In furtherance to the last post throwing light on Social Paradox, we move on to the paradox of another aspect of our collective life i.e. Political Paradox. This is not to say that the successive type of Paradox i.e. Political, Economic, Religious & Scientific are exclusive to the social paradox. They are indeed part of larger Social Paradox only, however, for the ease of understanding {…with clarity} we would deal with these aspects (…. Corresponding to the order of aspect of human behaviour), separately. Based on our understanding of primacy effect we tend to place one aspect over the other and one such understanding is what I am sharing with you. However, despite multiplicity of overlapping order, the most widely accepted is the one that appeals your common sense easily. Please be mindful of the fact that politics as aspect of human life extends much beyond the politics that we (…ordinarily) understand today i.e. Electoral Politics. Electoral Politics is just part of the political aspect of human life, not the end in itself. Almost all civilizations, drawing reference from (….. either) their respective article of faith or scriptures, have acknowledged that every human being in his/her own existence, is enjoined to play role of sovereign ruler over at least one strand of human evolutionary process. Even, slaves, in classical sense, had a sovereign rule over their own family life, if not over anything else. They had their own sub-set of society operating with all elements of politics, as their master’s society. Thus, no fabric of human society is free from Politics; even those in whose names politics is played {…. often so conspiratorially} by today’s politicians, themselves have politics operating within. Anyway, let’s not digress any further. You must be wondering, why this order i.e. Social, Political, Economic, Religious & Scientific. Let me explain the spirit behind this order, before I take up the next of the {kind of} Paradox for any further explaining. Just have a look around & you realise this is what is the pattern of our evolution. First we become part of a family that in turn leads us to the membership of society, which in turn enjoins us to adhere to the rules/regulation of that society even before we understand anything else of our collective life. Hence, Social Paradox takes precedence over everything else. Next, we are faced with the reality of social life & the inherent reality of primacy effect, leading to giving primacy to one set of people/behaviour over the other. This leads to identification with a particular group which in turn results into comparison/competition extending up to envy/jealousy and manipulation. And managing this social manipulation is all about politics. Hence, Political Paradox takes precedence over paradox of {even} economic behaviour. At face value, it seems that the economic part of collective life takes precedence over Political. But let’s try and understand another line of thinking - often over looked - this will embolden you to even challenge the conventional wisdom propagated by modern day proponent of the theory that politics comes next to economics not the vice versa. Let’s start with present day case study……as an individual we all are exposed to the political aspect of social life even before we (personally/individually) become an agent of economic operation of the society. Are we not into the politics of the institution that imparts us the skill necessary to earn our livelihood? Of course, we do. Fact is, even before we become active contributor to the economic activities of society we are deep into politics. Next, let’s turn to the evidence found in anthropological chronology of the human evolution. Until evolution of banking system, in organized form not even in its present/sophisticated form, there was no theorized system of economics, let alone study of Economics as separate branch of study. And you know quite well, when this banking system took root. It all started in the medieval Europe. And we also know that the humanity has been witness to politics of territorial rule or civilizational rule – operating at macro level, let alone micro level politics operating at smallest unit of human society - from the days of invention of wheel. Now I leave it to your reasoned wisdom to draw your own inference, as to which of the two viz. political or economic, aspect enjoys precedence over the other. Hence, the fashion statement that, you hear around electoral season that, for the underprivileged what matters most is economic prosperity not politics is as mythical as ……. “Nothing is impossible”. …..There are many such myths that you will see shattering in future posts. Next level of collective human activities is: religious, as we know (….When I say “as we know” all I mean to say is that religion as we know is seen religion only if it is compartmentalized and isolated by unbending rules/regulation exclusive to the group, whether by ascribing to revelation or sagacity of sacred propagator). When society operates with certain level of basic universal social order coupled with political and economic activities in place, the next level required is the application of values/rules/regulation guiding inter-personal, inter-familial, inter-clan, inter-tribe, inter-creature i.e. interaction with creatures other than human being, behaviours. And religion is all about believing in set of such values/rules/regulations {… this is the reason even so called non-religionists like atheists/liberal are basically religionist as they too have their own set of values/rules/regulations and at times they are no less extreme either in propagating their own un-understood religion}. However, beyond this, religion is also (principally) associated with identification (of creatures) with a Creator & rules/regulations believed to be derived from HIS preaching through HIS messenger, or in our part of the world AVATAR. Yet next level of collective human activities is Science which (supposedly) operates on logic & often challenges religion. And contrary to the widely held perception - that society got introduced to the science, post European Renaissance – science has always been part of the human life. However, to appreciate this we need to widen our ambit of thinking beyond the text book of elementary/intermediate science. There is an irony or fun, call it what you wish, here: science is believed to be very difficult a subject but at the same time, spirit of Science is so easy to understand that it hardly needs any elaboration. Despite my best effort, to keep it short, this post, too, got stretched to exhaustive length. Hence elaboration of views on each type of successive (…collective) human aspect & its corresponding paradox is to follow in future post. For now, thanks.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 07:07:30 +0000
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