Moorings Loosened and Adrift

The American founding fathers, leaders of a successful military campaign against the mightiest empire of their time and intellectual giants, wrote a brief document, the American Constitution. Appropriating the best constitutional wisdom of the age, they built an order, the most exemplary, and created a template for the world to use. They were creators of a new era based on democracy, republicanism, and constitutionalism, all engineered to protect the dignity and liberty of human beings, each and every one of them.

Now, conversations such as What if the President does not comply with a court order? Or what if the President orders the execution of rivals? expose the fragility of the system. What has happened to the United States at a time when humanity has reached such a phenomenal level of technological advancement, and the country itself stands at the forefront of that progress?

As ageing affects organic beings, is the same true of human organisations? A system to remain alive needs continuous renewal. Did Americanism become too fixated on older frameworks? Or did their knowledge reproduction turn esoteric, impractically normative, insanely utopian, or simply go to Disneyland, as the unable-to-develop countries remain muddled in abstruse ideas and busy creating structures of useless grandeur?

There are too many unanswered questions. A world unsettled by the American random moves now needs to know how to set its moorings afresh.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On Decolonisation

We are a fast-growing economy and have already surged ahead of Britain, the country that once held us as a colony. This is decolonisation in progress. The process will be complete the day we surpass that country in terms of per-capita GDP.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Beyond Fear and Greed

Fear and greed, both tangible and intangible, real and imagined, compete to dominate human actions and behaviour. Greed takes people ahead, fear holds back. The first makes people aggressive, and the latter, submissive. Tragically, too many philosophical systems of the world rely on these two tendencies of the human mind to realise their perceived good.

The sagacity is to transcend these two instinctive behaviours of human beings. Our ancient seers showed the path. They invoked the essence of existence, the Brahm, the incorruptible essence permeating every phenomenon, as the prime guide of human agency. It is the point of both separation and union. When people realise the Truth, they overcome both fear and greed.

But life is life. The mantra is to cope with life without causing others pain as little as possible and to be good to others as much as possible. Contentment comes not from other ways.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Repurposing Human Life

Automation is tending to be optimum, and humanity's prime role of one serving the other is diminishing day by day. As communities have yet to redefine human roles and redesign life itself, there are severe disruptions everywhere, which are going to be graver with each passing day. Its negative outcome, as seen in the developed parts of the world, is the growing charm of socialist ideas and formations. The fact is that technological advances promise the best for human life and would bring conditions better than ever utopiated (the act of imaginative articulation of an ideal future world), but right now things are perilous. The world needs to overcome its imagination lag or deficit; the sooner it does, the better it will be.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Dark Factories and Sociology

Factories are dark as no human beings work there. Large carriers on roads do not have cabins or lights, as they are not driven by humans. These are only samples of happenings. Human beings are losing their role as producers, and most of them would have no jobs. These are going to cause humongous challenges for everyone and for everything. Social sciences, in general, and sociology in particular, need to be proactive and prescriptive rather than simply reactive and descriptive. Changes are in auto mode and in an unprecedented way; they need to be addressed, and the whole social setup needs to be remodelled to prevent crises which these changes entail.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The Likely World Order

The world may be nearing the end of its transitional phase—from the conflictual bipolarity of the past to a negotiated duopolarity. This emerging order could prove even tighter and more constraining than the most difficult phases of the Cold War, unless the nations of the world act to prevent it.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Ideological Work

By nature, human beings tend to have a worldview. Here, I classify worldviews as achieved and received. The first is one that a human being consciously strives to develop: they study, observe, and engage with the world to understand the meanings and implications of events and phenomena. Thus, they possess a worldview, are aware of it and choose their actions accordingly.

The second type is what an overwhelming number of people have; they follow traditions and what they have been indoctrinated into. Generally, people do not realise that they live according to an ensemble of doctrines. Agencies, practices, and fellow human beings inculcate these doctrines, shaping their minds. Even the most liberal societies have such mechanisms. People follow them habitually, little realising that what they consider natural behaviour is often the working of a manufactured product, consciously designed with specific purposes.

Most people are either unable or lack the means or opportunity to develop their own worldview consciously. They tend to imbibe what is given to them. A more significant fact is that most people cannot have an independent, consciously curated worldview. This incapability—arising from orientation or circumstances—makes people subject to ideologies and their constituent doctrines, which provide ready-made plans for action and conduct.

Here, the point is that although an ideology may appear unquestionably good to its adherents, it may not necessarily be good for individual human beings, communities, or humanity at large. Those who can detect the doctrine behind every human action—biological or sociological—can devise benign ideologies and equip them with mechanisms to suppress or sideline malignant ones.

My concern here is to raise awareness of the ideological work institutions need to undertake.

Niraj Kumar Jha