29 January 2021
The funniest thing is how the ideas that one author has offered are in many ways so self reaffirming for many who have been thinking all along on those very lines. I had a friend and mentor whose understanding of interpersonal relationships, I had even dubbed as ‘Pach Principles’ which was a spin on both his name and the Bandung famous Panch Sheel of the Nehru-Lai keystone, which could have heralded a completely definitive and different world order had it held! Of course for me, it was amusing that a researcher like Rutger Bregman had not heard of Sangam Literature or Upanishads, else a cursory reading or even Wiki search would have thrown up for him, the evidence that his research echoes understanding of humanity that has come from both insight and experience across the ages! It is based on Aram, a concept that came to define incidentally Tamil Kingship itself, for the King (Arasan) was defined as defender or actor of Aram, and government in Tamil is also Arasu- meaning that which acts by Aram. So the rules and practices that applied to the Commons, which included all humanity in a realm were just those that would when applied to an individual would ennoble the individual, without inflicting upon the person the slightest amount of indignity, without subjecting the person to slightest degradation of the compassion that is due by virtue of being a fellow human. Equally a person well versed in Biblical or Quranic or Buddhist or Confucian or Tao or Shinto thought could find such portend in respective philosophical tomes. Basically, Bregman seeks to exact a standard extracted from the best that humans can offer, in the most practical way possible.
Along the way Bregman demolishes a whole lot of myths. Two books ( Utopia For Realists, Humankind-A Hopeful History) that are full of references and annotations, the way scientific papers are written, make for wonderful reading at both scholastic and cursory levels, confronting our bias and confirming our curiosity in a way that a another iconic author, Yuval Harriri of Sapiens, ( a book based on ‘Veneer theory of humankind’ apparently which I am yet to read because I couldn’t go beyond the blurb) endorses him now-“Humankind challenged me and made me see things from fresh perspective” is the exact quote! I feel that to write about what he has written would be to take away the surprise that readers would have, and it is better than this remain a word of mouth endorsement. Yet, for why we are in this soup, it is in my view, alright to mention his conclusions drawn in Humankind as well as Utopia.
Firstly many of the stuff he has discovered, as reiterations. But for human frailty where the best becomes enemy of the good, and for poor human character and conduct, many of these precepts would have become operative principles by now. So here goes:
Universally we need to work less and live more, we need to learn leisure and learn to be comfortable with ourselves, for humans are best when they have all the time about any and every thing!
The notion that offering wealth free, as sums of money makes for ‘wasteful expenditure’ is unsupported in evidence. Universal Basic Income irrespective of individual earnings is the way forward to not distribute wealth, but to unlock human potential. So NYAY is not ‘annyay’ and actually the acronym is a false premise. We don’t do justice to the poor by offering them a guaranteed basic income, we are doing justice to ourselves if any. The premise for distributing money to all is that actually economically it is a good thing, socially it is a wonderful thing, and universally it is transforming power.
Poverty afflicts the soul, contrary to what many religious orders offer, austerity of self to the point of deprivation is not a good thing. There is a measurable mental bandwidth, the one that makes us better neighbours, better spouses, better parents and better humans in the end, and it is related to a certain minimum guarantee with regard to our being. So welfare is a wrong word, investment is correct way to view welfare spending, only instead of tailoring solutions through experts and the maze of bureaucracy, just give the humans the means- which is legal tender of money now! ( Remember Geet Govind’s Buke pet bhajan nahi hoth Gopala?) Basically a poor human is mentally as weak as physically, when nourished with resources at a basic level, meta-analysis shows with clear evidence across continents and communities, that humans recover and blossom to their full potential! ( remember that black and white tacky cartoon of how a human shuts down becomes weak when parts of his body progressively stop working and how the human regains health when they swing back into action together? It was a Films Division project to promote ‘unity’ in India if my memory is correct. Bregman’s discovery is simply that, not anecdotally but with evidence.
Bullying, every form of human depravity, including the maximising of differences amongst us, is based on a gaming of resources, when humans are conditioned to think that their resources come from another bunch of humans. The need to dominate comes from our prejudice of limited resources available for distribution, which is far from the truth. Taken in a way we understand, inequality is a recipe for disaster in human societies for they underwrite the reasons for crime, for violence, for breakdown of social networks and civility. However, given just a minimal level of resources, the inequality blurs, for resources bridge the gap to just that level, where the humans can begin to appreciate the humanity in others. That is why Tolstoy’s concept of communes, Gandhiji’s experiment with ashrams, the TN Government’s Samathuvapuram ( Citadels of equality), transform the humans who gather here, making their world view far less prejudicial and far more compassionate.
When in doubt assume the best: Asymmetrical feedback means we simply reinforce our doubts, our prejudices so they become a self fulfilling prophecy. If we just held back on our distrust and allowed trust a chance, we would come away less stressed in our human interactions. Remember, homo sapiens is the only ape or primate that can blush! The only ones whose eyes are white with a dot of pupils that can make us spot our gazes from a distance, whose eye contact is the way trust or lack of it is made out! ( ‘Look me in the eye’!) So we are made up in a certain way, because evolution has found these to be the best tools to take us to the top of the species table and commandeer the resources of an entire planet!
Think in ‘win-win’ scenarios for humans are going no further first than ‘what’s in it for me’! Why do we get a sense of ‘feeling good’ when we perform an act of ‘kindness’? Why is mercy twice blessed, blessing the one that gives and the one that takes? You can blame it on our puppyness, on our evolutionary choice that has made us facially resemble a forever adolescent, smoothening our brows, our jaw lines, our cheeks, so that our countenance appears friendly and not fierce. ( Just see the contrast in facial features across hominins and you will be surprised that ‘friendliness’ was an active evolutionary choice.)
Ask more questions: It is why critical thinking was the corner stone of our civilisational transformation. If you look at unbroken civilisational train of human thought, it has been to seek ‘purpose in the grand scheme of things at the individual level, and to seek to know the workings of this marvellous mysterious universe across the ages’. All of us are Rishis actually, we seek spirituality at the level of the individual and science as a community!
Temper your empathy, train your compassion: Empathy is restrictive right now, because human has not evolved to expand the ability to place his/er self in the shoes of more than a dozen others at a given time. After that we burn out. Compassion on the contrary, is just commiserating with others, offering a shoulder or ear without being judgemental. Compassion is interacting with the entire Universe not on our terms but theirs! Again science shows meditation promotes our ability for universal compassion, no wonder our Vedic or Siddha thoughts and outpourings are full of it! Brahman or Cosmic Consciousness is now a scalable version of compassion raised to the power of infinity?
Try to understand the other, even if you don’t get where they’re coming from: Applying rationale or perspective to information promotes understanding. Many a times, simply allowing time to fill in and expand that information sufficiently to allow us to reflect upon itself enables understanding. Nelson Mandela had dozens of meetings with an Afrikaner general who led a militia, before South Africa transitioned from Apartheid to Democracy. Sometimes all that humans need to understand is proximity!
Avoid the News: This is something,many I know personally have managed for years now. Of course,we can see occasions to offer perspective as analysis advancing a pattern, of utter predictability bordering on the ridiculous because the repeat offenders think they have gotten away with it. In Post Truth World examples are galore, from Trump to Xi, and we need not digress into specifics here. Otherwise the golden rule would be what worked for us in the 70s, when you did a weekly round up of news globally and heard headlines twice a day. These days the yellowness of journalism has gone through the roof that there are no more staid columns, no more pithy editorials and no perspective in broadsheets too. TV news is all about decibels and rhetoric gets more jingoistic each passing nanosecond! Meeting people in flesh and blood is what humans have evolved to do, digital social media platforms are where humans are conditioning themselves to be duplicitous and at their worst!
Don’t punch Nazis: It means that don’t confront an extremist. More importantly a RW or LW ideologue is more likely dripping with prejudice that if you confront him or her, they are likely to be tripping more in their drivel. So just approach them in non confronting manner and remind them of their humanity. The antidote to the ‘killer’ is the ‘puppy’.
Don’t be ashamed to do good: People are consciously averse to admitting that their acts are predicated by their need to act in kindness or genuine compassion. So don’t do ‘gupt dhan’ ( anonymous donation) and don’t do charity in secret. Offer it with your face. It promotes more such acts, more of your direct interactions with others, it activates those genetic predispositions that made you human in the first place! People can tell easily between flaunting and doing, so don’t exert yourself! Folks ain’t dumb!
Be Realistic: For far too long we have allowed the cynic, the one pushing human behaviour and reducing it to the sum of our baser instincts, that we were nothing more than animals with a veneer of civilisation, etc to guide and restrain what we have naturally evolved as- as humans we are guided and goaded by our genes to be good to one another!
For each of these principled ideas, there is founding scientific proof offered. It in short upturns the Hobbesian world view on its head! What is most glaring is how many ideas like Lord of the Flies one where a bunch of boys lost on an island fight and kill each other ( the premise for ‘Reality TV from ‘Big Boss’ to ‘Survival’), the Stanford Prison Experiment, our surviving evolutionary cousins the chimps versus the bonobos, Richard Dawkins ‘Selfish Gene’ etc come crashing down in the face of such meticulously researched and cross referenced work here, were questioned but allowed to get away back then, because they appeared more ‘plausible’ conforming to our bias about ourselves, despite flying in the face of scientific evidence! But for a few crucial missteps, America would have been a capitalist economy driving a communist state leading with universal basic income, prison reform, and social safety nets much more than what it already offers!
Most of us will be tempted to dismiss Bregman. Before we do so, just read. Look at the volume and body of evidence. While it is tempting to get on with our lives, Bregman’s evidence demands a reset to our premises. A clear rethink on many of the assumptions that have proven so divisive to us as individuals, as families, as communities and as nations. Because they are indeed, so in conflict with our evolutionary nature!
Concluded from https://indiarubbermancom.home.blog/2021/01/28/the-human-soup/
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