Constitution vs Theocracy, and Proportional Representation

Democracy and theocracy cannot be compatible.  While democracy relies upon equality before law and equal say in political decisions, theocracy doesn't.  As we know a theocracy is a state that is governed by a government that derives its authority directly from a religion, usually invoking the authority of a religious deity and basing their laws on religious texts.  And no religion accepts a non-believer or a person with a different faith as an equal to be given the same rights as its followers.  And then again, almost all religions discriminate against women and also people with differing sexual orientation, that is, LGBTQ.  And thus a democracy by definition has to be secular.  Needless to say that this is a proposition that will be enthusiastically accepted by people of religious groups that form minorities but is likely to be resisted / resented by the religious denomination to which the majority belongs.

But then, since democracies decide things like elections or referendums by numbers, the majority gains an upper hand in these decisions.  And this is the fundamental irony of democracy which may enable a politician, who is so inclined, to use democracy to finish off democracy!

Naturally, the question arises as to how to prevent this from happening.  And one answer that immediately suggests itself is that instead of relying on a first past the post system, a democracy must necessarily have a system of proportional representation where each party gets seats in a legislative body in the same proportion as its percentage share in total votes cast and counted.  This also implies that elections have to be fought by parties and not individuals as individuals can shift their loyalty if they so choose.

In this context, I would like to draw your attention to an earlier post by me where I have advocated a reform of the current electoral process.  You will find it here - https://anil-upadhyaya.blogspot.com/2014/04/people-or-chunks-of-map.html.  Please read this post before moving on to the next para.

Once it is accepted that elections are to be fought by parties and not individuals, and then individuals are to be appointed by parties, a few more much debated issues get resolved.

The foremost is the ability of the parties to keep criminal and ill-qualified people at bay as in this system it is parties and not people that win elections.  Because of this, professionals qualified to do justice to the tasks that will be handled by them in the legislative bodies can be identified and appointed by the parties.  It may be noted that all this is not meant to preclude people with lower or little qualifications from politics itself.  They are welcome to form and run political parties if they so wish, but legislative and ministerial positions must be occupied by people who can do justice to them.  These people need not have affiliations with political parties but must possess the requisite qualifications that may be laid down by law.  This will take care of the complaint that while we prescribe requisite qualifications for even such inconsequential posts as peons, those at the very helm are not required to have any.

In fact in this system one may make it mandatory for people desirous of working in legislatures, to acquire prescribed qualifications carefully designed for such tasks.  New courses can be introduced in universities for this purpose.

This reform alone is not capable of solving the fundamental problem of political funding which is said to be the mother of all corruption.  This problem can ba partly alleviated by making rallies illegal.  These are a huge sink of funds for political parties.  Simultaneously we should create a broadcasting corporation that gives equal / equitable access to all parties to reach out to the masses.  Of course, this will be only a small beginning and this topic of political funding deserves separate and serious attention.

The Great Storytellers

Professor Yuval Noah Harari says that stories provide the foundation of human beings' capacity to cooperate in much larger numbers compared to other life forms.  This capacity to cooperate arises from use of fiat money for trade and wealth accumulation, organizations as legal persons for bringing together large number of persons in a venture, a belief system like religion / constitution that ensures uniform social conduct.  And these are all based on stories / narratives - legal, social and religious - that we collectively subscribe to. 

While mulling this over, it occurs to me that the Brahmins in Hindu society perhaps constitute one of the finest and most prolific storytellers.  I may use the term we because I belong to this group. We excel not only in creating stories but also in telling those story in a most captivating way.  This is borne out by the humungous collection of mythological stories in Hinduism, and our mastery of classical music, dance, and dramatics (sangeet, nritya and naatya shastras).  Also, the language ascribed to us, Sanskrit, itself is exquisitely suited to singing hymns, telling stories and conduct of Karmkand.

Collaboration implies cohesive groups, and groups necessarily need a leader as their face and the glue.  Since it is stories that validate the ideas cherished by a group, and by implication its leader, it is only natural that leaders need the storytellers and the storytellers need their patronage to practice and sharpen their mastery of the said crafts.  The storytellers also need to be very versatile as successive leaders may have very different traits and each prevalent trait has to be justified and even celebrated to ensure that the group remains cohesive.  And thus a society tends to accumulate stories that may have conflicting morals encapsulated in them even as they maintain a semblance of continuity.  Some stories may support a very moralistic leader while others may extoll the pragmatist even as some others may find complete justification for suppression with a firm hand.  As the repertoire grows, one can pull out a story for endorsing any action or style of leadership.

In today's society this role, that traditionally belonged to Brahmins, has moved from a social group to the elites in bureaucracy, media, academia, judiciary etc.  They are the new age Brahmins.

While a symbiotic relationship between rulers and storytellers serves a very important function as long as the going is good, it drains the capacity of the elite storyteller group to be a watchdog and to alert the society against a less than ideal leader or to be a mechanism to correct an errant leader.  And if someone in the group does set out to do so, we hear calls for a "committed" bureaucracy / media / judiciary etc.  And such self serving groups may end up accelerating the decline in a society instead of correcting it and bringing it back to the right path. 

And so a society must choose its storytellers with care and also critically examine the stories told to them.  This is one reason why democracy is indispensable despite it not being the best possible system.

EVOLUTION & DESIGN; PHYSICS AND FREE WILL

Evolution versus Design debate has been going on for quite long.  The scientists' community firmly believes that evolution it is.  Evolution, which essentially means coming into existence, through the mechanism of laws of nature, of random permutations and combinations of elements in nature that are able to persist and replicate themselves.  It denies any intervention by a conscious power that shapes things in accordance with its will.

Evolution seems to be the correct theory on two counts -  1) The long, long time taken for life forms to emerge and evolve, and 2) Consciousness seen as arising from life and not the other way round.  Thus, if  a Consciousness existed before the emergence of life forms and it was this consciousness that designed the life forms, the time taken would have been much shorter, which is not the case.

Also, classical physics maintains that given an initial configuration, all future states will evolve strictly according to the inviolable laws of physics and no miracles or interventions by something non-material like consciousness can take place.  This absolutely rules out anything like a free will.  

Of course, given the vastness of our universe and unimaginably large number of entities (fundamental particles), it is not possible to exactly specify an initial configuration and apply the laws to each participating particle to compute future states.  This is why even classical physics leans on statistical methods and probabilities.  The second law of thermodynamics is an outstanding example of this.  But this reliance on statistics and probabilities is not because of any non-determinism in the laws of physics but merely because of the extremely large numbers involved.  It may not be out of place to mention here that Quantum Physics poses challenge to this determinism and asserts that probability is a fundamental thing that applies to each individual particle in existence and not merely to large aggregates.

Setting quantum physics aside for the moment,  the play of probability in the classical sense because of extremely large numbers involved, lends credence to the long time taken for complex molecules to develop and life to arise.  If some kind of consciousness or intelligence was involved, probably the time will be much shorter.  This argument is supported by remarkably short time taken in discovering not naturally occurring new drug molecules first with human intelligence and now with help from more powerful AI.  Please note the emphasis on 'not naturally occurring.'

And thus arises the logical dilemma.  The extremely low probability of certain things happening merely through natural laws somehow gets powerfully boosted once consciousness and intelligence arrive at the scene.  Thus while the probability of a structure like the Bhakhra Nangal dam arising on its own within a time frame of a couple of decades will be very close to zero, though technically non-zero, presence of intelligent human consciousness makes it almost certain within the same time frame.

And thus the intriguing question arises - Does presence of conscious human intelligence and the associated free will, somehow affect the operation of natural laws, thought to be inviolable in the classical realm?  And if so, are consciousness and the quantum realm somehow related.  And the bigger question is this - has consciousness arisen only now after evolution of advanced life forms?  And if it was there all along why has evolution taken so long?

What I can say with certainty is that I look forward to your thoughts in the matter.

Cooperation or Competition?

Professor Yuval Noah Harari propounds that we, the Homo Sapiens, have dominated this world because of our capability to cooperate in large numbers running into millions and billions.  While this is undeniably true, it makes one wonder whether it is this cooperation alone that has brought us all that we have today, or is there more to it.  When we look around us, we cannot miss noticing that but for competition, our achievements will be nowhere close to what these are today.  This is the reason that capitalist societies have laws against monopoly and restrictive practices.  This is also the reason that in communist or socialist societies you have products of poor quality, scarcities, and lack of innovation too.

Viewed from another angle, it is often noted that most of our breakthrough innovations have taken place during wartime.  The reason is obvious.  The competition is at its height during wartime.  Also so is the cooperation, because nothing unites people like war.

It is this fabric woven from the warp and woof of cooperation and competition that has given rise to the portmanteau "coopetition."

Interestingly the very same stories, namely religion, organisations, fiat money etc, that provide the basis for coperation are also the cause of competition, at times destructive like wars, at times productive leading to better ideas and products.  Globalisation also has a bearing on coopetition.  Globalisation has amplified the scope of human cooperation by bringing together societies that were insulated form each other.  At the same time it has brought about conflict between competing stories from different regions of the world.

Why did diverse societies need similar stories in the first place?  I would like to think that the multifarious needs of human beings are difficult to satisfy by an individual himself and even by a small group or tribe.  Hence the need for organizations, money etc and underlying stories.  Each society had a container organization for which the basis was provided by religion and the concomitant culture.  Within this container came up organizations specialising in meeting a specific need of the individual members of the society.  Again for each need there will be multiple organizations competing with each other leading to continued improvement.

I will be very happy if Prof Harari or some other scholar could throw more light on this fascinating tapestry of coopetition.