Why Facts Can Never Defeat Post-Truth Politics

Exposing Trump’s lies is irrelevant since truth for him is besides the point. Here is a better way.

This post first appeared in my new publication called The Discursive. It seeks to combine journalism with discourse analysis to explore a world we don’t understand. You can see the original article here, and here is a link to the publication.

A significant amount of chatter has been generated around this ‘post-truth’ era we all are apparently living in now. Dictionaries have anointed it as the word of the year. The sales of Orwell’s 1984 has been cited as evidence for popular interest in the subject. Conferences of philosophers, historians and journalists have been held around the world to deal with this ‘new’ challenge which all intellectuals face.

The question however is not whether we are in a post-truth era but when have human beings ever lived in a society where facts have been revered in politics and personal beliefs?

If we sense that something has changed in our polity, then it’s definitely not represented by a president lying on camera or his spokesperson citing ‘alternate facts’. The symptoms of this revolution are seen in the public’s response to lies and their apathy towards truth. The driver of this tectonic shift is not one person but the whole system of media and journalism.

BREAKING NEWS BROKE THE NEWS

The supposed ‘coup’ of lies on all mainstream discourses is not just a fashion fad but the end result of a media movement which started with television. 24 hours TV news with its incessant need for both content and viewers adopted a very specific model of electronic communication in the 1970s. This same model has transfigured into the monstrosity we now call as the fake news network.

In this model, the audience is defined as a reactive subject and the main goal of any media outlet is that of snatching attention and clutching on to it until the advertisements end.

This forms a loop where the media, especially news channels, package and select content to arouse people’s limbic systems and in return they are rewarded with TRPs and higher ad revenues. Since anger or anguish is the easiest and strongest emotion to elicit in people, negative news or outrageous claims now form the bulk of any TV content. Be it daily soaps, debates or even ‘historical’ documentaries about aliens, almost all of them employ an outrage loop designed to stimulate our reptilian brains.

THE INDUSTRIAL BULLSHIT COMPLEX

The rise of social media and wider penetration of the world wide web created new roles for the mass audiences who were usually voiceless. The anonymity and the absence of any social consequences granted by the internet provided a fertile ground for the expression of outrage which was earlier limited to the living room. Theoretically, these messages shared on the internet are public and freely accessible. However the algorithmic framework made sure that only people who would agree with it, or vehemently oppose it would generally see it. This echo-chamber technique perfected by facebook both distilled and intensified the outrage model invented by TV networks. Hence, far from being a challenge to MSM, social media is it’s perfect partner in terms of the end goal media owners seek to achieve — sustained attentions and ad revenues.

Trump says Mexicans are rapists, TV channels go run it all day, the audience quickly run back to their echo-chambers, ranting and seamlessly validating each others worldviews. In the end everyone makes mountains of money.

So where exactly is the problem?

The real post-truth crisis starts when people eventually realize that the system will not only work without any real journalism, but it will work better.

If journalism is all about reporting the truth, and truth is inconvenient for the hype machine, then it makes logical sense to divorce news from truth altogether. Breitbart, along with the whole network of fake news outlets, thus are the most evolved forms of main stream media instead of being their mortal enemies. They are most blatant and honest about their goal to generate outrage in their audience. The fact that they have massacred journalistic ethics does not make any dent on the reputation because they make money from eyeballs not truth. They are in the business of bollocks and their readers love it.

The shift here is not from journalism to lying, but from Truth to bullshit. This distinction is absolutely important in order to defeat the Bullshit complex. A liar is a person who knows the truth but consciously conveys information which contradicts it. A merchant of BS is not even concerned about facts or truth at all. He does not need to know it, he doesn’t need to refute it, all he needs is to induce the desired effect on his audience.

Bullshit is far more dangerous towards truth because exposing contradictions, revealing facts and even using logic does not cause any harm to it. Like the outrage loop, bullshit targets our limbic brain to induce feelings about truth, aptly called as ‘truthiness’. More importantly a person can bullshit even when he is speaking the Truth. Hence when Trump, Putin or Modi are stating facts they are still dishing out piles of horse manure. What is important here is not precisely the content of communication, but the intent behind it, the effects which are induced and the strategies used to achieve this.

THE ANTIDOTE

Journalism, where people act as transparent mirrors of Truth, where facts and opinions are separate and lying means instant death is perfect for countering falsities. However, it is completely impotent against bullshit. Passive presentation of facts barely make a difference since bullshit is not countering them but seeking to make them irrelevant.

When Modi talks about head transplants in vedic India or when Trump states that Obama is not an American, they are simply disregarding every criteria of Truth. This constant disregard and contradiction either confuses the audience or employs their selective attention to make themselves more appealing. Truth is thus rendered absolutely useless in political discourse.

The work of journalism then, in order to counter this, is not to reveal facts but strategies, patterns and scripts bullshitters are using.

This kind of journalism has to move away from the conception of a reactive audience, obsessed with breaking news, having short attention spans and forgetting events as soon as the debate ends.

This new journalism has to envisage a reflective reader and has to move beyond current events towards a long term analysis.

Most importantly, the new journalism doesn’t need to reveal facts, but expose discourses.

When I speak of discourses, I refer to a very specific definition often used in social science research.

Discourse here means:

1) A mode of organizing knowledge, ideas or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (as history or institutions).

2) A particular way of talking about and understanding the world or some of its aspects.

In these definitions, the power of language is supposed to be not just descriptive but primarily constructive. We form the world in our minds as we talk about it, which in turn directs our actions. This is specially true for identities. Thus, when Putin is talked of as the strongest leader in the western civilization or Trump says he will make America great again, they are constructing their identities along with a worldview. This process is an interactive and dynamic one. People draw on discourses and produce new ones continuously.

The work of discursive journalism is to mark out the discursive strategies used in a particular context, study its effects and suggest some counter strategies and possibilities of challenging and transforming them.

Only this kind of long term, analytical, research oriented endeavor can hope to defeat post-truth politics and its sudden omnipresence around the world.

This publication is an attempt to construct such a kind of journalism. Over the next few months, we will work on certain projects where we will understand how various agents used various discourses to achieve different effects in a particular event.

Our first project will analyze the demonetization policy undertaken by the Modi government in India in the month of November, 2016. After this we will take up Trump’s presidency and Brexit as our next projects.

If you want to connect with this project or have some suggestions regarding the topics we should look into kindly use this form.

How the Liberal Left Dug Its Own Grave

Ok so I know I said this blog is no longer active, but 2016 has smashed my brain too hard.
In 2014 the Hindu Fascist leader won a majority in the Indian elections. Then this year Brexit happened riding a wave of hate nationalism and anti-everyone-but-us hysteria. Then finally the icing on the cake was the Trump presidency. It was obvious he was lying. It was obvious he’s a douche bag who shouldn’t be hired as a janitor of a school let alone the president of the most powerful country. But people voted for him anyway.

I still think that this is a sign of desperation and not some collective mind fuck history has dumped on us. Before each of these rise of the right events, people were waiting and hoping for a left wing, liberal alternative to emerge. In India the elections were preceeded by two major uprisings against corruption and sexual violence. A party was also formed which remains the prominent player in the political arena.
In Britain the young people squarely rejected the racist claptrap. In America Trump was actually a solid presidential candidate only after Bernie Sanders lost.
Thus the old quote is again proven true:

Behind every dictatorship is a failed revolution.

People are looking for alternatives and when the left fails them, the radical right seems like the last resort.
Here is how I think the postmodern leftists and liberals dug their own graves:

1) They rejected any possibility of ‘Reality’ existing outside of an individual’s presumptions and pretensions. They proclaimed that everything which claims to be a universal or a generally applicable principle is a dictatorship of thought. It was not the Truth in them which made them powerful but rather their privileged position in the world.

2) This meant that all opinions about reality were equally valid and there was no possibility of any judgement. Thus they supported a theocratic dictatorship in Iran as it was against US imperialism. They supported cultural relativism which stalled humanistic progress and supplied the perfect alibi for regressive conservatives who attacked free speech, used blasphemy laws, stalled any bid for gender racial or social equality. This also meant that denial of science and history was seen as legitimate ‘Knowledge’. From here started the Orwellian Ignorance is Knowledge trend. Climate Change was denied. Holocaust was underplayed or seen as a conspiracy. Nazism became all right and so did the Alt-Right.

3) Since liberals and leftists still believed in freedom, they were paradoxically creating a situation where they themselves became powerless. It was said that every opinion, reality and truth was subjective and should be allowed to exist. But this also meant that beliefs which supported a fundamentalist streak, suppressing everything which contradicted them with violence, was also a legitimate exercise of freedom. Many people came out in support of Fundamentalist Islam when they sought to ban Salman Rushdie’s book and asked for his head. He was blamed and no one really stood up for the freedom of speech of this writer. Thus people who believed in liberty for everyone lost their rights because they believed that people who attacked the very space of freedom should be allowed to do so.

4) Their dogmatic rejection of any possibility of a common reality existing outside subjective opinions made it impossible for the left to organize themselves at a societal level. Instead of solving real problems by coming together, they confined themselves to theoretical ivory towers endlessly debating everything and giving stupid solutions which didn’t work. This also meant that there can be no consensus. People can just come up and say that in their subjective opinion they reject everything and that will be enough to destroy common reality. People couldn’t find any stable foundation for their life, their society and for collective actions. Problems which were real regardless if you believe they exist or not were ignored. Postmodernists were also furious in their attacks on Humanism which actually was the leading grand narrative against regressive values, however they were far more sympathetic to religion for no reason. This gave birth to the infamous regressive left, where fundamentalist faith was protected while rationality was demonized. While in the end of twentieth century humanists were successful in ending apartheid and in civil rights movement in USA, religion (which was faultering) was given a massive incubator so that it can grow its tentacles again. Once religion was accepted in intellectual circles, regressive values and appeals to sexist and racist traditions didn’t take time to come back and become respectable.

5) Now all of this created a powerless stalemate where the left could actually provide nothing of substance except for the pretentious dogma that every thought, opinion, belief and value was equal in terms of facts and truths. “Everything is Subjective” is not really an answer to global economic crisis, climate change or fundamentalist terrorism. This meant that at least the right wing could provide some superficial action plans. Ironically it is the right wing which now uses this dogma not to promote freedom but to impose their power by simply ignoring facts and presenting their hate and judgment in a 24X7 reality show. What we seek from our leaders now is not a plan for progress based on reality but entertainment and antics.
Politics is a show at par with Jersey Shore. Our leaders don’t have to inspire us anymore they just have to provide us our celebrity porn, make headlines for saying nothing and help us masturbate out of our depressing realities. This is all thanks to some glamorous leftist French intellectuals who said many logically incoherent things in 1970s to earn quick fame and money.

Why the ‘Law of Nature’ Argument is the Most Unnatural Concept Ever

The law of nature is a funny illusion.
It was used to justify slavery until the slaves revolted and claimed their rights.
It was used to sustain colonialism until the Europeans were kicked out and the natives did just fine.
It was used to imprison women until the world wars happened and magically they were able enough to work in factories.

Laws which were supposedly permanent and inherent – – existing since eternity – – were simply thrown away like fashion fads which outlived their trendiness.

And yet after a whole century of debunking the ‘natural’ argument most people still use it to justify their own prejudices and defend their medieval thought-castles.

Beneath all the ‘Natural Law’ arguments, there lies a certain kind of arrogance and a fallacious logic of morality.

The idea that human beings can defy the laws of nature (if any) firmly rests on the grandiose delusion that we can be independent of nature. It presumes that humans are this special species who have the ability to rebel and create a civilization which is autonomous.
Nothing can be farther from the truth.

The Nature/Culture binary is a false dichotomy. Living beings are natural beings by default. Nature constitutes them. All the characteristics, abilities and features of every living being has to have some inherent, natural, genetic basis. And it is a known fact that our civilizations’ precarious existence depend upon the whims of nature. (How many civilizations have been razed by natural disasters and climate disruptions? A shit load of them.)

Trees can’t walk, because its not in their nature to walk. Dogs can’t speak mandarin because they don’t have the genetic potential to speak any human language.

Similarly, every human action has to have some natural basis. Even artificial machines like spaceships can only be built by using our inherent potentials. We could invent rocket science because of our natural ability to reason and understand. We could create all the unnatural materials used in a space crafts by using the raw materials found in nature. And ultimately the spaceship flies according to the natural, inherent laws of physics which can’t be rebelled against.

If nature really forbids something, no living being can go against its diktat.

But this statement in no way can be paraphrased as, “Everything is as it should be.”

Violence and cooperation are both natural – – but war and peace are in no way the same from an Experiential or an ethical point of view.
Nature is diverse, dynamic and different. But it doesn’t mean that we have to accept things as they are.

We have the inherent ability to choose and change. And hence, the question of good and bad in no way relies on the natural and the unnatural.(For everything is ultimately natural.)

Global warming is not wrong because it is human made and against the natural order. Humans themselves are natural beings and hence can’t go beyond nature. Global warming is wrong because of its effects – – because of the disasters and immense loss of life it has brought about. But it could only happen because of the inherent, natural potentials of human beings to create and exploit.

Rapes occur in the wilderness; but it can in no way mean that this justifies their ethical validity.

Disease is a natural condition, often brought about by natural organisms. Should we stop making medicines to fight them? I don’t think so.

Equating natural occurrences to an inherent and universal moral order is an old concept. It makes no sense in today’s times because human beings have become a force of nature themselves. Although, the dichotomy between human and nature was always false, but its even more difficult to sustain the illusion in our age. We have the ability to change global climate, make new species with genetic engineering, reproduce with our new technologies and even start an ecosystem on a distant planet.

The dichotomy of nature/culture was essentially based on control. Things like climate, natural disasters and the wilderness were beyond our power. Now, even the most isolated forests and distant oceans are directly effected by human civilization and our collective actions.

In this scenario, to rely on the old ethical doctrine of ‘Natural Order’ can be disastrous. The community of climate change deniers illustrate this point brilliantly. They say that the global climate is simply shifting and transforming as it naturally has. And since this change is natural, therefore human beings should simply let it be and keep on pumping toxins into the world.

It is true that global warming is a natural process. But it doesn’t mean that we aren’t a causing it. Earlier volcanoes and meteors might have decided the destiny of global climate, now human beings do. And it definitely doesn’t mean that global warming is harmless.

This powerful position grants us a unique freedom in the order of nature. A freedom which is certainly not an autonomy, but a practical ability to transform the natural constraints which form us according to our intent.

We can no longer dump the ethical responsibilities on nature. This freedom demands that we think for ourselves, for responsibility is the inherent twin of liberty. It is time that instead of having yelling-competitions about what exactly is the order of nature, we focus on creating an order which actually creates better, more sustainable ecosystems.

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On a side note — CONGRATULATIONS TO USA!

 

The Haemorrage Unremembered

I am the sighs
Between your words.
The grammar
Of the underworld.

The thousand little fingers
Clawing the back of your skull.

I sprout between the synapses
Of the memories you’ve forgotten:
The swirling skirt
Of the dancing girl;
The child you could’ve begotten.

I am the tear, entombed,
in the wrinkle of your cheek.
The leaking heart
Of the distant past;
the dreams you never seek.

I am
the internal bleeding
of your brittle bones.
That unvisited cut
on your invisible soul.

And
Snip
Snip
Snip
You are cutting so fast.

And
Drip
Drip
Drip
You fall far away.

The Soul Without God And Theory

How can I explain?

Words can’t make you feel the deep, spiraling well I felt burrowing in my lungs as I stood in my verandah, staring at the clouds and knowing silently, calmly but profoundly that I exist.

No arguments can justify my fervent faith and devotion which I experienced as I sat everyday in front of my own sacred idols and prayed to them when I was six.

Not a single poem has been able to capture that of pain of realizing that my first lover didn’t really love me back. No verse can really explain the suffocating agony which ripped my innards into shreds then.

People will laugh if  I express that devastating feeling of being betrayed when my gods didn’t answer my desperate prayers at a time when I needed them most.

These are the moments which made me intensely aware of my being and that is precisely why words always feel so impotent when I try to express them.

Some philosophers say that language is the house of being. I think that is terribly stupid. Language might be the house of identity which can be communicated, but being precedes words. It is in fact a precondition of language. This is made obvious in those moments when language’s failure is so complete that it simply crumbles — in those events when we become speechless.

These are the times when life acquires a depth previously unknown or forgotten. It may not exactly be a moment of unbound joy (pain and sadness are just as adept). It may not even be a moment of uncontrollable emotion (people who practice mindfulness will know how calm observation has a silent profoundness to it).

I think these are simply the moments of intense awareness — the point when existence refuses to be ignored by consciousness. This is when we realize that the experience of life has a value independent of any more explanations.

You might have heard something similar from the New Age gurus and spiritual enthusiasts.
When they tactfully evade the use of ‘God’ to explain the meaning of these experiences, they often use words like higher consciousness, the divine, the supreme consciousness and so on.

What I found common in most of the explanations I’ve encountered is that theses moments are theorized as events when the individual psyche ‘connects’ with someone or something larger, higher, placed above the individual in the spiritual ladder.

I not only think that these explanations are absurd, improvable or unnecessary; I also think that they are an insult.

It is to say, as if, the experiences aren’t worthwhile in themselves. That you have to construct an elaborate system of theories to give that experience some meaningful value. And these constructs are ultimately equally unable to ‘explain’ the cause or logic of any value whatsoever.

What is this special higher consciousness which makes us feel like this? What is this god-like divine and from where does it derive this powerful energy from? If these ‘higher’ beings and energies don’t need anymore explanations then why does the experiences of depth need to be justified by theories?

These explanations merely transfer the experiential valence of the events of depth into something else. It’s the same old religious trick in the garb of spirituality.

Their hypocrisy is often revealed when they themselves admit that words can’t explain the spiritual experiences and then go on to create fun, often cliched theories of spirituality. (Putting faith or intuition above reason is perhaps their favorite one as it allows them to bypass science and gain a few blind acolytes.)

I think that the moments of intense awareness, the moments when life acquires an unspeakable depth are preserved and relived the best without any words or gurus.

I think its time that the spirit reclaims its independence from the shackles of God and theory.

Richard Dawkins, There Are NO Better Rapes!

Date Rape Better Than Stranger Rape?

Context

I Feel That My Insides Are Blunted

 

It was so different when I was a child.

Happiness was so easy. It wasn’t that there was no pain or no fear. In fact, I was very shy and insecure. But I FELT life so much more…so much more intensely.
If a put a standard, a template to measure life — then of course I am better off than I was then. More money, more luxury, more friends.

But I feel that my insides are blunted. Pain doesn’t hurt that much. And there isn’t so much pain any more. But joy feels so dull too.

I was too sensitive towards life. I was affected by it far too easily. But there was an unsaid depth to it. I don’t know if anyone else felt it like I did. But life was special. I did not have to philosophise about it. I didn’t have to ‘figure’ things out.
I was vulnerable — but that’s exactly what made me feel so much more alive

I think people and society unnecessarily attach too much importance on things like pleasure as opposed to pain.
I think that the only inherent purpose to life is to experience it. After all it is because we experience that we know we are alive.

All other ‘purposes’ which philosophers, scientists and people attach to it are mere interpretations.
Experiences — wild, varied, ever changing, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes calming, sometimes overwhelming.
Everything has its place.

But now I just don’t feel it.

Maybe I got stuck in my pain and my anger for too long.

Of course it hurt.

Now it doesn’t.

But is it because now I am numb?

I don’t know.

When I passed out from school, my psychology teacher wrote that I should always cling on to my innocence.
I was a child who talked freely about sex (in all its variations) and liberation back when we weren’t allowed to. When it still wasn’t cool to think on your own.
I was a little surprised she called me innocent, but somewhere I knew what she meant.

Innocent doesn’t really mean ignorant or naive to me.
It means being a special kind of Honest.
Not in the Abraham Lincoln/Gandhian sense in which you don’t lie to others for your own benefit or when lies are needed.
Innocence means being Honest with YOURSELF.

I am 19 now, and I fear that I am slowly ‘growing up’.
I don’t want to.
I always want to feel as honestly as I did when I was a child.

I am afraid.
And I am not lonely. But I am alone in this, for no one can help me.
I am desperately trying to find my way out, and sometimes I don’t even realise the desperation.

The New Charter

We don’t find anything as self-evident. But, it is through the laborious and painful experiences of millions of people throughout centuries, that we have discovered 5 values which are necessary for a healthy society which helps all its people in their pursuit of happiness.

Fluidity

We have found that the capability of change is indispensable in order to adapt to life .

Throughout history, ideas, facts and ways of life which were thought to be eternal have been wiped out abruptly and with astonishing ease. The world which was flat under our feet for hundreds of eras has turned out to be round. The Sun which was universally seen to be moving has turned out to be stationary and the earth which was our point of unchanging existence has proved to be rotating and revolving. The triumphant physics of Newton which was able to explain almost the whole Universe has been trashed by the new physics of the Quantum.

To blindly believe that the Truth of our age will never change is naive.

We know that a human being has to change according to unique situations. We believe that every human being should be psychologically adept and ready to be fluid like water and change the form, function and abilities of one’s own being without any resistance from within. Mental stability can never be found in permanence but in fluidity.

We also believe that structures and models which mould our social institutions should have this fluidity inbuilt in them. Institutions are meant to help us live our lives better. If they can’t change according to our ever changing lives, then we regard them as defunct and futile. It is vital for any institution to have the ability of spontaneous change in-built in their systems. The present systems also undergo change but it is only through modifications and amendments. Such systems can never be fast enough to adapt to the hyper-fluid world that we see looming in the horizon of the future.

We also reject any knowledge system which has the necessary self-delusion of being permanent and eternal. We do not reject the probability of the existence of such a system, but we have seen that everything can be doubted. Every knowledge system should embrace this doubt about its base beliefs and should not only strive to prove them right, but should always check if they are wrong with equal zeal. If such a system is indeed eternal, then it will be unaffected by such a practice.
For instance, Science bases itself in the presumption that there is an objective world outside of the subjective perception of different human beings. Moreover, they seek to find out laws which are universal and don’t change. These are all presumptions. The world might be a RESULT of our perception. We don’t really know that does our perception perceives an object which already exists or does it CREATE it? Also, we haven’t been to all the parts of the universe and are not omniscient beings who can see the past, present and all future at once. The rules that physics or chemistry finds out may not be universal. Or they might change with time. Or they might not. We don’t really know.

We believe that the true pursuit of knowledge should always be aware that its base presumptions can be wrong, and hence should always keep the question of their validity OPEN.

The validity of every knowledge system should be judged if the reality it claims actually happens. Or in other words, REALITY is simply what works. The system of knowledge should be judged according to its ability to fulfill the claims that it makes. This negates any OUTSIDE structures or systems of judgement or validity criteria.

We also think that the leadership of any social group should be fluid and decided by a specific purpose. When the purpose is achieved or someone else proves to have more ability than this leader, then the position of power should be immediately abandoned. The leadership systems which give a small group of people massive amounts of power over gigantic populations are by default flawed. Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Dictators can never create a truly efficient social organisation simply because the purpose and their reason for power is too wide (administration of whole countries), they can’t possibly know the individual needs of each person they rule and their period of holding power is far too stretched.
And there is no need for leaders where leadership is not required.

 

Liberty

We have also discovered that the enlightened ideal of Freedom has endured extreme attacks against itself. We believe that freedom which doesn’t take away the liberty of others should be allowed to be exercised by individuals.

Liberty means a freedom from oppression, suppression, exploitation and violence. It also means a freedom to fulfill our dreams, desires and reach the epitome of our abilities. This is a precondition for Human Happiness and for innovation, along with fluidity — all of these are inherently helpful for adaptation and progress.

Perhaps the strongest argument for liberty is derived from the experience of people living in societies devoid of it.

The societies under dictatorships or ravaged by fundamentalism stand as prime examples.

It is to be understood that a lack of liberty means control which isn’t designed to hinder harm or is made to suppress people’s abilities. This control is always exercised by a group (usually a small group) and is never interested in the well being of the society as a whole but cares only about its own power position.

 

Heterogeneity

Through our exploration of the world and  history, we know that heterogeneity and multiplicity is the essence of the universe.

We find that every society has diverse individuals and every Human has diverse aspects inside their being which can be complementary or even contradictory. A person has both love and hate and anger and peace coexisting inside them.

We believe that it is inherently good and is needed to live fruitfully in the world — to react to and exist in diverse situations that the world invariably provides us with.

We thus reject any force which seeks to kill or exterminate this diversity — both internal and external — through direct coercion or implicit influence.

It is observed by us that the dominant trend throughout the world to bond people together is through an insistence on sameness and a rejection of difference. We believe that this is a self-deflating method as people are heterogeneous both within and in comparison to others.

We believe it is a superior way to bond people in diversity, both in terms of similarity and difference. No two persons are the same and eventually every social group which is based on sameness cracks from within because it is based on a fiction and will inevitably fall apart.

Also, we believe that the difference which is so often suppressed is in fact enriching and helps an individual grow, change and is able to have diverse viewpoints which helps it in adapting to a diverse universe.

We also observe that diversity is often talked about in social groups. The affect of this is people INSIDE the social groups are often encouraged or forced to destroy their internal diversity in order to mould themselves according to the image of their group.

We believe that an individual is the basic unit of human existence. The heterogeneity inside a human being is the only diversity which really matters in practical terms. Social groups are abstract entities which only have meaning when it refers to individuals. We believe that a person has heterogeneous identities, we believe that this is inherently good and we also believe that no one identity of a person should be given prime importance in order to subordinate or reject the other identities that individual possesses.

We maintain a micro-focus on individuals and refuse to talk in terms of homogenising groups.

We also believe that social institutions should not only preserve individual heterogeneity, but should also encourage the multiplication of this internal diversity through the exchange and cross pollination of identities so that an individual is able to reach and exist in ALL the different identities that a person can possibly achieve.

We plan to explore the limits of the range which nature grants us in terms of being, in terms of thinking, feeling, sensing and existing — a simultaneous nuclear explosion brought about by the eternal fusion and fission of identities in ALL individuals.

 

Justice

It is observed that Justice is a human need. That people should get what they deserve. If a person does harm, s/he should be harmed. If a person does good, s/he should be rewarded.

The main problem which arises is in defining what is good and what is bad. It is an ever going debate. But we firmly believe that a lot of things become clear and simplified through a direct experience of the event. The intellectual reasoning seems hollow without it.

However, we also accept that there are no universal rules of morality like there are the universal rules of physics. It is based on the people involved in a situation, the context and the subsequent outcomes. An element of subjectivity will always prevail, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that ALL of them are justified or right.

People have made flimsy arguments that things like violence, starvation, rape, poverty and so on are not necessarily bad, and their value judgement will always be subjective. To such people, we recommend that they EXPERIENCE such events and then tell us if their value judgements should be based on mere opinions.

We don’t yet have an answer, but we acknowledge the fact that the current systems of justice have severe shortcomings and need to be either revolutionised or replaced. However, we also acknowledge that they aren’t entirely defunct and until some bright alternative is found, we should continue with the same institutions while trying to reform them.

 

Uniqueness

We believe that every human being is born unique. They are not equal. They are not unequal.

We reject any universal standards or measures of judgement.

We know that each person has his or her own unique traits and hence, a unique path of progress.

We believe that preserving this path for every individual and the attainment of this path is good for the society as a whole.

The value of every individual is inherently unique and priceless, as no individual is same or born again.

The destruction of this uniqueness for some imagined and accepted model of value or goodness is a loss which can never be compensated.

We believe in hyper-customization of every institution, especially educational ones, in order to cater to the needs and desires of every Human — a necessary micro-focus on every individual.

We envisage that the very space and streets of the society will instantly transform and mould themselves according to unique needs of every person.

 

 

This is our vision for a perfect society which is like a womb which nourishes every individual, helps them find their own path of self-fulfilment and derives priceless benefit from their unique achievement.

We stand by our values and reject any enemies who threaten them. There is no tolerance for the intolerant. There is no freedom for people who threaten freedom.

We are not plagued by indecisiveness or directionless-ness as the era which immediately preceded us was.

Many great philosophers have predicted an end of History — as if it is a problem which only needs resolution and hence an end.

We don’t think Human History has even started. Until and unless all the societies of the world have achieved this womb-like state which we mention, all that happens is of no consequence in the wider arch of grand History. The majority of the Humans are struggling to survive — reaching the epitome and peak of their being is a distant dream.

History will begin with the New Charter.

Something To Live By

Existence is Fluid;

the Universe is Multiple;

Each Life is Unique;

A Human is Born Free;

Justice is its Need;

Happiness is Holistic;

God is You.

The Quest For Truth

Existence

 

In order to find what was before existence, what will be after it and what it is, we have to peel the layers of our own presence until we have undone ourselves — reached that point where existence and non-existence cease to be apart.

The absolute truth, hence, requires our absolute death as a precondition.

We can’t be IN existence and discover non-existence.
All theories about such a subject will be mere conjectures.