Karma operates at the deepest level of our being. Therefore its working cannot be grasped without rigorous introspection and true empathy with another person’s condition. Nonetheless, all of us do pick up hints now and then, from ancient stories and from the life around us.
A famous story in the Bible has Cain asking God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’
Cain was denying any responsibility for the well-being of his younger bother Abel and – by implication – for the well-being of other human beings. In fact the jealous Cain had killed Abel prior to this exchange with God, and therefore that question was also Cain’s attempt to cover up his horrendous crime. The story goes that, thereafter, Cain lived the life of a restless wanderer.
There will always be economic inequalities in any society. Why? Quite simply because there are incredibly huge differences among people’s outlook on life, the importance they attach to wealth, their ambitions, their good and bad habits, the social pressures they experience … and so on and on.
Dreaming of an ideal society in which there are no economic inequalities is therefore being naive, foolish – or both! The dream does not match reality.
So then what does a person do? Does one simply sit with folded hands and shed tears that the world is not constructed according to one’s ideals?
Popular myth is that Karl Marx, thinking deeply about life from within a library in London, came up with profound economic discoveries.
Dear Reader, does one discover deep truths of the real life from within the confines of a library? Today, would you trust a ‘profound thinker’ whose working day is spent surfing the web and theorising?
REALITY: One learns about real life and the economy by being out in the middle of economic action; by earning a living, talking with an open mind to workers, farmers, factory owners, shopkeepers – learning from them, understanding their lives, understanding what we all seek. The realities of economic life – extremely harsh though they may be – must be experienced before any workable solution is formulated and proffered to the world.
The so-called One China Policy, as currently defined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and apparently accepted by global power-mongers, is a crass statement of superpower aspirations, racism and xenophobia. People around the world do not speak up against this policy because they fear upsetting “the dragon”, or losing lucrative business opportunities and investments from China. The questionable basis of the policy is never discussed.
Consider the hypothetical case of an economy with annual GDP of 5 trillion US dollars, the broad economic dynamics of which are the subject matter of this exploration.
The hypothetical country whose economy we analyze here is named AB, because its internal economy is composed of two distinct components A and B. The total population of AB is 100 million, but only about 2% of it belongs to B; the rest of it belongs to A. For the ease of dealing with round numbers, we shall say that A and B have populations of 100 million and 2 million respectively.
The English word ‘gut’ is rich in its range of meanings. In Biology, ‘gut’ means ‘intestine’ – as in ‘gut bacteria’ or ‘gutting a fish’; this meaning extends to the racquet strings used in sports such as tennis and badminton. In common usage, ‘guts’ refers to ‘courage’, as in ‘having the guts to take on the huge challenge of _______’ (fill in your favourite). Continue reading Gutless Wonders→
‘Wish I could be a fly on the wall when X and Y meet one-on-one’. This is an ardent – and not very uncommon – wish among those who must know ‘what is really going on in the world’. X and Y are of course two global power-mongers – of the greater or the lesser kind – who imagine that they hold the future of mankind in their hands.
In the absence of the wish coming true, ardent knowledge-seekers are left with no ‘raw material’ except ill-informed and uninformed speculation, to be garnished liberally with flights of fancy and hints of the mysterious. This is how common folk are led to think ‘they know what is going on’ – by those who think ‘they know more of what is going on’. Continue reading FLY ON THE WALL→
Full disclosure: While the author has at times felt being “on top of the world”, he cannot claim any personal experience of “life at the top”. However, being a keen witness and a dogged student, the common idea of “top” fascinates him. After all, a crazed race to “the top” inevitably leads to injustice, crime and war. But anyone obsessed with “reaching the top” can provide only a self-serving report of his or her life. Therefore an objective if light-hearted study is attempted here. Continue reading Life at the Top→
Case 1: Imagine, in a picturesque suburban neighborhood, two pet dogs of immediate neighbors quarreling over a bone – growling, barking, snarling, lunging; that is, a typical instance of canine conflict over a prized object.
Imagine that the two owners come out and notice the conflict. How might they resolve the conflict? Surely this would be a simple matter, with several decent solutions. For example, the “bone of contention” may be tossed into a covered garbage bin. Or one of the neighbors may come up with a second bone so that each dog has one. Or each neighbor may simply drag his or her dog – growling and snarling – away from the conflict.
This would be civilized behavior. The neighbors would smile at each other, exchange a civility or two, and go happily back home. We can conclude rightly that a “higher intelligence” at work resolved the conflict. Continue reading It’s the Rapacity, Stupid!→
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