CANDLE REVOLUTION

There is a phase in the life of anybody who attends college or ever goes to the university. This phase is a slight, or in some cases a major, tilt towards the left. As a student you represent everything that drives you leftward. You are recently educated (well at least educated enough to matter), you are generally financially dependent, either on your parents, caretakers or the government. And you have less freedom of spending money than you would have, had your earned your own. Hence, your education, your facilities, what you spend and mostly everything comes from elsewhere. And although it rarely happens, but there is always a vague possibility that if you do not comply with certain norms or rules set by others, all these facilities can be revoked. This kind of personal dependence mixed with the recently acquired information and knowledge of the “trends” of dependence established in the world, in almost every society affect the student on a very emotional level. Then the person through his course of studies or extra reading comes across philosophies and theories that talk about “all this evil” and getting rid of it in a stroke. He becomes familiar with the “evil words” like “Capitalism”, “Classism”, “Fascism” etc. and then the words that claim to be or offer the solution like “Marxism”, “Socialism”, “Communism” etc. In many cases at this point a leftist is born. Very few of these leftists are leftists for life. In most of the cases the leftist will continue being a leftist as long as the education lasts and/or till the financial independence is reached. Then when the financial independence is reached if the person gets a job or begins a work where he/she continues to work with the people who have graduated out of the same institution, the tendency of remaining a leftist generally stays. However, if the person gets a job or begins working in something where he/she has no or minimal contact with his/her peers, and specially if the financial remuneration is decent, the inclination towards the left tends to slowly fade away. The reason is once you earn well and are financially independent, you realize that you can do or access a lot more things that you couldn’t previously, as a student. Now you see that as your situation has improved, and as that of many others with whom you had affinity has not, you are on the other side of the struggle. You have access to things, thanks to your superior education and/or your good earnings, that others don’t. So, after this point if you continue being a leftist, it doesn’t sit well with your own situation. It puts you into the shoes of the one you once thought of as “the villain”. You have become the person you supposedly despised once. So, if you continue being what you were once you either have to feel guilty at every step, or you have to believe in sharing things that you have hard earned with the underprivileged. You want none of the two. Hence, the leftist who was born in the university is now gone. That is the story of the most of us. At least of the most of us who get to see the university. I suppose it is almost a natural phase of evolution.

However, the fact that people tend to fight for some years in their different ways based upon their different beliefs or that they quit fighting eventually because continuing the fight one day takes them to a mirror where they find themselves standing as their most formidable opponents does not change the nature of the world or the society we live in. They don’t become either better or worse.

Nevertheless, they could have changed had we been able to change the human nature, instead of trying to change the social system. And the most ironic fact is that out of all the things that we try to change to no avail, only human nature is the thing that we can really change. The problem is it cannot be changed through social reforms, revolutions or other group based endeavors.

Any ideology, moderate or extreme, can be incomplete, too impractical or simply theoretical, and hence unimplementable because human beings of a certain nature can follow only certain ideologies or ideas. If the ideology goes against the human nature, it will have to be imposed and will be detested and eventually destroyed. Moreover, if we talk about imposing ideologies which go against the nature of the society on which they are being imposed, the humans imposing them should be entirely different in their “mental-build” from the general populace, which is not the case in most of the or nearly all of the situations. It is simple logic that a person suggesting treatment should be either immune to the disease in question or at least should have cured himself first. A mentally ill person cannot suggest the treatment for another individual suffering from the same condition if he has not been able to cure himself first. And mass treatments are not going to work ever. Let’s take an example: there is a group of 51 persons suffering from schizophrenia. One of them (let’s call him Mike for the sake of ease) suggests that fifty of them take a certain pill, which he believes will cure them all and is ready to force them to take it. Mike obviously does not take the pill himself as in his state of schizophrenia he fails to realize that anything is wrong with him. Others also think the same thing about themselves and that the other fifty people are insane. There is really no way to prove who is sane and who is not. Except for one, that Mike or anyone else of the group decides to doubt his own sanity and decides to take the pill himself. This thing if it happens ever is the rarest one to come across. The normal course of action for a group is to try to give everybody else the pill. However, it is illogical if ego is taken out of the equation: if everybody you come across is insane, why aren’t you too? Just because you are you. And being you, are you the best specimen of human species to ever walk on the planet? Come on, see it mathematically once: if everybody is insane, you must be insane too. You don’t feel so? And that is proof enough? Do you think everybody else feels that they are insane? No, they don’t. Actually they are exactly in the same boat. Not only they feel they are fine, they also feel that everybody else isn’t! Hence, my aversion to group based solutions. The solution of all that is wrong has to be applied by the person who has conceived it on himself first. If it works everyone will follow suit. Without the need to impose the “treatment”.

Hence, from where I see both communism and capitalism have failed to make the world a better place. Or any other “ism” for that matter. Because they are ideas conceived by people to treat groups which are essentially composed of others and without fail exclude a certain type of person who is normally the type the imposer belongs to. The only hope for making the world a better place is changing the human nature itself. How to begin? By changing your own. There is NO OTHER WAY OUT!

Now the question arises “how to change the human nature? Or one’s own for that matter?”

Well, the answer is first realizing that one is at fault. The first requisite to change something is realizing that it is not right. The second one is knowing that something else can replace it. So, now we have to ask ourselves what is exactly about the human nature that we want to change. Well, we all the time think and state that we are civilized unlike animals and unlike our own primitive ancestors. But is it true? Why exactly do we think that animals or primitive humans aren’t civilized? Because they cannot understand rap music? Or because they cannot read Shakespeare? I suppose not. They are not civilized because their existence depends on selfishness and cruelty. And they don’t have the faculty to question or give a second thought to it. On the other hand we CAN question and give a second thought to it. The problem is in spite of all this the nature of our society has changed very little in millennia. We do question our greed and our readiness to indulge in violence to satisfy it; however, our society is still based on the laws of jungle, although veiled under subtle exteriors. In order to “succeed” we still have to cheat, harm, damage and should the need arise exterminate other humans or other species. There is no mutual and harmonious exchange of resources. Humans, despite their supposed technological advancement, are still supposed to devote almost their entire lives to the fulfillment of their most basic needs. They cannot simply “sit” on their civilization and contemplate the nature of the universe or indulge in other “higher pursuits”. They have to “hunt” to survive. All else is secondary. If we hope to change the human nature the first thing we need to change is this dynamic. A civilized society is essentially a society where basic needs no longer rule. Otherwise, what seems civilized is in fact just a technologically advanced jungle where rules of hunter and prey apply.

Now that we have more or less identified the problem, we can look for its solution. How to change a violence and hunting based society to a harmonious one? There are ways of doing it, but let me warn you: in order to effect a change you will have to transform your whole build. You will have to go against what has been your whole existence hitherto. You will have to stop hunting. And you will have to stop being hunted. How to stop hunting? Well, there is only one way, become a “vegetarian”. Don’t eat without which you can live well. Don’t snatch. Don’t cheat people into giving you things that you don’t deserve. Do business, but don’t do dirty business. Sell stuff if you have to, but don’t sell what you don’t have as is happening everywhere. People are selling things that do not exist. People are selling things that should be given away for free either on their own or with other things that are sold. For example, a hospital charges you money for arranging for a doctor to examine you. Later on, you come to know that the doctor’s seeing is not really enough, that you will have to do some tests. In a particularly isolated case it is understandable that a test costs you separately, however, as we see now a days when you go to the hospital, no matter if you have a headache, a common cold or a malignant tumor, you will have to do a lot of tests for which you are charged separately. Once you are done with the tests, you go back to the doctor and you are charged once again for showing him the reports. Now you will be prescribed medicines (or more tests in some cases) which you will have to pay for as well. My question is why a hospital does not tell you right at the reception that you have to do a number of tests before any treatment could be administered? Why don’t they give this service of prescribing the tests for free? This is what I mean when I say dirty business. They could also charge you once as a whole package for a certain set of common ailments and make it all cleaner and easier. However, so many people wouldn’t make the insane amount of money that they don’t deserve if they follow this line of business. They will make only the profit which is just. That would be something closer to clean business.

Another example would be, as I talked about in another article “Ignorance And Slavery”, the computers. Has anybody ever wondered why computers are sold with a particular Operating System (OS) preinstalled? Why don’t you get a choice while buying a computer? Why aren’t you even told that there are choices? Why are you forced by all manufacturing brands to buy a computer that runs on a virus prone OS and which essentially comes without a reliable antivirus software? Why are you supposed to buy an antivirus later on? That is dirty business. In case of an extremely popular brand of smart phones, there is dirty business prevalent too in a very different way. They sell their products to you obviously for your hard earned money and yet the product still belongs to them because you get what they give you. There is no other thing possible. The clean business could be selling your product on the basis of its virtues and if the seller doesn’t survive as a business because their product is bad, they get out of business. That is the only competition which would not be called dirty. Creating monopoly in different ways is dirty.

Now we go to the second step of our effort of changing it all. Don’t get hunted. You can do two things when some person or animal comes to hunt you: 1. you try to hunt them instead. 2. you share with them what you have so that none of the two are left hungry. Sharing is better as it puts you at less risk and changes you as a person. When you change as a person it becomes infectious and that is how we can expect to change the society one day.

The only revolutions that can last in our world are that we learn to do clean business and we learn to share. No other revolution will last. It is a constant flux and reflux. Any truly lasting change always comes from an individual. It always has to come from you. You have to realize that you are sick too. You have to take the pill first. And the rest will follow.

To conclude I would quote Buddha as he says in Sutta Nipata “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened”.

– Madhuvan Rishiraj