deconstruction of purpose behind an action I took upon myself to imagine the results of such a grand scale endeavor. With whatever limited intellectual capacity I possess I was able to point out a few points to myself where such a decision will take into effect. Most of them are general enough that no one would disagree, but a few are more particular.

The withdrawal of the paper money from the economy on such a scale will create a shortage of currency for transactive purposes. This will increase the demand for money (not increasing the net demand but demand for whatever currency is taken out of the economy but is not replaced at present), while the supply reducing at the same time. The supply curve will shift to the left while the demand curve will remain at the same place thus creating a new money market equilibrium where the production will fall in very short term. But as the old money will be replaced by the new notes, the supply curve will again start moving rightwards. Although it will not reach the old equilibrium because a lot of black currency will exit the economy that would have otherwise been used by the political parties during the election, thus injecting high powered currency in the market. This through multiplier effect expands the general economy during elections. This step is good and bad at the same time. Good because the political parties who used to hoard money for campaign purposes will not be able to do now. Bad because the industry is already growing slowly, which would have received some impetus during upcoming elections. In the short run there may be depreciation of currency, but will start readjusting as the currency is replaced.

The target people for this policy are not the real holders of the black money (here black wealth). Most of the billionaires who have a lot of black money keep it either in offshore accounts or convert them into assets which are not in the form of liquid currency and thus should be differentiated as Black Wealth. Thus the real effect is on small business enterprises and middle class people who try to evade taxation in order to maximize whatever little profit they make. These people will have to turn their intended paper notes and declare how they earned them thus giving out tax on it. So most (almost all) of the accumulation of the black money will be from the smaller fish creating a false impression that the problem has been solved. This will render more of a political advantage to the ruling party rather than to some real good.

Because of the collection of money an impression of an essentially black moneyless economy will be promoted. This will strengthen the idea that the income and wealth disparity persisting in the economy is rather a natural result than an intended purpose. This has already happened in America and the West where 10 biggest corporations of the world hold more wealth that 190 (the counties figure maybe +-10) countries.

Due to the enforcement of slabs on the withdrawal of money through ATMs and Banks, there will be less money flowing in the form of paper currency and people will be forced to use online and electronic solutions. This will boost the private commercial banking and thus direction of real high powered money to the big corporates who will finance their projects through loans from currency deposits of the public that will essentially be deterred from withdrawal at a point in time. In short there will be more cash available with the bank at all times to give out loans if such a slab continues.

This is a very preliminary examination of the situation and has not been researched. It is an intuition based approach. I will present a more formal approach in my article with more research backing it.

[ali--javed]

Why the World Exists?

It is said that Sixteenth Century in the European philosophic thought was dominated by rationalism; rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. It was this attention to rationalism that led to the imperative assertion of Descartes “Cogito ergo sum” meaning ‘I think therefore I am’. The undivided reliance on the mental faculty as against the physical faculties gave way to the fatalistic deduction of the ‘I’ as the only true reality that is immediately known and thus the only experience that could most certainly be labeled as true knowledge or absolute reality. Any other assertion or proposition that could be made was either prone to doubt due to the lack of immediate perception or was directly or indirectly dependent on the existence of the ‘I’ in its support. If there were no ‘I’, the dependent proposition could not be accepted in any amount of certainty whatsoever.

Even the existence of God (Good God) was dependent on the existence of the ‘I’. In summary Descartes gave way to extremely sophisticated and highly advanced solipsistic thought that would remain undefeated in its entirety. Although today Descartes’ assertions are at best considered to be a way of thinking but no true disproval has been proposed that would testify the existence of matter or mind other than the self without the existence of the knowing self.

The reason why Descartes resorted to his radical assertion about ‘I’ as a ‘thinking being’ to be the only reality that can be immediately known was due to his intuitive understanding of the way dreams are perceived while dreaming. It is only after the dream is over the dreamer realizes that it was a dream. But while he is in the dream he experiences everything as if it were real. Similarly Descartes asserts, what is that makes us believe that what we are experiencing right now is not just another dream. What convinces us that this is reality. We may very well wake up to find ourselves into a reality that is otherwise unknown to us in this realm. It may be true that the ‘I’ that is writing this article right now may very well be a sub personality of a bigger conscious personality that is dreaming right now and all that this writer witnesses as other conscious beings may be other sub- personalities of the greater conscious being. But what then stops us into thinking that the greater conscious being is alone and is not one amongst the many greater beings who are sub personalities of an even greater being. This becomes a form of Cosmological Argument in which the ‘I’ becomes the part of the hierarchical conscious beings that exist as part of one supreme being whose consciousness then we become all part of. This will lead to God solipsism rather than the self solipsism. This is the kind of fallacy this writer has found in Berkley’s empirical idealism.

In Descartes’ demon argument he suggests that there may be a being that is so powerful that it has the power to deceive the self into thinking about the external reality. But for that the powerful being will have to exist by necessity to influence the ‘I’. But if we approach this problem as has been suggested by many philosophers that all that the ‘I’ perceives is actually in the mind of the ‘I’ the problem seems to be solved but by compromising matter itself. I will try to approach this problem of the ‘I’ or the self differently so as to defend the position of existence of matter as independent from the self, where matter exists in itself rather than by the necessity of its perception which ends up being subjective rather than objective.

I will begin with Descartes’ position, “Cogito Ergo Sum”. This means that I am accepting all his arguments regarding the existence of the self, but no more. Starting our journey for the existence of the world we find ourselves in fretful anxiety, realizing that when resorting to pure logic, the only thing we can be absolutely sure about is none other than the self, the thinking being that experiences this fretful anxiety. We start believing in the possibility that everything we seem to experience might just be an extremely beautiful and convincing mirage. The empirical world mercilessly shatters and only the illusion of it remains in our mind, although the sense perception of the world remains as real as before, only the mind becoming skeptic of the reality. Since I have already declared that I will only accept the position of Descartes’ as far as the self is considered, but no more, Descartes arguments regarding the existence of God and the external world are not as convincing as his arguments for the self. Arguments of God and the external world are imperatively dependent upon the argument for the self. If the self is omitted from the equation everything else falls along with it. Hence Descartes did not really prove the existence of anything other than the self that is the thinking being. In the following part of the article I will try to prove the existence of the world without resorting to the existence of the self by demonstrating contradiction deeply rooted in the idealist position so that the external world is rescued from its dependence on the subjectivity of the perceptive self.

When I while writing this article start to think whether the laptop I am typing on exists external to me or all this is an illusory outward reflection of my mind, I realize that self should not be able to deceive itself if it is really a thing in itself. This is because if there is only ‘I’, then the ‘I’ cannot deceive itself without knowing that it deceives itself. In this case everything that the ‘I’ brings into existence by mere imagination must be vividly and lucidly clear and known to the ‘I’ to be self-imaginative. But if the ‘I’ does not know about something clearly, then it becomes the work of something other than the ‘I’ or already an another ‘I’ distinct of the first ‘I’. This may be referred to as Descartes’s demon. But this leads us into believing that matter other than the ‘I’ also exists. Considering this this writer thinks the mind or the brain as distinct from the experiencing ‘I’. This is because in many cases like that of the rope in dim light when the ‘I’ judges the rope to be a snake, the ‘I’ is deceived by the sense perception and the brain that works on the sense perception. Hence ‘I’ appears to be something that is other than the mind or the brain that the ‘I’ works on in order to make decisions. This is similar to the distinction that Daniel Kahneman has made in his celebrated book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow” regarding the two systems of the brain he calls System 1 and System 2. System 1 according to him is the part or attribute of the brain that is concerned with the fast, effortless and reflexive judgements and decision of the brain in a situation. System 2 on the other hand is the part of the brain which is responsible for slow, effortful judgements and decision of the brain. Although this writer accepts this distinction made by Daniel but attributes this distinction only to the brain or the mind and not to the self or the ‘I’. According to this author the experiencing ‘I’ exists independent of the brain and the mind which is only the instrument for the ‘I’ to experience reality.

Originally written in 2014

[ali--javed]

Critique of the Theory of Parallel Universes

Science is the name given to all our imaginations that can be transformed into mathematical equations and are thus susceptible to being true or false. This is the beauty of science that it has given the wildest imaginations of mankind an acceptable and even respected forum for discussion.

One such theory that springs out from the physical sciences is the theory of parallel universes. The theory advocates one of our wildest fantasies to be a fair possibility in the complete picture of the universe. Imagine having a doppelganger in another part of the universe or other universe altogether which is only a brane world away from you. All those episodes of Fringe, The Flash, Rick and Morty and Steins Gate must manifest in the minds of those sci-fi lovers and yet the aspiring physicist have keen understanding of the implications of such a story. I myself find it amusing and amazing if such a reality may exist. It gives you a kind of relief thinking that whatever you were not able to achieve or do in this universe, one among infinite of your coexistences may have done that in some other universe. It gives you a sense of satisfaction and even a feeling of achievement that might have been missing earlier. But I am afraid that on careful analysis of the logic behind the likeliness of existence such parallel universes seems to be a bleak possibility. One finds themselves amidst the emptiness of their unique existence.

Although I do not deny the possibility of existence of multiple universes but them being almost similar to ours seems to be a far-fetched idea.

This is thus a simple criticism of the parallel universe theory where we are imagined to have our replicas.

If we consider multiple universes each having a version of us then it will become logical necessity for all the versions to follow an exactly same path and a similar fate. This is because if they do not do so, they would only end up contradicting themselves. This will be clear if we imagine a situation in terms of genetic quantum realities to simplify the problem.

We know that the genetic code of an individual is precise enough to manifest unique individuals and unique personalities. If it may have been otherwise we would have been witnessing exact replicas to the most fundamental levels where even the consciousness would resonate between multiple individuals. But it is not so. Philosophers may argue that this is only due to the problem of induction but unless proved otherwise the result remains the same.

Now because these multiverses may reflect same individuals in different settings, it will become absolutely impossible for an individual to exist in two universes without the same set of chromosomes that they possess in this universe. If it happens so otherwise it will only lead to a quantum change and the resulting personality will be distinct from what it is in this universe. So it follows from absolute necessity from the genetic laws that my mother and father in this universe would have to be the same, the ones they are in all the other universes.

But philosophers and physicists have stated possibilities where the replicas of individuals in other universes may or may not follow the same path they follow in this universe. This may lead them to associate with other persons in other universes rather than forming the same couple to give birth to the same offsprings.This means that at a point where even if once this anomaly occurs it will give birth to a butterfly effect that will gradually alter the path of evolution of the alternative universe completely from what it follows in this universe. This will give rise to much more anomalies and conflicts between the reflecting universes. So if there has to be same individuals in different universe they will have to follow the exact same path to the very minute details in order to be reflection of each other. Every other possibility would only lead to other possibilities that will make these universes not at all similar. If such an arrangement is to be considered than their remains no need for universes that are perfect replicas of each other. Only one may suffice.

Originally written in 2014

[ali--javed]

Migrant Crisis and its Effects on Global Growth: A Case of Levant

INTRODUCTION

Syrian refugee crisis is not as new as it seems to most of us who do not follow the world politics as eagerly and religiously as we follow the national. The crisis did not start after the image of a three-year-old boy Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach turned viral. I find it sad that we get more emotional watching a fictional movie than knowing about the real life pains of real people. It is sad that when we see real problems of real people we turn a blind eye towards them. This is what happened really. Europe and the International community had for four years turned away from the crisis as if it never existed unless they were forced to speak on it. It is a shame that the international media also seemed to be much more bothered about the economic gains and losses related to the crisis than worrying about the humanitarian that it really is. This paper aims at finding out whether the crisis is as bad as it seems in terms of economic stability or whether it can actually turn out to be more beneficial in the long run for both the refugees and the nations that take them in.

Refugees from the wars of the Middle East are pouring into the European Union at an unprecedented rate. So are economic migrants from Africa and non-EU countries in the Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, etc), and some of them claim to be refugees too. They are coming at the rate of about 3000 a day, mostly through Turkey into Greece or across the Mediterranean to Italy, and the EU says that it doesn’t know what to do about it.

It’s not really that big a refugee crisis: one million people at most this year, or one-fifth of 1 per cent of the European Union’s 500 million people. Little Lebanon (population 4.5 million) has already taken in a million refugees, as has Jordan (population 6.5 million). But while a few of the EU’s 28 countries are behaving well, many more have descended into a gibbering panic about being “overrun”.

Chancellor Angela Merkel put it bluntly: “If Europe fails on the question of refugees … it will not be the Europe we imagined.” She has put her money where her mouth is: two weeks ago she predicted that Germany would accept asylum claims from 800,000 refugees this year.

France, Italy and the Netherlands have also been fairly generous about granting refugees asylum, and quiet, gallant Sweden is accepting more refugees per capita than anybody else in the EU. But the good news stops here. Most other EU countries are refusing to take a fair share of the refugees, or even any at all.

CRISIS

An estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war in March 2011, taking refuge in neighbouring countries or within Syria itself. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 3 million have fled to Syria’s immediate neighbours Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. 6.5 million are internally displaced within Syria. Meanwhile, under 150,000 Syrians have declared asylum in the European Union, while member states have pledged to resettle a further 33,000 Syrians. The vast majority of these resettlement spots — 28,500 or 85% — are pledged by Germany.

When did the crisis start?

Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011, part of the Arab Spring. But the peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government’s violent crackdown, and rebels began fighting back against the regime.

By July, army defectors had loosely organized the Free Syrian Army and many civilian Syrians took up arms to join the opposition. Divisions between secular and Islamist fighters, and between ethnic groups, continue to complicate the politics of the conflict.

What is happening to Syrians caught in the war?

More than four years after it began, the full-blown civil war has killed over 220,000 people, half of whom are believed to be civilians. Bombings are destroying crowded cities and horrific human rights violations are widespread. Basic necessities like food and medical care are sparse.

The U.N. estimates that 7.6 million people are internally displaced. When you also consider refugees, more than half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million is in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, whether they still remain in the country or have escaped across the borders.

In October, Russia began launching airstrikes at ISIS targets in Syria. This has changed the dynamics of the civil war a lot. The pro Assad Russian government headed by the strong Putin has made it clear to the US and the whole International Community that they do not distinguish between ISIS and the other rebels as far as the position of Bashar-al-Assad is concerned. They have given a strong message that they are there to protect the interest of Syria and the Middle East which according to them lies in the leadership of Assad.

But it is more than evident through the present scenario that the human aid organizations that have been working in close contact with the rebels have become more vulnerable than they ever were.

Where are they fleeing to?

The majority of Syrian refugees are living in Jordan and Lebanon, where the governments and human aid organizations like Mercy Corps has been addressing their needs since 2012. In the region’s two smallest countries, weak infrastructure and limited resources are nearing a breaking point under the strain.

In August 2013, more Syrians escaped into northern Iraq at a newly opened border crossing. Now they are trapped by that country’s own insurgent conflict, and Iraq is struggling to meet the needs of Syrian refugees on top of more than one million internally displaced Iraqis.

An increasing number of Syrian refugees are fleeing across the border into Turkey, overwhelming urban host communities and creating new cultural tensions.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are also attempting the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece, hoping to find a better future in Europe. Not all of them make it across alive. Those who do make it to Greece still face steep challenges — resources are strained by the influx and services are minimal.

How are people escaping?

Thousands of Syrians flee their country every day. They often decide to finally escape after seeing their neighborhoods bombed or family members killed.

The risks on the journey to the border can be as high as staying: Families walk for miles through the night to avoid being shot at by snipers or being caught by soldiers who will kidnap young men to fight for the regime.

How many refugees are there?

Four million Syrians have registered or are awaiting registration with the United Nations High Commission of Refugees, who is leading the regional emergency response.

Every year of the conflict has seen an exponential growth in refugees. In 2012, there were 100,000 refugees. By April 2013, there were 800,000. That doubled to 1.6 million in less than four months. There are now four million Syrians scattered throughout the region, making them the world’s largest refugee population under the United Nations’ mandate.

At this rate, the U.N. predicts there could be 4.27 million Syrian refugees by the end of 2015 — the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago.

Do all refugees live in camps?

No. Jordan’s Za’atari, the first official refugee camp that opened in July 2012, gets the most news coverage because it is the destination for newly arrived refugees. It is also the most concentrated settlement of refugees: Approximately 81,500 Syrians live in Za’atari, making it the country’s fourth largest city. The formerly barren desert is crowded with acres of white tents, makeshift shops line a “main street” and sports fields and schools are available for children.

A new camp, Azraq, opened in April 2014, carefully designed to provide a sense of community and security, with steel caravans instead of tents, a camp supermarket, and organized “streets” and “villages.”

Because Jordan’s camps are run by the government and the U.N. — with many partner organizations coordinating services — they offer more structure and support. But many families feel trapped, crowded, and even farther from any sense of home, so they seek shelter in nearby towns.

Iraq has set up a few camps to house the influx of refugees who arrived in 2013, but the majority of families are living in urban areas. And in Lebanon, the government has no official camps for refugees, so families have established makeshift camps or find shelter in derelict, abandoned buildings. In Turkey, the majority of refugees are trying to survive and find work, despite the language barrier, in urban communities.

The fact is, the majority of refugees live outside camps.

What conditions are refugees facing outside camps?

Some Syrians know people in neighboring countries who they can stay with. But many host families were already struggling on meager incomes and do not have the room or finances to help as the crisis drags on.

Refugees find shelter wherever they can. Human aid organizations have seen families living in rooms with no heat or running water, in abandoned chicken coops and storage sheds.

Most refugees must find a way to pay rent, even for derelict structures. Without any legal way to work in Jordan and Lebanon, they struggle to find odd jobs and accept low wages that often don’t cover their most basic needs. The situation is slightly better in the Kurdish Autonomous region of northern Iraq, where Syrian Kurds can legally work, but opportunities are now limited because of the conflict there. And language is still a barrier.

The lack of clean water and sanitation in crowded, makeshift settlements is an urgent concern. Diseases like cholera and polio can easily spread — even more life-threatening without enough medical services. In some areas with the largest refugee populations, water shortages have reached emergency levels; the supply is as low as 30 liters per person per day — one-tenth of what the average American uses.

The youngest refugees face an uncertain future. Some schools have been able to divide the school day into two shifts and make room for more Syrian students. But there is simply not enough space for all the children, and many families cannot afford the transportation to get their kids to school.

How many refugees are children?

According to the U.N., more than half of all Syrian refugees are under the age of 18. Most have been out of school for months, if not years.

The youngest are confused and scared by their experiences, lacking the sense of safety and home they need. The older children are forced to grow up too fast, finding work and taking care of their family in desperate circumstances.

Is there enough assistance to reach everyone?

In December 2014, the U.N. issued its largest ever appeal for a single crisis — according to their estimates, $8.4 billion is necessary to meet the needs of all those affected by the crisis, both inside and outside Syria, an increase from last year’s $6.5 billion. Yet that previous appeal was only funded less than 50 percent.

Many humanitarian organizations are partnering with the U.N., using both private contributions and funding from the international community to actively address the needs of Syrians caught in this terrible disaster. But so much more must be done.

Refugee Crisis and Sustainable Development

Though Europe’s refugee debacle has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, it is actually only a relatively small piece of a far larger displacement crisis. Across the globe, nearly 60 million people are currently displaced from their homes by war or human rights violations — the highest number since World War II. If these displaced people lived in one place, they would comprise the 24th largest country in the world.

Most of the displaced live in countries outside of Europe, including Colombia (6 million), Sudan (3.1 million), the DRC (2.9 million), Pakistan (1.9 million), South Sudan (1.5 million), Somalia (1.2 million), and Nigeria (1.1 million). For the displaced in these and many other countries, the cameras stopped rolling years ago, and their plight has been largely forgotten. Precisely because this situation has arisen over such an expanse of geography and time, political leaders and the broader public has trouble conceiving it as a “crisis” at all.

When world leaders gather at the United Nations this week, they will understandably focus on Europe’s fresh refugee crisis. But it would be a mistake to overlook the much larger challenge forced displacement poses for poorer people and poorer governments in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

On the agenda for approval by the UN General Assembly are the “Sustainable Development Goals” — 17 sweeping development goals and 169 associated targets that have been painstakingly drafted over the past five years. Everything from eliminating poverty to promoting health, gender equality, and fighting climate change is on the agenda. Yet the development goals are conspicuously silent about human displacement, even though it arguably poses insurmountable challenges to governments’ ability to implement the goals.

People who flee their homes during conflict are generally expected to be able to return soon after. On average, however, conflict-induced displacement lasts 17 years. What begins as a short-term humanitarian crisis often morphs into a long-term development challenge, as the displaced look to a new government or community for basic services such as health care, food, education, and water.

Recognizing the clear link between displacement and development, a target addressing forced displacement was originally included in the draft of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the final stages of the negotiations, however, it was deleted. The leader of the UN Refugee Agency and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary General’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons sought to re-include a substantive target on forced displacement, but they did not succeed. It was deemed too politically sensitive by the negotiators. Instead, it was referenced in declaration at the beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Excluding a substantive target on forced displacement from global development goals was a mistake 15 years ago. Today, as 60 million people across the globe are displaced inside their country or as refugees, it verges on criminal.

Displacement due to conflict or disasters has occurred on every continent and is a universal challenge. From Syria to the Central African Republic to Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo, long-term displacement has overwhelmed state capacity. It certainly is a long-term development challenge with political, economic, environmental and security implications.

Forced displacement and its consequences are not issues the world can wish away. When the last global development goals were adopted in 2000, there were 25 million people displaced in their own country. By 2012, there were nearly 29 million. Today, there are 38 million. That’s in addition to the 20 million who have crossed a border to become a refugee.

Nor is forced displacement an issue that can be considered the sole writ of the humanitarian community. The humanitarian community does not have the financial resources to respond to the needs of the world’s displaced. It does not have the expertise to address long-term state capacity building. And it does not have the power to convince countries to devise solutions for displaced people who may never be able to return home. The development community needs to be engaged from the onset of a crisis to ensure that the development dimensions of displacement are adequately addressed.

At this late date, it is not possible to change the Sustainable Development Goals. But it is not too late for world leaders to pledge — on their own — to address global displacement as development plans are drawn up over the next 15 years.

How the mainstream picture is different from realities?

Let’s first put things into perspective. This year up until July the EU received 513,580 applications for asylum (including Syrians and others). Since January 2012 the number has been 1.9 million, which makes the size of the “swarms” and“invasion” of “marauder” asylum seekers equivalent to a mere 0.37 percent of the EU population. Over the same period, Lebanon — a country with many institutional and political challenges of its own — has registered 1.1 million Syrian refugees. Without including the tens of thousands of unregistered refugees, this figure is still a quarter of Lebanon’s population, comparable to the EU taking in 127 million refugees. Even if the EU were to follow Turkey’s example and take in “just” 2.6 percent of its own population as refugees, it would pretty much single-handedly solve the global refugee crisis by absorbing 13 of the 14.4 million refugees registered with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

‘Crushing our economies’

So assume you are in a country that has taken in a quarter, or even 2.6 percent, of your population as refugees fleeing war and prosecution. Would your economy collapse? Last time we checked, that was not quite the case. The Lebanese economy has been growing beyond expectations over the past two years, with the World Bank estimating 2.5 percent growth in real terms this year, the country’s highest growth rate since 2010. That is remarkable considering the hugely negative spillovers of the Syrian war on Lebanon in terms of armed conflict, and tourism and investments declining markedly, especially from Gulf countries. This economic resilience in the face of large inflows of refugees has been the case for Jordan (which has taken 630,000 Syrian refugees or around 10 percent of its population) and Turkey as well, with both economies growing consistently throughout the refugees’ inflow.

In fact, the inflow of refugees has arguably helped the Lebanese economy withstand the negative effect of its neighbor’s civil war. Refugees have been an important source of demand for locally produced services in Lebanon, funded from own savings and labor income, from remittances of relatives abroad and from international aid. In a recent World Bank report we estimate that an additional 1 percent increase in Syrian refugees increases Lebanese service exports by 1.5 percent. And the UNHCR and U.N. Development Program estimate a similar economy-wide impact from the $800 million that the U.N. spends annually on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. These effects are not unique to Syrian refugees. Burundian and Rwandan refugees fleeing war in the 1990s have generated net economic gains for their Tanzanian host communities.

‘Taking our jobs’

While the fear of economic collapse does not withstand serious scrutiny, a more founded concern may be that not everyone in the host economy will benefit from a large influx of refugees. A lot more refugees competing for jobs can reduce employment opportunities and/or wages for the host community’s residents. Again, a closer look at the data dispels most of these fears. Recent research finds that while Syrian refugees in Turkey — the majority of whom have no formal work permits — have displaced unskilled informal and part-time workers, they have also generated more formal non-agricultural jobs and an increase in average wages for Turkish workers. In addition, many of the displaced workers have gone back to school and may well increase their wages once they return to the labor market. This picture is also consistent with the Jordanian case, where unemployment has not increased in areas where Syrians have resettled, as Syrian workers have tended to find employment in low-skill sectors that Jordanians typically avoid. And this evidence is consistent with that on the net impact of migrants on host countries’ labor markets, which is typically small and if anything positive on average.

‘Wasting our tax dollars’

The most persistent economic worriers would probably point to the fiscal burden of ensuring EU-style living standards to a large number of refugees. The experience of Turkey comes in handy once again. Turkey has provided free access to health care and education to all registered refugees and has built camps that have become a “model for the perfect refugee camp.” To provide these services the Turkish government has spent nearly 5.37 billion euros since the refugees first began arriving, entirely funded through its own fiscal resources. While this is undoubtedly a lot of money, there is no indication that this spending has jeopardized the country’s fiscal sustainability. This should be even more the case for the EU, whose economy is 23 times larger than Turkey’s. Moreover if allowed to work, newly arrived migrants can increase their net fiscal contribution to the host economy.

Of course all this does not imply that handling a large influx of foreigners (refugees or otherwise) is not a challenging undertaking for the receiving country. Social, political, and even economic strains associated with the refugees’ inflow have been and continue to be key challenges to Syria’s neighbours. But these neighbours have shown the much richer EU countries that there need not be insurmountable economic (or even social and political) costs associated with fulfilling the moral obligation of helping those fleeing wars and prosecution. With proper planning and goodwill, EU countries would be able to welcome a vastly larger share of refugees than they have been doing so far. This is also what more and more proud EU citizens have been demanding.

The Case of Germany

Germany’s population is dwindling. The birth rates are equally shocking. So too is the working-age population which is Europe’s biggest economy. Overall population of Germany is predicted to fall from 82miliion to 65million by 2060. Between 2000 and 2013, Germany’s birth rate dropped by 11 per cent

Europe’s Population Policy Acceptance Study found that 23 per cent of German men thought ‘zero’ was the ideal family size.

Population in 2013–81.8 million

Population in 2003–82.53 million

Population in 2060–66 million (est.)

Population growth rate in 2011–0%

Without immigrant families, the number of newly born children in Germany would reach only 400,000 in a country of 82 million

The fall of population means shortage of skills and that shortage of skills runs into billions a year. Adding to this is that workers lack the necessary qualifications giving rise to unemployed or part-time workers.

The immediate response has been to attract multinationals and lure them but perks have to be part of the deal. The alternate option of refugees has been on the minds of policy makers.

This situation is no different to other countries of Europe.

Low birth rate, few marriages, marriages without children, divorce, no marriage in view of gay trend and this extrapolated leave a very scary picture for the traditionalists. It also has raised alarm for policy makers who have lost confidence in outsourcing and are now looking at insourcing where they feel productivity can be better when things are within their turf and under their noses.

Refugee Crisis more political than humanitarian

People are being forced to believe that the European Refugee crisis is a sudden unprecedented crisis, which Europe has to bear with as its “humanitarian duty” and that it is the creation of the forces that are dangerous for the whole world. The truth on the contrary is that this crisis is not only theintermediate product of West’s own plans in the Middle East but will also serve their future plans.

I have been arguing for well over two years that West is not only directly but wholly responsible for Syrian Civil War. Fed up with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, America-led Western Coalition decided to replace wars with civil wars. Wars had given them billions of dollars in terms of arms trade but had also consumed several thousands of their lives. The army had grown tired of it. It would be a better idea to plunge the area into civil wars. “Arab Springs” began and it soon became clear that these “springs” were ablaze with infernos. Libyan leader Gaddafi was thrown out, and the weapons from there were sent to Syria in order to topple the Syrian President Assad who was considered one of the three Axes of Evils, Iran and Hezbollah being the other two. ISIS was allowed to grow in strength and given huge weaponry as well as billions of dollars. When last year Assad succeeded in turning tables on the rebels, ISIS moved into Iraq. Initially it was used to replace Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki whose closeness to Iran irked America. Once the purpose was served, the ISIS suddenly became the “most dangerous” terrorist outfit of the world.

The American involvement in Syria has now become well known. Alex Kane says:

“Here are four ways the U.S. is currently intervening in Syria.

1. Light Arms to Rebels

The most direct form of American intervention is the flow of small arms to rebels in the south of Syria, where they control some territory. In late January, Reuters revealed that Congress had approved funding for months of further arms deliveries.,,,,

The move is a stark contrast to last summer, when reservations about whether the weapons could end up with Islamic fundamentalists caused Congress to dry up the flow of weapons. ….

2. U.S. Training

One of the first substantial interventionist moves the U.S. made was its decision to train Syrian rebels. Since late 2012, the CIA and U.S. special forces troops stationed in Jordan and Turkey have trained Syrian opposition forces. The training was started months before arms began to flow to the rebels……

3. Non-Lethal Aid

In early 2013, the Obama administration announced it was sending $60 million in “non-lethal” aid to the Free Syrian Army in the form of food rations and medical supplies. In April 2013, the U.S. said it would double the amount of “non-lethal aid sent to Syria, which is meant in part to allow Syrian opposition forces to provide essential services on the ground in areas they control. This time, the non-lethal aid included things like communications equipment, vehicles and night-vision goggles. In other words, the kind of aid necessary for rebels to be lethal……

4. Sanctions

Syria has been under some form of Western sanctions for decades. But in the aftermath of Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters when the uprising began in 2011, more sanctions were imposed………

The Obama administration froze all the assets of the Syrian government as a response to the armed force the government used on demonstrators. The U.S. has also prohibited “all new investment in Syria by a U.S. person, the provision of any U.S. services to Syria, and any transaction in or related to petroleum products of Syrian origin,” as Human Rights First explained. In June 2013, the U.S. announced it was easing the sanctions on rebel-controlled areas of Syria to facilitate the exports of commodities like technology and software, and for items relating to water sanitation, food processing and more…”

But the events of the last two years have clearly shown that despite all the propaganda against ISIS, it has continued to be a friendly enemy of West. It is enemy in Iraq and friend in Syria. If West had wanted, it would have destroyed ISIS by now. But it won’t do that, till Assad remains in power in Syria. ISIS has been clearly told that it would not be confronted till it restricts its operations in Syria.

The creation of ISIS by America too is now accepted by the analysts. An article in the Guardian, Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq by Seumas Milne says:

“The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition…

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime…

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny — and allies are enemies — often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call……

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate………

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shown by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts — and effectively welcomes — the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” — and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria……

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”…..

A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” — despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity — as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria……….

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it — as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control………

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly…….

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division.”

West has again grown in hope that Bashar al Assad’s regime would not survive the latest assaults by ISIS. It will allow the Refugee Crisis to build till Assad is gone. This is not without reason that Saudi Arab, Qatar and Kuwait have not been pressurised to absorb at least a substantial percentage of refugees. They will of course be made to pay the bills. Till Assad Regime is in place, ISIS will not be attacked. As soon as the fall of Syrian regime becomes imminent, war against ISIS will be launched. This may come sooner than later. With Iranian Nuclear deal, Iran’s support to Assad may also be neutralised. This is what at least the Western powers believe.

Conclusion

Syrian Refugee crisis is undoubtedly a complex issue having multiple sides to it. On one hand, there are people who think this to be a burden on the world, especially Europe. On the other hand, many believe that it will ultimately benefit the world, especially European countries. Politically, this has built pressure on the world powers to find an urgent solution to the Syrian crisis. An end to the Syrian crisis with defeat of ISIS and installation of a popular government in Syria will create an atmosphere of goodwill and peace. Peace in itself is a catalyst to economic development. With Nuclear Treaty between Iran and US and European countries, peace in Syria will multiply the advantages that are expected from the Nuclear Deal. European countries are passing through a phase of severe economic turmoil. At the same time, they are facing shortage of youth, particularly the skilled and unskilled labour class. The population growth has become negative in most European countries and the percentage of youth in the population is fast declining. Migrants from Syria can fill this void. Whatever is spent on these refuges ultimately remains within the countries and boosts economy by creating new consumers and new markets. Not only will the refugees spend in the same countries, they will also pay tax on what they earn as well as on what they spend. With the business opportunities with Iran suddenly brightening up, these refuges will help in several industries. Countries like France, Austria, Italy and Germany are making big plans to develop economic ties with Iran. They will also be getting cheaper oil and other energy resources from Iran. In turn, they will be helping Iran in providing the technical knowhow and advanced equipments needed in Iran. Iranian students are also going to come in big numbers for higher studies in Europe.

In short, even if the refugee crisis may appear to be a crisis in the shorter run, this crisis has the potential of unfolding an economic revolution in Europe. By giving a rousing welcome to the refugees, they have also earned the good will of oil-rich Muslim countries. Once Syrian crisis is over, trade with Syria, Lebanon and Iraq will also get a huge boost. The only challenge for Europe and the rest of the world is to peacefully resolve the crisis in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Once this is done, not only Europe, ultimately the whole word will reap benefits.

Originally written in 2014

[ali--javed]

The Perils of War

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth. — Leo Tolstoy

Indian conscience today is dominated by the need of War. War, say they, will end once and for all the endless pains inflicted upon the idea of India by its eternal enemy: the enemy that was once part of the identity of India.

What is this bond of hatred between India and Pakistan that grows by the day? Do the reasons still remain or what prevails today is mere dogma? To each and one the only plausible answer is: War is what will make the problems disappear. But do they not realize that War is no more being fought for a cause that can be justified. ‘They’ say that India has done Injustice to the idea of Justice. India has got Kashmir crucified. Say We, Kashmir belongs to none but us, its pains and pleasures belong to none but Us, Pakistan must not interfere. In all this mess we fail to learn about Kashmiri’s idea of justice and fairness. Maybe that is the idea that ‘They’ and ‘Us’ have long ago crucified. Maybe their idea of justice is not allied with our idea of the justice. Maybe they do not deserve the same choice that ‘They’ and ‘Us’ deserved 70 years back. Maybe that is because we fear that they will make the same choice.

Kashmir today is not the issue of Justice, but that of ego and pride. More than this Kashmir today has become an economic issue. There was still a chance a few decades ago where Kashmir would have been given Justice. But due to economic interests of China in Kashmir and Pakistan, the Justice seems to be remote. When it is clear to both the nations that the issue of Kashmir cannot be resolved the way it had been intended at the time of Independence, why then even bother to fight? To understand the reasons we will have to delve into more fundamental, philosophical, psychological, economic, political and geopolitical issues. As students in India in the 21st Century, we study and learn the ideas of liberalism, globalization, socialism, capitalism, utilitarianism, free trade et cetera, none of which on a closer perusal seem to be employed as they are meant to be. We are today living in a globalized world where there are more rigid boundaries than there were any time in the past. Nations championing free trade are its biggest exploiters, subjugating the poorer and smaller nations through the subtler form of imperialism: Economic Imperialism. In every part of the modern world, no matter which philosophy is being followed, capitalist or communist, one has to sacrifice one part of his existential identity without even ever realizing having done so. The capitalists prey upon the individualistic and selfish nature of man, while on the other hand, communists try to exploit what they call the socialist and altruist nature of man. The result is that nowhere on the Earth the comprehensive nature of man and its potential is being utilized.

A few hundred years ago when the global political system was dominated by the monarchial states, the greater national consensus was easily built through oppression and forcing of ideas of the ruling class on the classes that were ruled. Due to the dominance of democratic states today, the forceful oppression of the mighty has become extremely difficult, as well as, not a preferable method of consensus building. Relatively more power and information in the hands of the common masses has rendered it difficult for the Mighty to commit crimes in the broad daylight. But the elites were too organized to have fallen so easily. At the turn of the 20th Century the psychoanalytical revolution under Sigmund Freud changed the way human behavior was perceived. Utilizing the insightful new theories of his uncle, Freud, Edward Bernays, Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, developed psychological tools that would enable the democratic governments to create mass consents. The process is known to the modern thinkers as the ‘Engineering of Consent’. Bernays writes in his book ‘Propaganda’ that

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

We are facing the same engineering of consent today that the people of western nations have been experiencing from last century. America’s involvement in the World War 1 when the earlier consensus of the people of America was against the war is the classic example of an experiment undertaken to engineer a mass consent for war. India and Pakistan are at a stage where their media have grown influential enough, and working in the hands of their corporate masters subservient enough, to do the biddings of their respective governments. What people fail to realize is that the people benefiting from such war like conditions are no other than their ruling classes. Pakistan’s PM Nawaz Sharif, himself being a business tycoon, represents the Pakistani corporate lobby, whereas, Indian PM Narendra Modi while not a business man himself, represents the interests of the Indian right-wing corporate lobby. The surprise visit of our PM to their PM at their PM’s birthday seems to be an indication of the aligned interests. With elections overhead and no economic achievements to showcase, it was aggression towards Pakistan that could most easily polarize the country in favor of the present government. In Pakistan Sharif faces a challenge from Imran Khan that he intends to neutralize. In these times when the evening news are dominated by pro-war sentiments, the real issues of the country are being intently sidelined, Kashmir being the primary sufferer. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book ‘Manufactured Consent’ note that

“In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.”

Chomsky and Herman have rightly argued that when the media is private it becomes extremely difficult for the common man to realize that they can be and are being manipulated. People have to operate from the feeling that the apparatus of media exists separately from the government and thus has no reasons to side with government propagandas. What people fail to see is that the private media firms are more than often owned by the business houses that the government supports. Therefore, the journalists find it difficult to give statements against their corporate masters although they may realize that they are playing in their hands. The system has been created as such that it becomes extremely difficult to say the truth, and even when one does the message is denied to be published or promoted by the media. As such the consent is manufactured. A few months ago when the Kashmiri crisis had just started and the forces had started using pallet guns against the civilians, I had shared a Facebook post with pictures of a Kashmiri woman blinded by the pellet hits on her face and eyes. In response to the post I had shared, one of my Facebook friends replied with hatred and abuses. I had written a small post in response to his attack. I am reproducing the piece below.

I was not sure how to react to this. On one part I was thinking that replying to such allegations would only fuel them more. But in the meantime I came across a few comments made by Muslims on Hindu brothers. These comments were as grotesque and full of contempt as have been targeted towards me on my views. I have been feeling for a long time now that we are witnessing a paradigm shift in our country. The premises of thought and feelings among common men have drifted to more radical sources. The Indian ideal of democratic constitutionalism is being constantly thwarted and ridiculed for more personal and rigid opinions. The problem does not lie with the opinion itself, opinion being the fundamental feature of democracy, but with how the opinion is being propagated as mainstream ideology. Today speaking for a deprived community in India has become a symbol of anti-nationalism. People have forgotten how our ancestors fought for our freedom. We were once deprived and oppressed. The militarianism that we support so much today was what we opposed to win our freedom. The difference is that we were the oppressed and not the oppressors. The British Empire was using the same ideology to fuel warfare and oppression. That ideology should be termed ‘radical nationalism’. The idea that one’s nation cannot do anything wrong, the very idea that oppressed us in the past and the very idea that has been responsible for bloodshed throughout history. We have become no different from nations we freed ourselves from and the nations we intellectually fought against for the freedom of other oppressed nations. We have become no different from Pakistan who has been historically using the issue of Kashmir for their political ends. And we are only a step away from becoming the nations we loathed so much, the ones that destroyed the very fabric of our society. But the radical nationalism has occupied our rationalism to the extent that we have become oblivious of the suffering of people who do not share our opinion. An intellectual campaign has to be started against such radicalism if we want to truly free our country again.

Just like we deserved in the past, Kashmir deserves the freedom to choose its own path. Let not my nation become what we most despise by depriving Kashmir of its fundamental right. Let India be free again.

PS. My personal opinion is that Kashmir be part of India but by consensus and without bloodshed and by winning their hearts.

Individuals are not always in support of wars. It is the mob where the opinion changes, even the most peaceful agrees to abide by the opinion of the masses. It is this opinion that is staged through controlled gatherings which are then displayed on the media channels leading the individuals into believing an opinion which is non-existent at the time. In time the non-existent opinion becomes the true opinion of the masses. In India, the conditions for the present paradigm were being created from some time now. The idea of ‘Hindu Nationalism’ which is only as old as the ideas of Ram Mohan Roy is propagated as ever existent. Its most prominent ideologue Savarkar is today hailed as a national hero in the eyes of RSS and the people who are influenced by its ideology. The idea of ‘Hindu Nationalism’ and ‘Hindutva’ is not at all compatible with ‘Hinduism’ or ‘Sanatana Dharma’, which being a religion does not create any boundaries. Jains and Buddhists are constitutionally Hindus, thus lying within the definition of Hindutva. Dalits, although, part of Hinduism, do not want to be called Hindus today due to centuries of oppression. The definition of Hindutva was carefully designed so that all except Muslims become part of the idea of Unified India. Muslims were denied membership on the basis of their religion while Jains and Buddhists were not. Jains and Buddhists were accepted on the basis of their ethnicity and roots in in India while Muslims were not. 99% of the Muslims living in India share the same DNA with the other Indian communities and yet it was them that were labeled as the “other”. After the election of the pro-RSS BJP government, the experiments of engineering of consent against the Muslims through the issues like ‘Love Jihad’, ‘Cow Slaughter’ and ‘Anti-Nationalist Slogans’ have been forcefully initiated. These ploys existed even before the last elections, but on a much lower scale. The present government has commercialized these concepts. The pro-war sentiment is the byproduct of these efforts. Leo Tolstoy writes in his 1895 essay ‘Christianity and Patriotism’,

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists. Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.

The preceding excerpt highlights the role of the governments in creating sentiments for war. In another essay ‘Patriotism, or Peace?’ Tolstoy writes,

Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. “Yes,” they will say, “wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold.” But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.

Nationalism in its most radical form, called Jingoism, is what is being promoted as patriotism in all the countries of the world. The word ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’ have been used interchangeably in such a way that they have become indistinguishable in the eyes of the common masses. George Orwell writes on the difference between two words as follows

By “nationalism” I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled “good” or “bad.” But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

As is clear, the two words may ideologically be antonyms of each other. India and Pakistan have both used nationalism as their preferred method of mass control through the instrument of media without caring for the adverse effect it had and continues to have on Kashmir. According to Wikipedia, there have been 16,725–47,000 civilian deaths and 5462 security forces deaths in the valley between the period of 1989 and 2002 at our side of the border. Thousands of Jawaans and civilians have been sacrificed by both the sides of the border in order to control an area that has not essentially been given any right for determining their own path. This is because in all the nations of the world, the human soul and consciousness has been nationalized. It is the people of these nations that due to manufactured consent are unable to side with the justice. When we see the statistics on deaths in wars, we find that we live in a gloomy world dominated by violence and bloodshed which in most cases is unwarranted and unjustified. The death tolls in wars of the past where more than 100,000 people died has been given.

It is curious to note that most of the recent wars have been fought by the West. It is also curious to note that almost all of these wars were fought for more land and wealth rather than any religious cause, religion usually being highlighted as the cause of wars. It is religion and class that is politically utilized for creating sentiments for war for the personal gains of the ruling classes without any benefit ever passing down to the people who actually fought them. It is due to the radical nationalism that even after so many statistics and examples we fail to see the effects of war. People who have never experienced war are mostly the ones that ask for it. If only they could experience the pain of a dying soldier or a civilian they would never ask for conflict but yearn for peace. I wish people could realize that violence leads to more violence resulting into a formation of a vicious circle. Such a circle is only broken when and if the wars are fought for justice and all the parties after the war agree that justice has prevailed. But if justice were to prevail like this people would not have chosen war at the first place. The issue of Kashmir as such must be solved by giving Kashmiris the right to choose their destiny rather than India and Pakistan acting as their rightful envoys. If the decision is not given to them the issue will never be resolved. Countless more families of soldiers and civilians will be destroyed amidst the power hunger of the politicians and the corporates. Such arbitration can succeed only if the citizens of both the nations start seeing this issue as a Kashmiri issue rather than seeing it as the issue of their respective governments. They have to start criticizing their own if they think their own to be at mistake. This will not make the nation week but will make it stronger than it ever was where true voice of the people is heard. For this to happen Media will have to start fighting for justice prior to common man because common man’s perception is built upon the perception of the media. At the same time social organizations should become stronger, more organized with more information passing through its channels to the common man so that even with the absence of a media that support the masses, the masses could support themselves.

The empahsis of the West and the Hindutva lobby on Islam being a religion that promotes and supports terrorism forced me into studying the validity of their claims. What I found can be best represented in a single verse of Qur’an

“If anyone slays a person (unjustly), it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”

It is the beauty of Islam that it does not give importance to the idea of nationalism. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in his last sermon said

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. You know that every Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”

The preceding paragraph defines the egalitarian and righteous nature of Islam which unfortunately even the Muslims have not been able to completely understand and employ. If Muslims want to defend themselves from ideological oppression of the West and Hindutva then they will first have to realize the strengths of their own ideology. If that happens, a major population of the planet will be actively opposing war and oppression and striving for peace. Other religions should also try to follow a similar path where they should exploit the peaceful nature of religion. Let then people chose ‘Peace over War’.

[ali--javed]

Einstein’s Masterpiece: Relativity

It is my birthday today, and I am extremely happy. I am happy not because it’s my birthday. Birthdays come and go each year. There is nothing new in them. My state of happiness is because of the insight I have acquired in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Relativity introduces us to the relativistic nature of the realty we experience in our day to day experience. It provides us with the insight of relativistic nature of time itself. The one of the first and foremost nature of reality that relativity acquaints us with is that we all see past. We all see what has already happened. The observation of this past may be on the smallest of scales in our daily experience on earth. But this observation of experience of past increases greatly when we are concerned about greater distances. By greater distance I mean cosmic distances. Distance between sun and earth. Our solar system and all the other solar systems in the universe. Distance between galaxies and the like of it. At these huge scales we experience reality proportional to the distance under consideration. The more distant object in the cosmos we are observing, the deeper into past we are peeking. The past becomes directly proportional to the distance under consideration. Greater the cosmic distance, more distant past we observe. All this is because of our messenger particle of imagery information. That is to say the photon. Light is packets of photons travelling at a fixed velocity through spacetime. The speed we are all well aware of. The limit to speed of light is the very reason that creates the illusion of past.

When I have a discourse with my friend, no matter how close we are standing, we observe each other’s past. Although we don’t realise the difference because it is minuscule. But if my friend were on sun, somehow surviving the extreme heat produced by it in his super anti radiant space suit, I would see my friend wave me 8 minutes after he actually waved. This is because light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth from sun. It would take 8 minutes for me to realise that my friend waved me when I observe him through my powerful telescope. Similarly my friend who is observing me from sun through is highly advanced anti heat telescope, he would observe me after 8 minutes of waving him. So if somehow we had our clocks set to the same time, considering the effect of sun’s high gravity to be negligible on his clock. We could both wave each other at the same time. This way when after 8 minutes we would observe each other through our telescopes, it would appear as if we are waving each other at the same time. After 8 minutes each of us would be able to see waving each other at the same time. Although both of us had done that 8 minutes ago. Similarly if my friend were to be in andromeda galaxy right now and clocks were to be synced. And we were to wave each other right now, then after three years if we were to observe each other through our super powerful galactic telescopes-we would still be able to see waving each other. Although the event for both of us had occurred three years ago. We will be able to greet each other at the same time. This way actions of the past could be synchronised with the actions of the future. How beautifully has Einstein’s relativity explained the illusion of time . It was Einstein’s genius that he could observe such a non-obvious reality at his time. But the relativity raise questions in a curious mind.

We perceive the moment in time when the light photons that have captured that moment strikes at the retina of our eyeball. But light itself is a slow wagon for the transportation of moments in space. All the relativity that we perceive in our lives is due to this shortcoming in the speed of light which is our fastest sensory way of acquiring moments of time. Hence our perception of reality is flawed by the very basics of our sense object contact. Einstein’s relativity only enables us to view the universe and space time in context of this flaw, inherent in our sense. The perception exists only because we see universe through the lens of extremely slow photons. But what if there is a fast enough wagon that can introduce us to the existing reality. I would like to assert the existence of this wagon based on quantum mechanics analysis. Because the probability wave in quantum mechanics itself opens the doorway to this wagon. Would this wagon not enable us to see the world through the eyes of a saint that has attained enlightenment. Did Budhdha not see the universe as it is? Had he not realised the existence of such a wagon boarding which he attained Nirvana. Do we not read in The Holy Quran that prophet Muhammad(PBUH) travelled the whole universe in one night, what we all call the miraaj. These are questions of metaphysics and in no way should concern us while trying to unfold the transcendental reality of physics. But they at least develop a sense of curiosity in our minds, searching for the ultimate principle behind the working of the universe. What governs the objective reality?

We have not yet discussed the effect of Einstein’s relativity over space. This is part of his more general form of the theory of relativity that envisions the effect of gravity also. In my present assessment I considered the effect of sun’s gravity to be negligible, which in reality is not. This aspect of general theory of relativity may be discussed in the next article where gravity plays a leading role in the mechanism of the universe.

Originally published at alijaved12123.blogspot.in on Wednesday, 7 May 2014

[ali--javed]

Concerning Human Knowledge Part 2

I intend to be a writer, a writer of philosophy, and that of religion. But when i sit back in the corner of my room thinking hard about the topic on what i should write, i realise that whatever i may chose to be my topic has complete dependence on what i know so far and not what i may truly know. All the great philosophers i have read about and whose philosophies i have tried to understand take me to a common conclusion. That truth is something that can never be achieved. No matter how close one comes to the truth there develops even more possibilities to derive the truth that is different from the truth that man has conceived. But then the question that remains unanswered over centuries of trying to dig the truth is that will there ever be an end to the unending conquest for truth. Whatsoever be the end but it appears to be far from achieving. After the claims raised by Plato and his disciple Aristotle there is still same conquest for the same answers to the questions that they then answered. 

 What we derive from the long history of the conquest of the truth is that every great philosopher has had his idea of the truth which is followed by some and criticized by many. Every theory that a philosopher has theorized has been and in future events criticized by some other philosopher of equal intellect. In all this pool of confusion and discussion our conquest for the truth remains unachieved.    I am making the same mistake of trying to explain my perception of the universe and the truth behind its existence. But to me mistakes have to made for the establishment of the grounds for their correction. I think the world of man is like an ocean. Man here is like a stone which when thrown in the ocean will cause ripples to form. So all men living and who have ever lived on earth are like stones or for the ones who have seized to exist were at least like stones who like stones leave their influence in the world when they live in it. The world is the ground for the interaction of man like ocean is the ground for the interaction of the ripples formed by different stones. My point here is that the knowledge we have of the world today is the sequence of knowledge acquired by man throughout history.And this history has been formed by the effect of influence of men who have lived in it. A man’s perception is based on what he knows from the past and what he can derive out of it in the future. Coming back to my ocean of ripples. I imagine when two stones are thrown inside the ocean or for instance inside a small water body for we are taking only two stones at this moment, this shall keep things simpler. Coming back to the stones thrown in the water body, both the stones will form different sets of ripples. At a point of time these different sets of ripples will interact with each other and will exchange their characteristics. If one set of ripples is quite stronger than the other set, it may absorb the other set of ripples and merge it into his own. This may refer to a person who has a strong ideology and the other person gets influenced by his ideology and starts to follow his steps.     But the situation may also be that both the sets are equally strong and they clash with each other causing competitive environment. This may refer to two persons who have different ideologies but they are equally strong. Their thoughts may clash with each other causing problems with them trusting each other. This may be compared to two high priests of different religions having conversation on religion itself.   Now imagine billions of ripples being formed in a large ocean causing the interaction with each other. Now it may depend which ripples will interact more and cause the influence over each other thus causing groups of ripples having similar characteristics. This may be compared to a large society or a nation like india having different religions and how they interact with each other.    Through this example it becomes clear that a person’s perception is just not his own but the different sets of perceptions he has adopted to shape his own and then accepting or rejecting these perception to establish an entirely new stream of thoughts which in turn are dependent on the older thoughts.     For example if we take a child and isolate him from the world and keep him in a jungle. He will grow up to become a man who does not know about mankind. This is because he has never been acquainted with the concept and hence he is no more a human as conceived by the present society. But the truth remains that he is as much a man as we are or the greatest thinkers produced by mankind are. He has just not been introduced to the sequence of knowledge that history has provided. He is at a point of knowledge where a man in stone age would have been. He had to start afresh. But instead if he were a part of ocean all the other men are then knowledge would have been induced in him by mere experience.    So the big question is, whether this sequential knowledge we have acquired throughout history is any closer to the truth itself or have we been misled from the very starting of the civilization. The question again establishes doubts that were thought to have been solved not completely but at least a little. Man thus is standing exactly where he was standing a thousand years ago or even at the very beginning of the mankind. This is the philosophical derivation of reality.

I got a perfect comment regarding my previous article fitting perfectly to this one also.

The farthest backward you can look the farthest forward you can see..

— Winston Churchill

Originally published at alijaved12123.blogspot.in on September 20, 2016.

[ali--javed]

Stop The Porn!

College students and young employees display their new found pride in supporting homosexuality and pornography as if they are natural part of human behaviour. With the banning of porn sites in India, Social networks were full with articles and personal opinions until the government changed its stance and made the porn sites live again, keeping only the websites hosting child pornography shutdown. Most of my colleagues in my college were celebrating the restart of these websites as if our country suddenly turned into true democracy, where only people’s opinions matter. My friends and all the other people who celebrated this move by government were silly to believe that the government took the step for them. The only reason for the change in the government’s decision was because the corporate lobby it so much relied on to come to power was unhappy with this move. And why wouldn’t they be unhappy when it is the indirect and direct source of a big part of their earnings. Richard Alleyne in his article “Pornography is just ‘advertising’ for prostitution, claims Louis Theroux” for the Telegraph on 6th June 2012 wrote

“Pornographic films have become adverts for the real business of many of their performers which is prostitution, claims the documentary maker Louis Theroux.”

In an article on Business Pundit called “The World’s Most Lucrative Business Markets”, the top estimated markets for businesses are mentioned with rank as follows;

Drugs

Defence

Prostitution

Oil

Counterfeits

Sports

Gambling

Banking

Alcohol

Pornography

Pharmaceuticals

Entertainment and

Human Trafficking

That means that the world’s biggest businesses are also the biggest source of all human problems. Pornography that lies at 10 supports its mother business ‘Prostitution’ which lies at no. 3.

The above discussion was related to economic aspect of pornography which is an industry that was estimated to be $10 billion in 2001.

Next I would like to talk about the social impacts of watching porn.

Puberty hits males and females from around 11yrs of age to 14yrs. This is the time when there is start of the transition of a boy to a man and that of a girl to a woman. There is so much radical change in the biology of both males and females that they become conscious of their appearance. The build of the body suddenly changes, there is a change in voice, and hair on face and other parts of the body starts to grow. With all this there is also a radical change in the behavior of these young individuals. They try to seek knowledge of what is happening to them and understand it so that they become comfortable with it. Today from a very early age the children in urban cities are well acquainted with the use of internet. When puberty strikes they find it easier to search for their issues on Google rather than feeling embarrassed around parents and friends. This is also the time that they are most vulnerable to the flood of pornography that is waiting for them on the internet. The information regarding their issues that must have been revealed to these young people in a span of time from puberty to their late teens appears in front of them in a single video. Initially these youngsters are extremely embarrassed after watching the porn, but in due course of time they acquire the strength to discuss about this with their friends. In no time the embarrassment turns into the pride of becoming an adult earlier than other students.

This is also the time when distinction between a male and a female is understood by these young children. They start to engage with opposite sexes in what we call relationships. The irony that lies deep within this is that although marriage is not allowed at this age by constitution, there is no provision against pornography which can lead to everything that is done after the marriage.

Supporters and promoters of homosexuality and pornography raise similar kinds of arguments. One of the most used arguments is that these exercises are natural to the human behavior. They are part of the human psychology and cannot be treated to be fundamentally against nature. They argue that it is retrograding to think otherwise. The recent support from the media to them has successfully been able to make this argument an intellectual worldview. To the general public, anything spoken against these practices is labelled as unscientific.

To completely destroy the validity of this argument I am going to use neuro-scientific insights into the human brain. I have frequently mentioned in my previous writings that it is very easy to manipulate human consciousness through elaborate schemes that penetrates the human psyche. In the realm of neuroscience this phenomenon of the brain being able to be rewired is known as plasticity. According to Wikipedia,

“Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, is an umbrella term that encompasses both synaptic plasticity and non-synaptic plasticity — it refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions — as well as to changes resulting from bodily injury. The concept of neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held position that the brain is a physiologically static organ, and explores how — and in which ways — the brain changes in the course of a lifetime.”

This means that the once held view of the localizationists that the human brain is hardwired to perform certain functions is obsolete and recent researches have proved that the neuronal network within the brain and its processes can be significantly altered. I am going to reproduce some excerpts from one of the greatest books on neouroscientific discoveries by Norman Doidge. The book is called ‘The Brain That Changes Itself”. The excerpt I am reproducing has direct relevance to pornography and its addiction.

Doidge writes

“The current porn epidemic gives a graphic demonstration that sexual tastes can be acquired. Pornography, delivered by high-speed Internet connections, satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change. Pornography seems, at first glance, to be a purely instinctual matter: sexually explicit pictures trigger instinctual responses, which are the product of millions of years of evolution. But if that were true, pornography would be unchanging. The same triggers, bodily parts and their proportions, that appealed to our ancestors would excite us. This is what pornographers would have us believe, for they claim they are battling sexual repression, taboo, and fear and that their goal is to liberate the natural, pent-up sexual instincts.”

He continues and talks about pornographic addiction,

“The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor. Not all addictions are to drugs or alcohol. People can be seriously addicted to gambling, even to running. All addicts show a loss of control of the activity, compulsively seek it out despite negative consequences, develop tolerance so that they need higher and higher levels of stimulation for satisfaction, and experience withdrawal if they can’t consummate the addictive act. All addiction involves long-term, sometimes lifelong, neuroplastic change in the brain. For addicts, moderation is impossible, and they must avoid the substance or activity completely if they are to avoid addictive behaviors. Alcoholics Anonymous insists that there are no “former alcoholics” and makes people who haven’t had a drink for decades introduce themselves at a meeting by saying, “My name is John, and I am an alcoholic.” In terms of plasticity, they are often correct.”

But this phenomenon is not all too new to the human understanding of sexual preferences. The sexual instincts,” wrote Freud, “are noticeable to us for their plasticity, their capacity for altering their aims.” Freud was not the first to argue that sexuality was plastic — Plato, in his dialogue on love, argued that human Eros took many forms — but Freud laid the foundations for a neuroscientific understanding of sexual and romantic plasticity.

Doidge further writes about the sexual plasticity,

“But in fact the content of pornography is a dynamic phenomenon that perfectly illustrates the progress of an acquired taste. Thirty years ago “hardcore” pornography usually meant the explicit depiction of sexual intercourse between two aroused partners, displaying their genitals. “Softcore” meant pictures of women, mostly, on a bed, at their toilette, or in some semiromantic setting, in various states of undress, breasts revealed.Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes of forced sex, ejaculations on women’s faces, and angry anal sex, all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation. Hardcore pornography now explores the world of perversion, while softcore is now what hardcore was a few decades ago, explicit sexual intercourse between adults, now available on cable TV. The comparatively tame softcore pictures of yesteryear — women in various states of undress — now show up on mainstream media all day long, in the pornification of everything, including television, rock videos, soap operas, advertisements, and so on.

Pornography’s growth has been extraordinary; it accounts for 25 percent of video rentals and is the fourth most common reason people give for going online. An MSNBC.com survey of viewers in 2001 found that 80 percent felt they were spending so much time on pornographic sites that they were putting their relationships or jobs at risk. Softcore pornography’s influence is now most profound because, now that it is no longer hidden, it influences young people with little sexual experience and especially plastic minds, in the process of forming their sexual tastes and desires. Yet the plastic influence of pornography on adults can also be profound, and those who use it have no sense of the extent to which their brains are reshaped by it.

During the mid-to late 1990s, when the Internet was growing rapidly and pornography was exploding on it, I treated or assessed a number of men who all had essentially the same story. Each had acquired a taste for a kind of pornography that, to a greater or lesser degree, troubled or even disgusted him, had a disturbing effect on the pattern of his sexual excitement, and ultimately affected his relationships and sexual potency.

Typically, while I was treating one of these men for some other problem, he would report, almost as an aside and with telling discomfort, that he found himself spending more and more time on the Internet, looking at pornography and masturbating. He might try to ease his discomfort by asserting that everybody did it. In some cases he would begin by looking at a Playboy-type site or at a nude picture or video clip that someone had sent him as a lark. In other cases he would visit a harmless site, with a suggestive ad that redirected him to risqué sites, and soon he would be hooked.

A number of these men also reported something else, often in passing, that caught my attention. They reported increasing difficulty in being turned on by their actual sexual partners, spouses or girlfriends, though they still considered them objectively attractive. When I asked if this phenomenon had any relationship to viewing pornography, they answered that it initially helped them get more excited during sex but over time had the opposite effect. Now, instead of using their senses to enjoy being in bed, in the present, with their partners, lovemaking increasingly required them to fantasize that they were part of a porn script. Some gently tried to persuade their lovers to act like porn stars, and they were increasingly interested in “fucking” as opposed to “making love.” Their sexual fantasy lives were increasingly dominated by the scenarios that they had, so to speak, downloaded into their brains, and these new scripts were often more primitive and more violent than their previous sexual fantasies. I got the impression that any sexual creativity these men had was dying and that they were becoming addicted to Internet porn.

The changes I observed are not confined to a few people in therapy. A social shift is occurring. While it is usually difficult to get information about private sexual mores, this is not the case with pornography today, because its use is increasingly public. This shift coincides with the change from calling it “pornography” to the more casual term “porn.” For his book on American campus life, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe spent a number of years observing students on university campuses. In the book one boy, Ivy Peters, comes into the male residence and says, “Anybody got porn?”

I hope I am able to convince my readers about the shift in socio-economic phenomenon that is taking place right now and destroying millions of lives. Also pornography, prostitution and homosexuality more than being fight for individuality is an underlying fight to exploit human weaknesses to make profit.

[ali--javed]

Limits and Limiters to Human Knowledge

The man is bound by the limits of nature itself. To know the universe from outside, man will have to be outside the universe. But nothing natural or physical can exist outside the universe. Hence the knowledge of the universe from without is not possible. Also to know the internal workings of the universe or its part, man’s frame of reference should be less than or within the system of his observation. But to observe the internal workings of the smallest indivisible substance, man’s frame of reference will have to be smaller than the smallest substance possible, which in itself is a contradiction. Hence man can neither know the true world from within and neither the true world from without. This means that man can only know all the possibilities within the two ultimate ways of perceiving the truth but not the truth itself. Yet we deceive ourselves in believing that we are only a little away from the transcendental reality which appears to be distant no matter how close we get to it.

But there may be a different way of thinking about this demarcation. Man can know the whole Universe from within and the smallest particle from without. So by changing the approach we find that by being equal to or greater than the smallest particle possible we can observe its outer workings. Also by being equal to or lesser than the universe, that is, the biggest natural existence, we can understand it from within.

But to know a substance completely we need to know that substance from within as well as without, which seems not to be possible when we reach the lower infinity and the upper infinity. Hence man will always be trapped between these infinities. He may know everything, from within and without, between these infinities but will always be left one step behind in understanding of the true reality.

It is like integration and differentiation. In calculus, we always tend to reach 0 or 1 but we never do reach them. The real answers are always like 0.00000000000000000001 or 0.999999999999999. This leads me into believing that the fundamentality of my understanding to the limits of knowledge has put limits to mathematics itself. Mathematics then cannot justify itself to be an absolute and independent source of knowledge. It then becomes only a highly advanced way of almost reaching the fundamental truths without ever reaching them. How scary and insane is that? It is these times that lead me into believing, it is only human belief and conviction in something higher than his understanding of the universe that can truly save him from pure skepticism.

[ali--javed]

Yes to Religion, No to Communalism!

It has become a common practice to view people with contempt if they speak for their community, even if what is said is true. This is specifically true of the people belonging to minority. It is sad to know that individuals derive their conclusions from incomplete facts and information that is being fed to them in the mainstream media. We talk about democracy and freedom of thought and yet it is them that we have sacrificed in the process of creating the mirage of a secular nation. Secularism which was originally devised as a tool to combat religious intolerance has become a tool for greater biasness against religions. An atheist can today easily speak against religion but a religious person has no right to speak publicly against atheism. A feminist is glorified for fighting against the oppressions by men, but, a man cannot stand with confidence against a woman if she is wrong, he is then branded as a male chauvinist. There have been laws created in the country against early marriage but sex and live-in relationships before the legal age have been decreed legal. I do not understand any sane logic behind the law which is meant to protect young people but unfortunately makes the same young people vulnerable to unwarranted problems. How are we supposed to believe in such a crippled system of justice where pressure from western culture and countries has made them to create laws that are fundamentally against the culture of this country.

The problem is now fundamentally deep rooted within the minds of the common people, it has infiltrated and hacked their sense of wisdom and has become a disease that needs immediate attention.

The process of this diabolical change started as a fight against the priestly system that had established under the umbrella of religions and had against the principles of its proprietor oppressed the people it governed. To fight a system that was believed to be backed by religion had to be a difficult task, hence it was thought that the easiest way to fight this system was by propagating contempt against the religion itself. A standard strategy used very often; if a building is to be completely destroyed then destroy the pillars it stands on, religion was that pillar. But the common people that were brainwashed to become the part of this propaganda failed to realize that destroying the pillar itself will also destroy the sense of all their morality; since their morality was derived from the ethical code of the religious scriptures. Hence to change the system the whole humanity was drowned into anarchy and were promised a new Utopia of liberal ideals. But what was disguised was that liberalism could never survive without the support from socialist ideals. For more than three centuries now man is being slowly and steadily consumed by these liberal ideals, meanwhile, growing distant from religious and spiritual values. To people who do not take events as it is but analyses the background of its occurrence, have lucid understanding of the vicious and elaborate scheme that has been in work constantly in order to create a world exactly like the world we presently live in, the world lacking Humanism and Justice. Ironically Justice was what this world was created for, or at least that was what the common people were informed. It is now a common knowledge that the world is now more unequal and unjust than it ever was any time in the past.

What worries me the most is the realization of the ideological enslavement of most individuals in accepting the worldview propagated by the select few that profit from it. To kill an evil that was not religious, but exploited religion for its purpose, another evil was created that was far more destructive than its predecessor. What we failed to realize is that it was not the religion which was at fault but the people who exploited the religion for their benefit. These same people became the leading proponents of this new evil because only they were the ones who were resourceful enough to benefit from it. Man was put into new chains and these chains were created by his own willing support. This New World Order reminds me of the quote by Rousseau,

“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”

But why did men consent to this unfortunate state of affairs?

Homo sapiens are the species of animals that happen to possess freewill. This means that man is free to take his own decisions conscious of its effects. This part of humanity is what was twisted and presented in a way that seemed to philosophically synchronize with the liberal doctrine. Although man is free by will but that freedom has ways to be unconsciously imprisoned. Man has the freedom to choose between various choices, but what if those choices have been devised to deceive him. This is exactly what happened to him. He was given the choices that were beneficial to the designers of the liberal doctrine. Media played the role of creating the consent among the people that the choices provided to them were the best possible. Noam Chomsky has vividly described the process of ‘Manufacturing Consent’ by the media in his book by the same name. He has shown that the mainstream media that is controlled by the people who control the present world order only shows those views regarding events that are beneficial to the propagation of this world order. This displays the elaborate plot that has been laid and employed to control the minds of the common people by rewiring their tastes according to their doctrine, where the value of an action is determined economically and not morally.

This doctrine became so successful because the biggest threat to its existence was dealt with from the very moment of its conception; the threat was religion. Homosexuality, live-in relationships, alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution and other vices could never have been institutionalized to the scale they have been now. Anyone who would now speak for the religion would be branded communal and anybody who would fight against the liberal values would be declared obsolete in his thinking. The intellectualism would be dominated by the propagated doctrine in any field be it science, literature, politics philosophy, economics et cetera. This is what Thomas Kuhn calls irrationality in science where the solutions to the problems are not derived objectively as science proposes, but within the paradigm that exists.

The reason I described the above historical analysis was because of my recent experience, the experience that left me deeply saddened. I was branded communal due to my voice for my community. I was asked to leave my country because I raised my voice for my community. I was questioned whether I had my allegiance to my country or my religion. The question itself is absurd because if people have their allegiance only to their country, religions would cease to exist and there would be wars and crimes without any responsibility towards any other country. I was asked whether I was first a human being or a Muslim. The question was again absurd because I am a Muslim that believes in one God who has created me and all the other human beings. So all humans are practically kin. But do kin not fight based on selfish interests. They do, and they do it often. I am then a human being who is an Indian Muslim who believes that he has the right to fight for himself and others who are being oppressed or not given proper justice because they belong to certain community. I am also human enough to fight against the Indian Muslims and Muslims from other countries who falsely employ Islamic Principles for the suppression of others. I am also equally vigorous to fight against the people from other religions who misuse their religious values in order to suppress others. My ultimate fight is against the oppression of minorities in all the countries of the world. In the sphere of violence my fight is for the punishment of same scales of violence with same scales of punishment be it from any religion, community, region, caste et cetera. My fight is for true egalitarian society where justice is itself free and not imprisoned.

I would now quote from two different scriptures from, two different religions that make me fearless for my fight against the above vices.

“If anyone slays a person, it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”

— Qur’an

Silence, it is said, is better than speech, if speak you must, then it is better to say the truth; if truth is to be said, it is better to say what is agreeable; and if what is agreeable is to be said, then it is better to say what is consistent with morality.

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa”

Originally published at alijaved12123.blogspot.in on September 20, 2016.