Scientific truth and multiplicity of ideas in life

I remember the time when as a child I used to spend hours staring at the sky, particularly enjoying those stargazing moments during late evenings with a clear sky and good breeze. The sky was like a painting for me, a large work of art suspended above the earth by someone big enough to do that. The painting was made richer by the stories about its constituents, like the woman sitting on the moon weaving clothes for us to wear. (If you look closely, with assumed ignorance, you will see a vague shape formed by moon's spots). There was great beauty and wonder in those images, a sense of being a part of a larger world that could be explained by interesting stories that somehow seemed to connect every entity with every other entity in some way or the other. Then I grew up. I learned more about the 'sky' I was seeing at night, and what formed it. I learned more about the stars and the moon. I was told, to my utter dismay, that sun is just a stupid big ball of hot gas, and not a wise God riding a chariot with seven horses. There was disappointment, but I was too busy studying and playing to reflect on what I had lost, or to truly appreciate what I had gained. At some level I did feel a loss, but couldn't identify its true nature. I had unknowingly made a trade-off of sorts.

In this sense, not too long ago all humans were like my child self. They had stories about the world, because they didn't have the kind of knowledge we now have. They were ignorant of the scientific interpretation of their reality. Then Science happened, not as a sudden event but as an evolutionary process catalysed by some triumphs or revolutions. These days the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgment of priests, witch doctors and tribal leaders was accepted not too long ago. This move towards 'demythologisation' was largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between religion and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science was certainly right and religion wrong. Science has that privileged, centred position that marginalises all else that may come in the way, religion, myths, everything.

Science and the scientific truth dominate. The education system just indoctrinates us into a given 'scientific truth', which is the unquestionable absolute. It neither encourages imagination to run nor does it make a serious attempt to waken the critical abilities to see things in perspective. Though we have to acknowledge that science has found some truth that we weren't aware of earlier, this 'truth' has taken a disproportionately prominent position in our lives and our social systems. Though intended to be an instrument of change and liberation, it has become so rigid that it is oppressive, almost as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight.

"Truth" appears to be a neutral word, and in many ways it is. Nobody would deny that it is commendable to speak the truth, but we must be aware of the implications of always measuring ourselves against a single, absolute standard like this. Must we always follow only the scientific truth? Must it be the only standard? The argument that rigidity of science is 'natural' and there is no choice in it needs to be examined carefully. It is crucial to acknowledge that human life is guided by many ideas and ideals. Truth is just one of them. Freedom, beauty, imagination, emotional and spiritual fulfillment are some of the others. Some of these may be better at providing that crucial nourishment that goes into fulfilling our existence. Just finding the 'truth' is important, but not necessarily fulfilling, and fulfillment is crucial life. We must appreciate that if truth, as conceived by some, conflicts with our sense of spiritual fulfillment, then we do have a choice. We may abandon this sense of spiritual fulfillment, or we may abandon truth, or we may adopt a more sophisticated idea of truth that doesn't contradict spiritual fulfillment. The way modern science manifests through its socio-cultural and economic vehicles, it inhibits such freedom of thought and choice. It must proselytize the child (and his grandma) who believe in the lady on the moon, no matter how harmless that imagination may be, and do so with such efficient permanence that such imagination would never dare raise its head again.

I am not trying to romanticise the primitive, but attempting to carefully acknowledge the limits of the role of scientific truth in our lives, and to boldly place this truth alongside other important ideas and aspects of life, some of which it may be at odds with.

Life, thus death? Pleaure, thus suffering?

A person I was acquainted with died yesterday. We were at college together, but he was older than me by a few years. He was married, with two young children. Coming from lower middle class roots, he had carved a reasonably comfortable life for himself and his family. Though we had not been in touch over the last two years, I remember him as a jovial, kind and generous man, unpretentious.and simple in his ways. He was flawed, like all of us, but he was neither unaware nor very uneasy about his simple flaws. He never seemed to aspire for perfection or some towering moral standards; he was just happy being good enough. He was not trying to change the world; he was just happy raising his family. He was, in most ways, a normal man. One could say he deserved a normal life, and a normal death. His death was anything but normal. He perished in a road accident, while on a regular bike journey back from a nearby town. Death came to him, unannounced, unexpected, not like insistent humming in the background but like a leaping tiger. I don't know how to react to such instances, what to think, how to interpret, if at all. The arbitrariness is overwhelming. Our desire for and expectation of order, linearity and predictability is eternally disappointed by the ruthless randomness of reality. If death was the price of life, a payment that must be made after one has gone through a full experience, it would have made some sense. But, what about this arbitrary demise? Death is natural, necessary and universal, but when it happens arbitrarily, it deserves to be questioned. The problem is with the seemingly random and untimely death, the fundamental ineluctability about such a fate, and the suffering it entails for the living.

Death itself is nothing. A great deal of suffering originates from the fear of death for ourselves and for our loved ones, and from the death of our loved ones. Basically, it's random, untimely death, and unexplainable suffering for us the living that has puzzled me most. Suffering is for all of us, with some getting disproportionately high shares, for reasons that are hard to understand. The question is: Why suffering? Some religions link this suffering to our deeds, proposing a causality between our choices, our actions and our well-being. This link justifies some suffering, but doesn't seem to hold when we see a child born with a disorder, suffering throughout his life of 7-8 years, and dying in pain, probably never having stepped out of his bed. Did he actually live? I don't know, may be he did see some pleasures of life, but I feel this is still unfair, and the child couldn't have done anything to deserve the pain that governed much of his life. So some religions, like mine, argue about multiple lives and having to expiate for sins of past life, soul being eternal and body being like a cloth, which can be and is changed when we die and proceed to the next life. Though this argument helps explain something, it is not comforting in any way. What is the point of me expiating for the crimes I don't remember I committed? This is a Kafkaesque nightmare that doesn't seem to lead to any meaningful remorse that could have been possible if one were aware of the true reasons for one's sufferings and had a sense of responsibility towards them.

I struggle with these questions, but now with little hope of finding satisfactory answers in religion. I am reminded of what Camus wrote in The Plague: "Since the order of world is regulated by death, perhaps it is better for God we do not believe in him and we fight with all our might against death, without raising our eyes heavenward where he keeps silent.". Perhaps we could expand the statement by considering 'suffering' alongside 'death', to define what regulates us and what we need to put up a million fights against, together as humans. We couldn't do anything to prevent the death of our friend, but perhaps we could do something to alleviate the suffering of his family, and work in our own humble ways to prevent more people from dying like this. Though the answer to the question of causation behind such random death and suffering can't be found easily, we can still find some hope and solace in our efforts to alleviate pain and suffering for the living, and in our endless fight against untimely death for anybody. Perhaps humanness is our only salvation and our only hope, no matter how naive this hope and how modest and easily destructible the results of our efforts may be.

Writing in turmoil

Certain kind of literature can only be a result of turmoil, internal, external, or both. More often than not this is the kind of literature that touches us, because it shows us the mirror that we had never seen before, it makes us see aspects of ourselves that we never thought existed, and also, sometimes it makes us realise the nature of the human flesh that we didn't want to see before, in all its limits, its helplessness, and its possibilities. To live is to realise, to realise all that we hadn't till the moment before. If a written word can help us realise and discern what is meaningful and profound, and what is meaningless and trivial, and the entire ocean of life that lies between these extremes, then that is good literature, though it may not be the only good literature. Still, I must say I haven't come across any other type of all literature I would care to call 'good'.

Looking at this issue from the point of view of the writer, is writing an act that can be performed satisfactorily without some motivation? There three aspects of the answer to this. Firstly, I don't think serious writing can be done without some motivation. Lack of motivation may be a greater problem than the lack of skill of the writer. There may not be any basic skill of a writer as testfied by the fact that there are all kinds of writers who have done well and been liked. Secondly, there is also an importance of sustained motivation. Writing without sustained motivation would be like trying to fly without proper wings; one can stay in the air for some time, but bound to come down and feel miserable (I know that feeling in my own humble way). Lastly, since the written word has a sense of permanence about it, writing is a bold act, and therefore the act of writing is also an expression of faith in the possibility of the risk (that could come with this permanence) being worthwhile, because of a hope of succeeding in making others understand what is behind the words, the hope of truly connecting with the other. For such a bold act of serious and long writing (and not a blurb like this one) what could be the motivation, if not to change something. Is there a sense in writing if it is totally purposeless? What is the use of such writing, if there is not a will to change something in the minds of the readers, and through them the minds of the Gods? I think this will to change must significantly drive the motivation of a writer of good literature. It may just be so that such a will to change is usually situated in a turmoil that creates churning of the kind that urges one to sit down and write, or stand up and do something else about it. This probably offers a partial explanation for why so much good literature has come out of troubled societies and beings.