Several centuries after the decline of the Romans, the major European naval powers had laid the groundwork for a culture of colonization and exploitation. By that time, the Anglo-Saxons had established themselves in England. Their belief in ‘God, Gold, and Glory’ spurred British colonization in the New World, altering history forever. The other European naval powers who likewise set out to colonize and exploit were Spain, Portugal, France and the Dutch.
The choice of where one would live, work and settle down is never a simple or an easy one. Many people spend their entire lives in their hometown, never having to make that choice. Many others have that decision forced upon them by economic or other compulsions.
Nevertheless, the factors that might typically affect such a choice can be explored in an objective manner. At least that is what we have attempted here!
In a few previous posts, we have discussed harmony of mind, body and spirit (here), harmony with nature (here) and — somewhat indirectly — harmony in a society (here). On the last point, harmony in a society, clearly the legal system also plays a big role. The ideal, of course, would be that the legal system adds to societal harmony. But can this ideal ever be attained, given human nature and the working of a modern society?
The legal system is a practical, administrative necessity in a modern society. Without a proper legal system, a modern economy cannot function. Harmony figures nowhere in the stated goals of an economist or a business titan; and only a very simple-minded person would assert that the legal system adds to societal harmony.
Thus we have a seemingly unavoidable tradeoff here between two goals — economic performance and societal harmony — both of which are desirable for a society. Three views are presented here to get you thinking!
Cooperation and competition both play a role in our collective life — sometimes more of this, sometimes more of that. However, a self-styled ‘capitalist’ sees red at the mere mention of cooperation, whereas a self-styled ‘communist’ argues for forcefully imposing cooperation on the whole society.
Suppose we put all such western ideologies to one side and ask: What does our lived, empirical reality say?
We often hear the phrase survival of the fittest, when it is used with reference to evolving natural eco-systems. However, for two reasons, this usage can mislead. One reason is that survival may be wrongly taken to mean the survival of an individual, whereas its correct meaning is the survival of a species. The second reason is that the central, crucial criterion of fitness is left unspecified in that phrase.
Last week a discussion took place within our WhatsApp group on the subject of wellbeing, quite broadly defined. Members shared their views, based on their own knowledge and experience. Overall, the members’ views, when arranged together, took the form of a panel discussion. Needless to say, in a discussion among friends, nobody had a personal axe to grind. Views were shared in the hope that a thoughtful reader may find something useful in them.
It is in that spirit that are we presenting the views here.
A recent post on this blog, Time as a Resource, showed that time is a crucial resource in business management. Like any other valuable resource, time must be utilized in an optimal manner. As a short and sweet summary of that post, we repeat here the line from Peter Drucker with which that post started:
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
However, as we shall now show, there is much, much more to time than what we encounter in our busy worldly lives. When we logically explore various aspects of the lived human experience of time, we are led to conclusions which have a huge impact on the values by which we order and live our lives.
Today we present contributions from three of our members, Suman Rao, R. Srinivasan and Naresh Jotwani. The common aim of these pieces is to bring out the fascinating relationship between the truths we seek within, and the lives we live in the world outside. We believe that sincere, first person accounts of good friends are at least as valuable as scriptures.
[Our previous post (here) contained only the introductory part of Suman’s article on Karma. This is the full article.]
Karma is the all-encompassing concept of action and reaction in a continuous chain in time and space. It is inclusive of causality as conceived in Science. It includes the effects of grief, hurt and wounds caused to ‘another’ or ‘others’. That is nothing but insecurity playing upon the ego which is nothing but false sense of separation. Until the ego with its limited contents of consciousness drops its limited identity and becomes one with all, through repeated experiences of samadhi, this sense of separation continues and actions are of a mixed nature.
The co-editors of this blog, Srinivasan and Naresh, have also been running a WhatsApp group named seeker-of-root-causes. Occasionally, a question or a statement is posed to group members, to which members are invited to respond with their own views.
The practical context and significance of today’s topic will be established by this first-person, true life account submitted by Srinivasan:
My own experiences have taught me the enormous scope of karma in practical life, and totally ingrained the concept in my psyche. I will cite just one specific instance here.
seeker-of-root-causes 