World History Primer: Governance, Prosperity and Service in the next millenium

Under the overlay of oligarchies, plutocracies, monarchies and anarchies which obsess historians, there was, at the level of the vast, sparsely populated countryside of the World's Old Cultures, Consensal Governance with its many diversities and variations. There was little paper-shuffling. No computer-assisted bureaucracies manned remote but powerful Control & Command Centers (CCCs). Consensal Governance was human scale. It focused on equilibriums, not equalities.

The change from local consensual governance to commanding and controlling CCCs first occurred in the geographical harshness of tribally attenuated, pagan Europe. To neutralize the marauding local looter-aggrressors, the tyrannical alliance of the Fiefs and the The Church scaled up Governance. The affairs of the populace began to be affected by Power siezed and vested in their remotes CCCs. It took a while for the fermenting upheavals to culminate in insurrections, beheadings, revolutions and, finally, the general acceptance of Majority Governance, aka, the "Lesser Evil."

After this, however, Colonial Greed + Industrial Enterprise + The Zeal To Protect The (so-called) Rights & Freedoms from those remote Fiefs-&-Church CCCs, over-individualized the people, tempting them away from the Responsibilities and Disciplines inherent to living under local Consensal Governance. Enterprise, Politics and Bureaucrythen helped give larger-than-human-scale Lesser Evils in Europe a spin which, in effect, progressively internationalized its Regional Plunder-&-Protection Rackets which cunningly legitimized themselves under Majority Governance Guises. Greek "roots' were "located' to support the notion that "to govern' meant "to control and steer" and fancy social contracts were constitutionalized to hoodwink the people in the interest of the club-&-boardroom manipulators.

Families, communities and academia, instead of producing socially-skilled, self-disciplined citizens, began churning out rainbow-chasing taxpayers, jobbers, entitlement-jockeys and "escape artists" adept at rights-agitation while winking at their social responsibilities. Meanwhile, nominal governors of these European Rackets which had, by then, spawned across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, and were cracked up to be "Representatives of The People" or otherwise, had only hero/martyr paradigms to establish their man-made Rule-of-Law at these large, inhuman scales. The audacious--and scientifically now shown as fallacious--presumptions were
(a) Nature was "Wild' It, therefore, needed to be conquored and tamed.
(b) Natural man was a "Savage' who must be schooled, civilized and "saved," and
(c) God & Creation were imnherently chaotic calling for Order & Organization.

Under a hallucinatory paranoia of Progress and Development, predaition and destruction were prosecuted world-wide with arrogant expedition. Strip mines wounded the Land; its forests were "cleared" into oblivion. Rivers damned by dams. Mountains, blown apart. The Oceans were emptied of their teeming life to become sloship waste-dumps. Even the Air was ceaselessly incinerated by constant injecting of toxic-pollutants. As a crowning example of DoubleSpeak, Anti-bio(tics} were heralded as Life-sustainers. All that the hoary heritage of humankind had held sacred and in reverance was trashed and trivialized under the motto:

If it moves, shoot it down. If it doesn't cut it down.

More fat to the fire, these Euro/US micro-macro "management" examples became models for the new "nations" of these World-Shepards.

Recent histories are packed with "leaders' who successfully committed hero/martyr follies--and by those who tried and failed in correcting those of their flamboyant predecessors. Majority Governance cannot be scaled up any further without scaling up its unacceptable and unsustainable evils, too, to create worldwide amity, stability and prosperity. Localized Consensal Governance, aided by zero-cost, on-tap and non-judgmental, globally inclusive, nondiscriminatory, cooperative and relevant communication, now appear to be a more realistic alternative. For this, notions of prosperity and value based on (a) gun-running (b) Purveying of Planet-inimical techno-fantasies and (c) mindless, expensive and inefficient patterns of consumption--these need to be urgently jettisoned.

Prosper(ity) isn't derived from a Shakespearean character, nor does "Government' have Greek roots. The Sanskrit "Paraspar" is approximated by "mutual' while "Guru + mantra" suggests an advisory function in Statecraft. For advice to catalytically and sustainably function in the desired direction of Wellbeing for All, carrot-&-stick games, latently threatening "messages" and exhibitions of techno-destructive prowess are counterproductive. One needs only, say the ancients, the moral force of true, patient and loving care which is transparently motivated by an equation which puts "Self" at the bottom of the heap where it really belongs. In fact, that is precisely what Sarva (Everyone) + Sva (Sel) or Sarvasva from which "Service" is derived means.

--Excerpt from a letter Vyom wrote to "educate a friend." This segment was entitled, "a one-page primer of world-history for relevance in Governance, Prosperity and Service in the 3rd millenium A.D."

On International Understanding

Speech delivered by Vyôm Akhil, Guest Speaker, Rotary Club Sambalpur (Main), February 28, 2003

Thank you for having me as your chief guest today. I am to talk to you on International Understanding.

Friends, International Understandings are badly needed today. I wish you would not construe this cliché as a set-piece sentence. We have a major crisis staring at us. Its specifics have inter-related components. India’s Finance Minister who is busy presenting his budget right now, says, we have a sluggish GDP growth rate. Oil prices, if they should rise, will upset the apple cart further. And that depends on THE DESIRE OF THE UNITED STATES TO LAUNCH A WAR AGAINST IRAQ.

This morning I heard three news items:
(1) Saddam Hussein has agreed to dismantle the long-range missiles per the suggestions of the U.N. Chief Inspector Hans Blix.
(2) U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfledt says Saddam should not be believed.
(3) Hans Blix is under further pressure to present a report that will facilitate a war.

Since it would be counterproductive to line up the good guys on the one side and the baddies on the other, what are the key elements of understanding from these items? Furthermore, must one not have an alternate format from what the media usually dish out?

Asking and answering a set of questions can aid this: For instance,

• For how long have Saddam and George Walker Bush been presidents of their respective countries?
• Who was elected and how? For how long will they be in office?
• How much propaganda from either side should be given credibility and how much of it discounted?
• What are the real, personal, domestic compulsions driving their behavior?

I am sure all of you remember that the evidence for going to war - touted to have been gathered by spy satellites, presented with fanfare in the British Parliament, and later used by Secretary Colin Powell in the United Nations Security Council - was quickly found to have been plagiarized from an old research paper submitted at the Oxford University and, actually published in Jane’s Defense Weekly. Not even a comma or a full stop was altered.

If you remember, the last time a U.S. president attacked a country in Asia without any immediate provocation, he had a domestic scandal on his hands. I allude to President Clinton’s decision to rocket positions in Afghanistan. And it is possible 9/11 was Al Quaida-Taliban’s angry retaliation.

But that is just one reason why the U.S. naval taskforce gets ordered into international waters. The so-called ‘gunboat diplomacy’ is an old one and is named after a so-called doctrine is named after U.S. President James Monroe. In fact, it would be plainer if we called the doctrine or policy by its ancient name: “Have muscle. Shall bully.” A couple of years ago, BBC’s Christopher Gunness interviewed the U.S. intellectual, Gore Vidal, a cousin to the then U.S. vice president Al Gore. At one point during the interview, Mr. Vidal quoted former U.S. president Richard Nixon, who, having had the insider’s experience after having been vice-president for eight years, had this amazing thing to say, and I paraphrase: The United States does not really need a president because it runs by itself. Mr. Vidal, then explained, that the U.S. president has chiefly a foreign policy role, where he has to safeguard U.S. national interest.

One can ask, which part of the U.S. economy has a major interest abroad? So that U.S. multinationals can operate in foreign countries, U.S. Government’s foreign policy must have pliant governments in those lands. This is usually achieved by diplomacy, and aid and advice of dubious value because it is based on the most superficial and cursory understanding of those lands, its people and their problems. But the aid money is “easy money” and it attracts and seduces the dominant elite in those countries to be amenable and agreeable and compliant.

When diplomacy and aid fail, then comes war. And months before it is actually executed, details are prepared as to who will benefit from them and how. For instance, after being World War II’s hero and serving the United States for eight years as president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned the people of his country against the threat to them from “The Military Industrial Complex” of their own country.

As someone who has first hand experience of all this, thanks to my decade-long stay in Los Angeles, after having completed and returned back to India my Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship for International Goodwill, I can vouch for this. The day the Soviet Union broke up, people working for defense contractors – they, not Hollywood, are the major employer in the State of California - were thrown out their jobs. But soon, there was Desert Storm and the rehiring began.

And about Desert Storm – George Bush senior, had advisors who helped him circumvent Congressional approval. I remember that period very well. At 9:30 that morning, on D-Day, he had gone on record saying there would be no attack on Iraq. But at approximately 6 pm, after a 4:30 meeting with Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of U.K., he had changed his mind and launched a 32-day long carpet-bombing campaign against Iraq.

The next day I called into a talk show and brought this up but was politely hushed up. From then on, whenever, my North American wife, who used to teach at the UCLA, and I had an argument that entailed calling each other names, we would say, “You are George Bush, You are George Bush.”

Part II

Friends, as my topic is International Understanding, I have to cut short my thoughts on the current crisis and share with you what I think the nature of Understanding is.

This part of my speech will force me to become somewhat theoretical and speculative and I hope you will bear with me. I beg for your sustained attention because I believe my comments and thoughts could be of assistance to you both in your fields of classification as well as your duties and functions as Rotarians of this premier Club in this region.

Given that over a millennia-spanning period, our species has consistently demonstrated that it will unerringly choose to be silly, stupid, selfish, dangerous, vindictive, arrogant, jealous - the list is as long as you wish to stretch it - one may ask why do we need to understand anything at all? The insects and animals - not to mention all that is inanimate - do very well in the surviving-&-thriving game without, apparently, understanding a thing. In fact a saint had gone so far as to say ‘happy and content are those who are not bothered by the conditions and problems of the world’.

During a previous visit to your Club, I had spoken of the stage-related origins of the word "understanding". Someone had to stand under the stage and hand up the props, such as a bouquet, to a Romeo who would use it then as a love-vehicle and give it to the actress playing Juliet.

The word originally meant, "to be supportive". That is not the same as “being wise and full of insights."

Understanding is a first but not the final step towards an accommodative, mutually beneficial sustainable co-existence. Without this goal at the end, an ocean full of understanding cannot, with any reliable degree of certainty, prevent aggression and attack, cruelty, violence, destruction and tragedy.

Resolving existing conflicts is laudable and that is what negotiators skilled in the use of facts and their effective communication try to do. But this heroic act is akin to performing a life-saving surgery on an old and malignant tumor that has brought the body to the verge of death. To this extent conflict-resolution is the next thankless step in the vocabulary of crisis management. Frequently, the high-pressured process of resolving conflicts, reasonable dialogue has to be set aside because there are deadlines to meet and innocent lives might be lost. Often negotiators have to go into what I call the deal-making mode.

Friends, it is obvious that understanding is multidimensional. From an individual wrestling with the essential nature of Being and Becoming, to a group that may be as small as a nuclear, or, even a single-parent family of two, or a tribe, a community, a village, a region, a nation, all the way up to the global level of international understanding, there are events and on-going processes that first need an understanding and then a comfortable accommodation. Beyond the international, we need understandings and accommodation with nature and our physical space - with those creatures, whether plant, insect or animal. And this needs to occur both at the local as well as global level. But as we explore outwards from this planet, there are understandings that challenge our notions of time and space, of the meaning of life and intelligence. Called by the National Geographic Society in 1976 to look at the future, the late R. Buckminster Fuller observed that after having traveled 39 times around the world and actually feeling it to be a tiny planet of a tiny star, he was convinced no one out there in the Universe was dying to know who would be the next president of the United States. We can also appreciate the fact that partial understandings in one domain affect the processes in the other. That, at every level, there has to be a good fit to build upon. In some respects the nature of understanding is like those in fractals. For instance, there is the oft-quoted Sanskrit aphorism, “Yathä-piñdé tathä-brahmäñdé”. One can looslely translate this to say, ‘as the point, so the Universe.’ Today, understanding is when you say, "I see!" or "I got it!" or even more colloquially "Bingo!" or, Jackpot!"

Clearly, this is more than being supportive. It means to be able to figure out something, to know its nuts and bolts, its P's and Q's. And It's time, therefore, we revert to the intent of the original Sanskrit word, "Antarsthäna". For what is really occurring when you understand something today is a mental process.

But how does the human - perhaps all mammalian - mind process information, most of which comes to it through the sense of sound?

Even the horizon, be it noted, is limited to line of sight vision. It is for this reason that our sound-sensory apparatus switches on during gestation, long before we are born to this earth.

One can say that our ears have a head start.

What exactly happens when we receive sounds from the outside? Brain scans now confirm that our visual cortex is stimulated and our minds use the sound to create an internal image of the event.

It is this image that predominates the one we receive from our eyes. We even say of a prejudiced person as one, whose vision is colored, thereby implying that the internal image he has, overpowers the evidence of his own physical eyes.

At this point, to limit my exposition, I shall revert to Sanskrit words, "Chitta" or the active part of the mind, "Chétanä" or the state of consciousness, and "Chitra" or an image, usually internally formed in the active part of our mind; for the one visible on the retina Sanskrit has the "Drishya".

I have a confirmation of sorts. Don't people who understand something say, "I see" without really meaning that they are sighted and not blind?

I am, therefore, suggesting to you something that may not have been submitted to anyone anywhere:

Understanding means creating accommodative images.

I use the word "accommodative" with reason. Quarrels occur when our images are not in agreement. We have the famous and well-known story of the six blind men who were using their sense of touch to figure out what an elephant was. And each had an image that did not agree with those of the others. Friends, I now have to use two phrases to explain my next point. We have this 'Image-based understanding" and we, the educated and the influenced, find we also try, unsuccessfully, to often substitute it with what I would call 'A word-based understanding'.

Here, when I say 'word-based', I mean those words that, for one reason or another - like the abuse, or overuse of available of visual technologies - do not create a "Chitra", or, a sharp internal image/vision.

Most words - especially long speeches are so boring, listeners fall asleep. Even India's Vice President recently found his foot had gone to sleep as he was reading out the Hindi text of the President's address to the Parliament! I hope Rotarians - and those who come to speak to them - are free from this affliction.

Opposed to a word-based understanding, I bring to you an example of an image-based understanding in the shape of a small visual - a chart - that I like to call "Humankind's Price of Fear" and what can be done if we reduced it just by 25%...." Each square on the chart represents one billion U.S. dollars. There are one thousand squares. That equals one trillion U.S. dollars that was the approximate sum total of the annual military budgets of all the countries on this world in 1993.

Super-imposed on these one thousand squares is a small area – approx 25% in size. This area is made up of thirteen approximate rectangles of varying sizes, each representing the amount of money and time to solve a problem that humankind faces. Once you see problems in this perspective you immediately understand that the money that the few billions of dollars that are being asked for are negligible in comparison to what we spend for our collective fear, which, paradoxically increases the more we spend in search of a security we have you to clearly define and understand. The text that came with this chart, not included in this presentation says, “If asked by a child, how would you explain our failure to act on this information?” Friends. I have to save the rest of theoretical part with this example and save it for another opportunity, another day.

Rotarians, when I was here more recently your able and dedicated President informed you about the Foundation’s new program of Scholarship for Conflict Resolution.

A couple or so years ago at the First Alumni Multi District Conference in India held in Goa, I was lucky to be selected as a panelist and I must gratefully add that your Club had contributed to defraying part of the expenses of that trip. At the Goa Conference I had suggested that Rotary set up RA-CAN, the Rotary Alumni Cyber-Ambassadors’ Network,” because, “For less than the price of a world-around airline ticket…a deserving past/potential alumnus can today transform into a Conflicts-Resolution-Supporting, life-time cyber-Ambassador. (Such) a Network can become the synergistic link between the Clubs and the anywhere-on-earth Community Programs of Health, Education, Hygiene, Nutrition, Sanitation, Conservation, Employment and Farming…”

I conclude by quoting to you lines from the excellent editorial in the February 20, Times of India, entitled “People Superpower”, which, in turns, quotes Patrick E. Tyler writing in the New York Times. Mr. Tyler has described the current Iraqi situation as a standoff between two Super Powers: the United States and world public opinion. The paper suggests Mr. Bush take a lesson from Mrs. Indirä Gändhi who imposed an Emergency on India in the name of National Interest. And the people here overwhelming voted her out at the first chance.

I am hopeful, International Understanding will somehow prevail. We, in India won’t have to face a price rise and a sluggish economy because of Oil prices and the misadventure in the Middle East will be prevented in the nick of the time.

Thank you.

Speech delivered by Vyôm Akhil, Guest Speaker, Rotary Club Sambalpur (Main), February 28, 2003

The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist

The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist

Five hundred years of alleged human history on this planet that preceded the second Millennium, has thrown up in the Third one, a combative state between The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist.

The Hedonist: Usually of European descent, more likely a native speaker of the English language. Like a successful virus, he has colonized Australia and the North American continent; furthermore he uses his cunning to dominate human lives on Asia, Africa and South America. In these lands, thanks to his imperial rule, he has a vast army of local lackeys and flunkeys, who, for the price of hand-me-downs, usually act as compliant local elite.

The Hedonist is insecure. His desires spiral ever wider. His ego seldom dwells either in his body, or in his brain, but obsessively swells or shrinks to the orchestrations of an oppressive self-created system of bafflegab - that is communicated to him by a power structure that believes that responding to given compulsions of the day - the need to find heroes/martyrs, bullies/victims, violators/abiders and so on - are power. The social, family, and community systems of the Hedonist are shot. From a citizen he is reduced to a manipulated consumer of goods and services of which he has seldom any real need of.

The Terrorist: Usually a person of Middle-Eastern origin, he is often an unwitting - and unwilling - accomplice of the Hedonist, cast in the role of defending his honor, his wealth and his dignity, he interprets his faith in a manner that will justify the only thing he CAN do, viz. burn with vengeance and hatred. The Terrorist today is a Frankenstein created by The Hedonist.

It is important to bear in mind that while the two may be important to each other, together they do not constitute - or significantly affect the lives of - no more than ten per cent of human kind. Although they do everything possible to make others believe that what they think and do have civilizational significance. For instance a media source, located in Hedonland that bills itself as a "World Service" can pause to talk about a war between them only to tell the world what the New Castle or the Manchester United teams may have done.

Someone like me usually thinks that of these two protagonists on the world stage today, one is Sänpnäth while the other is Nägnäth - a baleful pair of Tweedledum and Twiddledee.

One speaks of human rights but doesn't even know the roots of those words. He speaks of democracy when what he means is thuggery and hoodwinking. Every twenty four hours he has to change his tune, find right words while seldom having a right thought. Every few months he has to create a new demon to show his valor against.

The other, while saying Allah-O-Akbar acts as if it is Mullah-O-Akbar.

The Hedonist says something terrible happened to him - and therefore to the 'Free and civilized world' - on a certain day in September a couple of years ago. And it was The Terrorist that did it. The Terrorist says, this is the first remittance of a big and overdue retaliatory payment.

As counter-retaliation The Hedonist went to Afghanistan and now he has gone to Iraq.

He did this despite World opinion against it. There is now a mess in the middle east that is obviously worse than the one that existed before.

I have seldom wasted my anger on either The Hedonist and The Terrorist. They fate themselves to suffer. But I am concerned that the people of the world were not strong enough to prevent them from being so dangerous to themselves and to others.

I suggest the U N General Assembly pass a resolution that will ask the governments of the United States and Great Britain to come to the United Nations with (a) unconditional apology for acting unilaterally and (b) Give an undertaking that, in the future, they will back their positions in the Security Council by War-declaring resolutions from their 'democratically' elected internal bodies, viz., the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament.

This will convince the world that the people of those countries are, in fact, represented in the United Nations by these governments who are now giving the impression that they represent oil interests, gun-runners and development-as-business NGOs.

-- Vyom Akhil sent this to the BBC a few years ago. I post this on his behalf, since he (in his words) phase-changed last Sunday 15 July near his home in Sambalapur, Orissa, India.