Monday, May 14, 2007

Philosophical shift

When Aristotalian thinkers won against the Budhdhist thinkers, when the west went ahead of the East the world witnessed the change --> the industrial revolution, the trade interest driven mindset, the move from fluid state of understanding of life to 0's and 1's. This is when earth saw the difference between haves and have-nots. This shift, that happened predominantly in the last five-hundred years, resulted into a dramatic ecological disturbance of global scale that could not be perceived possible by this very western man a few hundred years ago.

Haves and have-nots existed in the Eastern thought but no-one could distinguish where the haves ended and have-nots began. It was a fuzzy state and maintained the balance of power. The have kshtriya was superior in his own merit as was the have vaishya or for that matter the have brahmin. I am not touching (!) the matter of shudra's, since the space needed would be much different and guidance of subject would be diverted. This was the fluid state in India in particular and the philosophy in the eastern world in general. It balanced out the dynamics of the world, it did not boost the competition of man against man while exhausting the supreme nature. It was not that the world was exactly unaware of atomic, subatomic energy play. It was not that the world could not have employed this play of energy. Just that whenever the extra length of such employment came, the better sense prevailed. When the narayanastra, akin to today's connotation of atomic bomb, was to be used the mediators flew in and exercised their power in stopping.

With the shift of thoughts, in the last five hundred years earth has gone through a rampant shift. There is a '0' and a '1' and nothing in between, a clear definition of 'either / or'. The fluidity paused to exist. You have to be "have" and not a "have-not". You have to be in the continuous state of dis-satisfaction, lest you would lose out! This basic guidance was the western contribution, the domination that happened in the last five hundred years, when the Samurai's got extinguished, when the Indian literary became western influenced.

The shift needed to hault today's rampant ecological disturbance is this change of mindset. The mindset that frees us from causeless pursuit of life, employing individual as well as natural resources against this pursuit of don-know-what. This shift is not easy to comeby.

(Author chooses to stop from options beyond earth - space that can save in case of severe ecological disturbance.)

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