A thinking mind is anarchic and unfaithful

I am not sure about my fellow citizens, but I believe to have been raised with flawed morals and values. Let me reflect on my growing up memories, which I have realized to have an above average level of recall. My intentions is to hope that my reader, even if bad at acknowledgement or articulation herself/himself, can better understand the shaping of one's ethics/values.

Growing up, "justice" played an important role in my everyday life. It may be fights with fellow kids, understanding some mythological stories, making sense of complex Bollywood stories, or a situation arising in kindergarten. Once "justice" is given, I found it unquestionable, accepting it to be the fairest of all. 

There were some interesting aspects also, based from the emotional memories of my nursery times (It was in 1994-95, Jamshedpur. We stayed there for 10 months and I have some visual clear memories of few incidents. My younger brother was yet to make his entry, so I had less distractions from myself):

1: When I was denied a "trial for justice" I felt I was cheated and was at loss. 

2: When I developed a sense of sensing I am on the injustice side, I tried stalling or manipulating the "trials". In an event of zero sum justice (one of the two parties have to be punished and other will be pardoned) such manipulations for my benefit was often followed by a phase of guilt. 

3: Sometimes they were followed by irrational stints of revenge where I tried justifying my manipulations to be fair and in lieu of some past unfairness which had nothing to do with the present, which comforted my guilt feelings. This was also one of my early recalls of discovering the "evil" side. This thing had let me to believe that kids (I was fully aware of being a kid due to the pampering advantages adults gave me) are not always innocent and truth seeking, something which was brilliantly portrayed in a recent Danish flick, Jagten.

But all these were far less complicated. These are cases of me vs outside world. My consequences were functions of 1: my "deeds" under trial, and 2: my influence over the system of "trial" itself.

But then I observed something else which had forever destroyed my belief in "justice". The real complication surfaced when the verdicts started looking different when coming from a different adult. This had following effects:

1: Justice is relative, which means justice can be unjust. Or I may have been happy with an unfair verdict believing in to be fair.

2: Manipulating the trials is not an immoral option, but is very much necessary.

3: Unfair justice can be passed by adults consciously, seeing it to be as fair as I used to view manipulating my trials in lieu of some past revenge.

4: The state can be at fault with its justice then, so instead of listening to adults or "laws/legalities" one should talk with as much adults as possible to deduce what is right (at that age influenced by the Bollywood courtroom dramas).

5: In an adult/individual, more than the act of justice there is a greater responsibility which I figured to be taken seriously by very few, often trivialized or ignored as a crowd behavior. I concluded so because I could see a very distinct adults who cared for "justice". Later I realized that to be "ethics".

So in my nursery class, when my class teacher hit two of my friends when unable to pin point the source of nuisance, I was kind of devastated. I don't remember their names, but I remember their faces. She tried inquiring but then it was, perhaps, a tricky case. So she hit them both and stripped their half pants down. The thing which affected me was that, the teacher didn't dare taking a "judgmental call", but punished both of them, fully knowing that one of them is definitely being punished for no reason. It was not an accidental injustice, it was deliberate and was done by an adult who also happened to be a "teacher". This marked the beginning of my mistrust on teachers. Gradually,  I could observe more and more flaws in my teachers and I saw myself relying on books and my own senses more than the supposed mentors.

Another key lesson from that day's incident was: One of the guys was wearing underwear. So I thought I should start wearing one too. But then my parents prevented me till I was in std 6/7, and that's a different story :P Jokes apart, when I look back, I am amazed with how little natural rights Indian kids of 90s used to have.

One of the adults, or rather the only adult who I respected for being ethical was my mother. I may sound like just another kid respecting his mother as the common social norm, but it's not so. Many times I was given some very brutal punishments, a mix of physical and mental torture, by my mom. One can argue that was bad parenting, but given my nature, the hardship my young mom faced (she was 22 when I was in nursery) and the overall social norms existing back then, I think it' alright. But the most striking thing for me to respect her was: unlike other mothers who used to have no motivations to "probe" for truth/evidence and unwilling to punish their kids, my mother was opposite. Sometimes she cried as I cried over her physical punishments. And she went easy. Looking back I find it interesting, and fair on me since I was fully aware of the probable consequence of my misdeeds.

But the story doesn't end there.

My mother had flaws no doubt which I thought was okay. And then I realized there was bigger flaws. One of them was being religious. Being faithful and being religious are two different things. When faithful, one is committed to a person or a group of individual. When religious, one is committed to an abstract idea. Man by nature is religious. An average man is faithful to his own kind. this is also a low level form of being religious. Few men are religious. They are committed to an idea, ready to make sacrifices for some abstract concept. In ancient times it was Gods... in modern times, I suspect it is Natural Rights of Man.

The problem with being religious is rather absurd.

A man's values are valued in term of his loyalty. It may be towards his family, or community, or religion, or state etc. One of the case study is the ongoing practice of NDA government in India where anyone questioning the government will be termed as "anti national". And it works to a significant extent. It also works in China, Middle East, SE Asia etc. but that will be a different story.

The second category of man faced greater challenges. If one is not faithful to one's own kind to one's values then you will be left alone. In fact unless you make sure you are alone, you are yourself being dishonest to your own values. They constantly fight under the social norms they live and the value they believe in. All this leaves little room for self criticism for one's own values.

The classic example can be my mother and her religion. At her age and past struggles, she is unable to proclaim herself to be an atheist. The whole life she had lived until now will become invalidated if she accepts God is dead. This represents another curious behavior of humans: he being aware that not always he is capable of imparting justice.

So what did the society, together the average man and the thinking men, invent? They invented democracy. Instead of shouldering the burden, it's distributed. Instead of putting universal framework of ethics, the petty humans tried stalling some important questions by labeling it as "law of the land". Everybody believed in all powerful God, yet there is no ethical police to protect. 

If an Arab man is sentenced to death by his state for being gay, that's it. Other states will not do anything about it, except for reporting and hoping with awareness the "democratic" view gets pro-gay. It's always about the majority. Something injustice is happening, well spread awareness and educate so that the majority accepts. Something wrong has to be sold, well market till the majority is biased. 

With globalization and rise of soft power concept, things are getting better, but then that's a transactional diplomacy taking advantage of "justice" card. Ethics as an end in itself has been missing.

Talking of democracy, when I look back in history, democracy was always "illiberal". Fareed Zakaria tried defining illiberal democracy in 1997 as a system where citizens are cut off from the knowledge of the activities of those in power. But the definition has been revised by him in 2014 as a system where minorities are not tolerated by the powerful majority. I find it interesting because it took only 17 years for the definition to undergo such drastic change, and when "technology", the poster child of humanity to end all unfairness and unawareness, grew from zero to its zenith. I tried talking about the basic concept of illiberal democracy in the third part, The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, of this blogpost.

In this age of advancing science and over-expanding technology, we have been shifting ourselves towards "technology" beings than "social" beings. Quantization and precision is important for us. Data and statistics are our excuses for justification of actions. Bureaucracy and rules are above empathy and ethics. Abstractions are hunted down each day. The new ideal man is not Nietzsche's Uberman, but the optimized man who resembles close to an AI android. Questions to invalidate the past rules are not valid, since that will corrupt the past data, much like my mom holding on to her Hinduism. Empathy is seen as a distraction and weakness for a man. As long as he can optimize his external factors best to his resources and capabilities, he should believe that humanity is doing the best. Is it so? What would have happened to the world of literature if Russian artists took that route after October Revolution? Not to forget, they were kept alive by their audience, the common folks.

But these times are different. The current one's is worse. This is exactly what Orwell feared which compelled him to tell his student, that he had proposed a far more darker version of the future than his 1984 big brother's. But then of the few thousands people I know, I feel I am the only one to mourn over the age of post ethics and democratic-statistically I am just 0.02% at best (does the percentage gets better or worse with bigger sample size?).

If you are reading this, then I thank you for bearing me till now. Now I may request you to bear a little more and read this extract from one of my favorite books which recently verified my personal opinions on democracy:

"After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?"