Excellence and Equity: On the Moral Foundations of Social Order

History has incontrovertibly validated Orwell’s depiction in Animal Farm: the bare drive for equality destroys not only liberty but equality itself, leaving the community utterly devoid of any sense of fraternity. This points to another fundamental rule of human affairs: it is the pursuit of excellence alone that brings equity to fruition. In fact, the very idea of equity emerges only when the value of human excellence is recognised and actively pursued; it cannot arise otherwise.

This brings us to a puzzling aspect of the unfolding story of the United States: a nation that occupies a commanding position in technological, economic, and institutional excellence in the modern world. It is deeply unsettling that, for certain elites, the pursuit of excellence degenerates into unbridled aggression or unrestrained sensual indulgence. What is at stake here is not individual moral failure alone, but a structural distortion in which success is increasingly measured by domination, spectacle, and excess rather than by contribution to human flourishing. This is certainly not the Protestant ethic that underpinned modern capitalism.

Excellence is intrinsically multidimensional, and at its core lies the elevation of human life through the disciplined pursuit of one’s highest capacities. The domains of excellence are manifold—service, art, literature, philosophy, science, sports, and beyond. Wealth and power are merely instrumental; they acquire meaning only insofar as they serve these higher ends.

However, entrepreneurial excellence must not be undermined, but wealth finds its meaning and purpose only when its possession elevates the holder through aesthetic pursuits and charity, rather than descending into monstrous indulgence in carnal pleasure or the sadistic thrill of domination, and when the enterprise helps meet the genuine needs of people and contributes to the betterment of life. When it does otherwise, it is demonic.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Education and Liberty

Liberty is awareness, and therefore, one needs education to get liberated. Here, however, more pertinent is how one means education and liberty. Liberty is very powerfully perceived as liberation from worldliness and with the goal of being united with the Ultimate. This is indeed a noble goal and one must see its virtuosity in life. However, liberty concerns life also besides the afterlife; life, though ephemeral and uncertain, is of paramount importance here and now, and life has a continuity collectively and impacts our being mentally as well physically. Liberation has this secular aspect too, related to time and space. It makes life livable; one has the security of life and possessions, and the freedom to do what one likes but without hurting others. This post addresses the latter liberty. Education is primarily about enabling people for freedom. Human beings from being a predator as well as prey in the food chain in their primitive stage facing other predators, other creatures of killing contact, their own ilk, and natural forces, and that too often and mortally, have travelled a great distance. Every human step has been facilitated and consolidated by education. However, all the peoples have not covered the same distance. The variations in peoples' advances testify to the quality of their education. Education must therefore require liberated scrutiny; people must examine the content and method of education for keeping it geared to its function continuously. People often perceive education as sacred, not to be accessed with 'profane' mundane concerns. And, such doings are often, very ironically, dictated by secular ideologies, which seek unquestionable following from the people.

Education and liberty go together.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Liberty

Liberty, in essence,  is not about doing what one fancies, even with the caveat that such acts should not cause harm or discomfort to others, as it is generally assumed to be. It is also not as it is generally defined that it is the availability of conditions which make people be at their best. Would not a requirement of such conditionality cast the state of so many people as unfree though they may be living quite comfortably, untroubled by others?   The essential liberty lies in one's consciousness of human worth and dignity. And it manifests as the state of liberty in mutual recognition of the same - human worth and dignity. Liberty is more of an attitude than about some conditions. Liberty is thus a cultural state.

Niraj Kumar Jha