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Facts interfere with values…..the way to know facts is not the way to know values...then what makes us moral?
Help me out here.
Assumption : Moral sense is a sense of right and what is wrong. Right?
Question: Truth and Ahimsa are they really compatible being in the inherent space of moral correctness, which is the sense of right? Also can we associate the right sense with rights (as in something which we are bound to have and cherish…..like fundamental rights or human rights)?
I want to make a space for these questions with what I am going to argue rather stupidly. I hope that it makes some sense though, even if not moral.
Truthfulness is a virtue, and it would(and it does) certainly turn into an imperative following Kant’s general maxim. Let us see why? In layman terms:
- One should always be truthful (to others)?
(Just knowing what is right is not fine in ethics, action is mandatory)
- One should always be not none truthful…that is one should not lie. (to others).
From what I am going to argue, the condition changes…..in the above mentioned two sentences.
It should rather be that one should be truthful to oneself and one should not lie to others. But more often than ever the interaction space forces the conditions in such a way that it is hard to be truthful to oneself without also being truthful to others. More on that later.
However based on the general understanding (which will later create a problem) the fact that the value of truth is sustainable via the other is most obvious when one poses the question:
Why should one be truthful?
And if it be permitted that I answer this question with another question while debating and then try to answer that I question:
Why should one NOT tell the truth?
The condition of not comes in, seemingly out of nowhere.
But I want to argue that if the latter question is answered with a because…..then, it comes out of the empirical, out of stupidity of people around us, of the mad fools who live in Plato’s cave and are in self deception and wish to remain that way and throw stones at people who try to tell them. And that they can do this, because each one of those stupid people have the right to ‘self realisation’ but you know what they are too slow and too dumb to get there, which is why truthfulness is a associated with a moral sense. But anyways…….
Similarly let us look at Ahimsa, NON violence.
It is not GOOD to hurt others. Again let us question:
Why should one NOT hurt others?
Answer with question: Why should one hurt others in the first place?
(Again we see it is the negation of the first question in the argumentation)
Why should one not practice Ahimsa?
Now if we let the structure of these obvious interrogations which comes to one’s mind, be intact and change the content to something relatively simpler, something which concerns a child and then something which concerns an adult’s freewill.
It is not good to have candy.
A child should not eat candy (or too much actually).
Why is it not good to have candy?
Why should one have candy in the first place?
Now there are reasons why it is not good to have candy…..it spoils the teeth, but barring that when the question of choice presents itself, then it becomes mandatory ethically to answer it first. This is the case presented for moral policing in the case of smoking, isn’t it, one of free will, despite the obvious answer to the first question which must be acceptable but it clearly isn’t. Otherwise the second question will not be asked.
Smoking is injurious to health. Be that as it may!
When someone uses the imperative: You should not smoke.
Why should one not smoke? (Injurious! Da-ah!)
Answer the question with the question then,
Why should one smoke in the first place?
Life is about making choices (if not living with them but with their results that are so volatile), whether right or wrong but usually there is often an answer, reasonable or not, and as philosophers we try to look for ‘adequate’ answers because there can always be questions on questions overlooking the answers in a USELESS debate like the ones I have mentioned.
Coming back to the questions which need to be answered are about Ahimsa and Truth. Here the choice is of moral one, where right and wrong matters and the answers should not only be adequate but reasonable.
Why should one not tell the truth?
Why should one not practice Ahimsa?
These questions bother me Oh So much!
Why should one not tell the truth? The truth about truth is that it HURTS. So we lie. And not just metaphorically. Look at what Happened to Socrates.
If my answer to the first question is right then Ahimsa is incompatible with truth and this is why one should not practice ahimsa.
So which imperative do we pick, which do we place aside?
That truth hurts, one does not have to look any further away than Plato’s cave as I had mentioned. It hurts the person living in self perception, and consequently it hurts the truth teller.
The Philosopher enters the cave and Neo enters the Matrix, and when he tries to initially tell others that they are living a lie, no one is going to take it lightly if what is told is meant seriously. In a funny sit com a genius physicist gets fired from his workplace because he tells his boss that he is not a real scientist. His mother tells him, ‘I know you are right, but people do not like to hear that’
Socrates told people that the virtues like piety which they had been holding on to, were all wrong, by reducing their arguments to absurdity. But he never gave an answer, if he did really know one, he never told the truth, because he wanted people to ‘know thyself’.
But considering that self realization is so important and that Socrates did infac
t know that he did not know, then why tell people anything. Why be truthful to OTHERS? To those others who are fools and are not ready to come out of the cave. They have to come out in steps, and they take baby steps. I mean the Republic’s Philosopher ruler is 55 years old, that is when most people almost open their retirement funds here.
In A Few Good Men when Lt Cathy gets Col Jessup to say. Give me answers. I think I am entitled. Col Jessup says. You think you are entitled? You can’t handle the truth….and then the legendary speech which made movie moments. Son, we live in a world with boundaries that need to be guarded, who is going to guard them…you….you use words like honour, courage as a punch line, we use them as a life defending something…….
And while Jessup happens to be the BAD guy is so far as he gave orders for discipline that resulted in death of a person, the Himsa he committed was in accordance with his conception of TRUTH…..the one Lt Cathy could not handle. And so in the movie he lied, he is the bad guy. Or is he really. Truth hurts and so we freaking lie.
I mean who can handle the truth. The closest one gets to truth is by seeing that it is certainly true that they are wrong...because....of the consequences of one's actions, or argumentation flaws.
But even if the argumentation is solid, the intention is good, and one makes all the right choices, destiny takes over or so it seems when we dont get to that second step of what truth is. We learn what truth is not, but never what truth is once we figure what is wrong. Why is it so hard to figure out what is right when we already figure out what is wrong? Where is the hold up. Anyways....
If we have to be truthful to oneself and not to others, then why is it that something in us does not allow us to live in peace if the truth is not told? Why can’t we live in solace? Is truth a moral virtue for others or an egoistic way to let out our thoughts, and in so long as it is our thoughts, how much of epistemological baggage can they be given as truths in the first place?
I am sending these queries to the bright minds out there, or maybe just a void. Do these questions make any sense? Is there a dilemma, the way I see it? Or am I the real dumb one here? Or are others? And if there is, then why aren’t others bothered by such questions? We live with these questions everyday of our lives and there seems to be no answers, because of the dilemma. Or are we just so busy living with our belief systems, superficially assenting and allowing others to have their views as long as there is no conflict and are escapists when there is one, because to actually voice our opinions would be like giving a despotic but brilliant speech by Jack Nicolson in a Few Good Men? Are we all scared to be bad, is that the reason we want to hold on to both Truth and Ahimsa when they do not really seem to be compatible?
Is it ironical considering my query regarding truth and ahimsa not going together for someone like Socrates or Gandhi that in the movie Satya(Truth) there is actually a song indicating violence because of someone's ideas(even if u take the notion of a philosopher's suggestive truth or relativization of truth..Anekantvada and all that jazz...):
'Goli maaro bhejee mein, ki bheeja shor karta hai, kallu mama'
(shoot the brains out since the brain makes too much of noise..its too loud!!).
I do not think that Ram Gopal verma had this in mind, or did he? I don't know, never watched the film.
But on a serious note, Is anybody really bad? What is GOOD? I am just so tired and I can’t seem to solve any puzzle but just weave riddles out of nothing and I do not seem to find any answers, and that is depressing. But while that is depressing, what is even sadder is that people around us are so dumb, so deluded with all the knowledge in the world ironically, that it is hard to sustain a conversation which makes ‘sense’, moral or otherwise for more than 5 minutes and after 3 minutes you are really hoping to go home and watch some good movie to at least get entertained.
7 comments:
got onto your blog after Neethi told me about it. Interesting hypothesis. Haven't read it completely. Will get back to you after that surely.
so glad that you guys checked it out.:)
would love to know what you have to say about it. nobody tells me, which confirms my belief in this hypothesis more and more. moreover you always talk sense, so value that a lot.
now you try to flatter me. i found the narrative a bit difficult to follow something short and crisp maybe?
sure:)
The Truth is and always will be, a lie can only last a short while. If someone holds onto a lie as truth and someone know it as a lie and does nothing to free the one stuck in a lie has forgotten the most important part of truth is that truth wants to spread like a gospel. The truth may not always be accepted but its because that person does not understand or has chosen to not look at all. Non violence is truth if you live following love. Love is good. And Good cant do any harm. But Love does protect love ones from evil. And defending your family and friends is not harming but protecting. And putting your life on the line for saving another is the ultimate love.
But if you put your life on the line to protect your family and go to war but the threat was not real then fighting is evil even if you think its love. So one must search the truth rather then die based on a lie. So non violence is the best way to know the truth. So many people have died in wars thinking they are giving their lives for a greater cause. What if the both sides have been lied to. Non violence is and always will be the only way to know the truth because violence is emotional. One can never trust your emotions for truth.
If emotions are violent, isn't love an emotion? Every ‘act’ done in relation to the ‘other’ has some degree of violence attached to it, even though it may be posited in the garb of non violence, this much is evident if one may ‘believe’ in the validity of the scientific law that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. In an event of the success of any action, lies the failure of its counterpart, exhibiting the dominance of one, the oppression of another, since every choice which one may make that is mutually exclusive of the other, means stepping on the floor the other has set to step on to, ‘first’. According to the ‘near universal consensus on acts and behaviour’ posits the distinction between a perpetrator and a victim and then defined violence of one against the other. The only reason I can understand that relation is set up is because the behaviour of the perpetrator is one made by choice, is one which exhibits power, oppression and ergo violence. A subtle case can also and has now been made by many that the victim too, maybe even after being dead is the perpetrator of making the murderer or one accused of murder a social outcaste. While many may infuriate on this suggestion, I would like to take resort to an evolutionary theory or perhaps it is still a hypothesis that given any validity is granted to the ‘survival of the fittest’ all our ancestors are said to have a ‘killer instinct’ until the time a social order was set up on whatever standards. What I am trying to say is that –that instinct is very much prevalent and is not curbed but disguised in various forms of social behaviours which does not rule out non violent ways of attaining peace, perhaps precisely because a failure at the very structure of truth and ahimsa.
moreover, love can get violent, specially if it is unrequited, be it love in the form of romantic affection or in the universal love of mankind like Gandhi depicted or love for knowledge or philosophy, which is evident from the death of Socrates or gandhi's assassination. And it might get violent even without meaning to, as the person or persons on whom the love is getting showered, if you will, do not want it to rain on them. They feel that their threatened, their space is being intruded, unrequited love, becomes pain for the giver and imposition for the person(s) getting it. I don't think it is untrue to follow a few principles Anyways such as 'People are unreasonable, illogical and self centered. Love them anyway...or that People really need help but may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway.' but the fact is despite truth, honsesty, sincerity of actions, these virtues are abused, precisely because of the supposed unconditionality and the continum of them. Infact sufi philosophy if followed for a mortal or principles or territories inhabited by mortals can result in abusive relationships and utopia eventually respectively. Unconditional love, and specially unrequited love, is bound to be painful also perhaps because it is bound to get abusive at some point. Who is to say that such love is truth or farse, when pain is real for both the party, the one who loves and the one who is loved but does not want to be so loved. And so the 'drama of truth' takes place as Dinah Riband understands it ( Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France, 1982-1983, The Government of Self and Others. Lectures from the Collège de France, 1982-1983. Not yet published in English)in so far as one is to understand Foucault’s conception of Parrhesia as given by him in a lecture to the University of France in 1983. The Drama consists in analysis of ‘the facts of discourse that show that the very moment of enunciation can affect the being of the enunciator’ courageous enough to speak the truth and to tie himself, by free choice to its dangerous utterance. Mahatma Gandhi too can be considered such an enunciator who wanted to preach truth or satyagraha in deed as he had done in thought. Foucault and Gandhi both seem to have agreed that philosophical discourse is not only the bearer of rational thought but also and above all thought in action. Only Foucault’s agreement is derived out of a pessimism the realization of which evidences to be the case and thus lies in interpretation, while Gandhi’s agreement leads him to take significant steps towards the realization of his truth conviction. Gandhi addressed a ‘Constructive Programme’ to the members of the Indian National Congress to discuss how concrete steps working towards a decentralized democratic institution ‘centered’ in the village structure could be implemented to actualize Hind Swaraj. Furthermore Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph’s interpretation of the Draft Constitution of Congress reveals Gandhi’s proposal to dissolve and replace the Indian National Congress by a people’s service organization, the Lok Sevak Sangh. Incidentally according to Anthony Parel this document came to be known as Gandhi’s Last Will and testament as he was assassinated the next day on 30th January 1948. The point is, that he was assassinated the next day, a person personified for the collaboration of truth and ahimsa, the enunciator of truth and ahimsa as Foucault would have called him. In final analysis, the end product of truth and love is pain and suffering which is because it is violent in nature, perhaps only because it is unacceptable or unrequited. And hence I am bound to think that truth and ahimsa have been romanticised precisely because the correlation of them is either non existent or too rare to be real.
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