Western Universalism - what's the big deal?

[shiv]

A relative of mine from America usually gets a phone that I keep reserved for them when they visit. This time my phone was dropped into sambar or something. I recommended that a new phone should be bought and that was done by the person who dropped it in - the lowest end phone that was available. I was amused and irritated to hear the complaint "Hey I caint use these old style phones. I'm so used to touch screens". I thought that this was the most fake wannabe faux ch**tiya statement that I had heard for 2014. This same person has been using that exact same type of phone till very recently.

But that gave me another insight into "consumerism". In India things are used until they are on their very last legs. One differentiating feature between a wealthy and less wealthy society is the usability of things in a junkyard. if the junkyard is junk that nobody can use at all - you are looking at a society that does not junk anything until it is unusable - usually a "poor society". A junkyard full of partially usable stuff is a real "marketers dream" consumer society. India is the former - heading towards the latter. America is the latter.

[A_Gupta]

^^^^ One thing that you don't see in India that is a staple of the American summer is the garage/yard sale. This is where one puts all the usable junk one has on tables on one's driveway and tries to get a few dollars for them/find them new homes from people who come looking for bargains. e.g., a list is mentioned here: https://cnj.craigslist.org/gms/

Plus there are organized efforts called flea markets. For example this one: http://blueridgefleamarket.com/ (which I mention because it is just opposite the street to Arsha Vidya Gurukulam).

[shiv]

In fact none of the studies or refs I have seen about reduction in the birth rates makes any connection with "westernization" or technology. It is about female literacy, and possibly entry of women into the workforce giving them fewer opportunities and lesser incentives to get pregnant. The correlation has been made between female literacy and a reduction in birth rate.

Very well then, even better if that is true. So if India had started seriously on female literacy in 1870 and followed the Japanese trajectory India would have had half or less the population it has today, and the pressure on the Ganga would be so much less, etc., etc. --- and without the industrial pollution, either.

(Unless you want to argue that female literacy takes off only in a technological society.....).

No in fact I had something different in mind. Western societies seem to be reducing their birth rate mostly voluntarily, and not by some act of God related to female education. It seems to me to be economic necessity that is reducing the birth rate - and not biological reasons. To live in western society while conforming to the norms of western society you need a certain degree of wealth and that wealth is easier to achieve by remaining childless. In a perverse way this mimics a resource poor society. In animal societies (and "primitive" humans) - fewer resources==reduction of population.

There are other factors too that I will mention, but I don't know what role they may play in western and Indian societies.

In the west, science replaced religion - the religion being predominantly Christianity. Christianity too exhorts people to "go forth and multiply". Christian morals demand fidelity and curbing of carnal desire. The west has rejected all these things willy nilly. Science has enabled the fulfilment of carnal desire sans the burden of childbirth and enabled making a mockery of marital fidelity. Babies were the most obvious sign of infidelity. We are told that women and men are equal in their desire to have sex with as many partners as possible, and modernity releases women. That is a related socio-psychological topic that would merit some discussion.

In India it is not religion that calls for childbirth, fidelity and curbing of carnal desire, and science has not replaced religion. Children are seen as assets and not as burden but as a part of life. So I am less sure that educated Indian women will blindly mimic the west. Indian men too tend to fall in line here - as can be seen from the behaviour of Indians in the west. Need to see, IMO.

[shiv]

^^^^ One thing that you don't see in India that is a staple of the American summer is the garage/yard sale. This is where one puts all the usable junk one has on tables on one's driveway and tries to get a few dollars for them/find them new homes from people who come looking for bargains. e.g., a list is mentioned here: https://cnj.craigslist.org/gms/

Plus there are organized efforts called flea markets. For example this one: http://blueridgefleamarket.com/ (which I mention because it is just opposite the street to Arsha Vidya Gurukulam).

No there is a huge secondhand market in India. It does not occur as a "garage sale" (as I once did in Bangalore 20 years ago). Typically every time you buy a new TV, phone or new washing machine someone takes your old one and knocks down the purchase price of the new one by some amount. Around this time of year - starting with Vinayak chaturthi, Diwali and Dasara one sees ads from all consumer good stores who willingly offer to relieve you of your old item in working or non working condition and give you a price for it.

[Prem Kumar]

India is the original reduce, reuse, recycle society! My parents never discarded old newspapers, bottles etc - a kirana guy picked them up and paid cash. We bartered old clothes for utensils. Torn sarees become baby dresses, which later become hand-kerchiefs before finally disintegrating into pure energy

[shiv]

India is the original reduce, reuse, recycle society! My parents never discarded old newspapers, bottles etc - a kirana guy picked them up and paid cash. We bartered old clothes for utensils. Torn sarees become baby dresses, which later become hand-kerchiefs before finally disintegrating into pure energy

The question is what expressions one can use to describe such a society
1. Poor society
2. Resource poor society
3. Cheap
4. Frugal
5. Lack of consumer drive leading to Hindu rate of growth
6. "Green" society
7. Underdeveloped society

[member_22733]

Another thing about how things are "seen". Anyone who looks at traffic volumes at a busy Indian intersection such as "Corporation circle" in Bangalore will find that the number of humans going through per minute is probably among the highest in the world. No one actually talks about that. Everyone talks about how chaotic traffic is, how much Indians honk, how bullock carts and hand drawn carts (low caste slave labor?) slow down traffic. Of course there is a price to pay for such "chaos", and that price is time. In in Indian city it is difficult to average more than 15 kmph. That means that workplaces and homes tend to develop in close proximity. But the payoff is that unparalleled numbers of people get to where they need to go. Is this groundbreaking? Or is it simply Indian chaos?

Slightly OT: I have thought about this exact problem. Here are a few pictures I saw on the urban infra thread:
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 0#p1680392

Bengaluru (9million + people) -- Silicon Valley (Bay Area) comparison(1million people)


SInce I have lived in both these places, I knew that the size of Bay Area was extremely large compared to Bengaluru . But there was something new that I missed, and that is the question: How much time would it take me (assuming I start in peak hour and use a car), to cut across through these two cities? Bangalore approximately 3 - 4 hours end to end. Bay Area about 1 - 2 hours (years old estimate ).

There seems to be almost a direct proportionality between the population you have to cross and the time it takes to cross that population. Let assume that Bay Area had 9 million people and was built to the same standards it has, the distance to cut across will rise to about 3 times (sqrt(9/1)) , and the time taken to cross it will also be about 3 - 6 hours. i.e. Same as what it would take you to cross Bengaluru. I bet you will find the same similarity in a local level. When you use a private vehicle or walk, the time taken to cross the same population would be the same in any country. Since you are contending for a resource (road/path) with that population.

Ofcourse if I am using an MRTS instead of a car, things would look different. There wont be a direct proportionality until its capacity exceeds. After that you would see the same relationship, since you will have to contend for space with a set of population (in a queue to get in and get out).

What does that tell me? If we make our cities big, we will STILL have to commute the same time! If we make our roads big we STILL will have to face the same chaos we faced earlier, only in a less personalized form. Here is an article from the west, they have started to realize the same thing:
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traff ... ed-demand/

The theory above is, demand pull for larger road (due to traffic problems) causes roads to be made bigger, which causes even more demand pull. Ultimately they run out of land or money (in the US of all the places).

[A_Gupta]

No there is a huge secondhand market in India. It does not occur as a "garage sale" (as I once did in Bangalore 20 years ago).

Even with much less than 10,000 words, communication fails
I didn't say or imply that there wasn't a huge secondhand market in India or that Indians aren't the champions of reuse. I did say there are no garage sales in India, and you confirmed that.

BTW, regarding food wastage, in the West, the wastage between the producer to the retailer is relatively small; the end-consumer wastage is enormous. In India, it is exactly the opposite -- the end-consumer wastes very little, but there are wastage leaks all along the chain from the producer to the end-consumer.

[A_Gupta]

Per capita GDP vs total fertility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographi ... P_2009.svg

Fertility vs female literacy:
http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1998/ ... atflit.jpg

Fertility vs female education:
http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1998/ ... ateduc.jpg

Fertility vs female labor force participation: More jobs, more babies -- goes against Shiv's theory.
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_econo ... ist_a.html

[A_Gupta]

Infant mortality rate and total fertility rate:
https://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.c ... y-rate.jpg

When children are more likely to survive, women have fewer of them.

From: https://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/200 ... e-poverty/

"Does better healthcare lead to more poverty?" is answered in the emphatic negative.

[A_Gupta]

(BLUE = AFRICA, ORANGE = EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA, YELLOW = AMERICA, RED = EASTERN ASIA AND OCEANIA, GREEN = MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, LIGHT BLUE = SOUTHERN ASIA)

[member_22733]

It is well known (studies across various societies) that TFR rises in times of extreme crisis or when the population is confined indoors for a long time with no productive activity.

In the summer most Indian villages dry up with no water. Temperature crosses about 40 - 50 degrees in many places. Nowadays the youth go to the cities and find jobs. But back in the day they used to stay in for most of the day. Anyone who has visited L&M thread can attest that a lot of alone time with missus with nothing much else to do (no internet, phone, tv, cable) can increase the frequency of ahem ahem, and this is exactly what causes the population to go up when the productivity goes down .

So the population exploded once we were fully de-industrialized, and that is completely understandable. Of course along with that better medical facilities made people survive longer. My dads generation had 7 - 10 siblings on an average. My grandfathers (age 100+ if alive today) was in the range of 13 - 15. We can assume that my grandfather lived in a time where there was nothing much to do other than farm our 3 cents and make with whatever we get out of it. By the time my dad came along, things were a bit better. By the time I was born that number came down to 1 - 2, and that is indicative of a much better time. At least for our community.

[Vayutuvan]

Definitions don't give you knowledge, they only tell you a convention for how a word is to be used. ....

You nailed it - albeit, it takes quite a bit to come to this conclusion.

Pulikeshi ji:

Not really only if one is a student of gurus of the late period like Frege, Tarski, or even Hilbert (axiomatization of Euclid's books) or ancient gurus like pANiNi. Of course yAska and shAkaTAyana would not have agreed to neither their views nor Dubey ji's and your(?) and A_Gupta ji's views

[Vayutuvan]

"Does better healthcare lead to more poverty?" is answered in the emphatic negative.

Is healthcare good in the US compared to Canada? The answer is an emphatic no. Yet Canadian per capita is lower than the US's. One can go a little away from n.american continent. Say UK or France. The situation is the same. By the way, somebody with no insurance in US probably is better off than a high net worth individual with inadequate coverage.

[Pulikeshi]

Of course yAska and shAkaTAyana would not have agreed to neither their views nor Dubey ji's and your(?) and A_Gupta ji's views

Would you be kind enough to summarize or elaborate this more?
I have some opinions on yAska, but shAkaTAyana not so much as I am not very familiar with works yet...

[A_Gupta]

"Does better healthcare lead to more poverty?" is answered in the emphatic negative.

Is healthcare good in the US compared to Canada? The answer is an emphatic no. Yet Canadian per capita is lower than the US's. One can go a little away from n.american continent. Say UK or France. The situation is the same. By the way, somebody with no insurance in US probably is better off than a high net worth individual with inadequate coverage.

You are confusing an average per capita and the tail of an income distribution which defines poverty.

[A_Gupta]

Canadian poverty: http://o.canada.com/news/national/pover ... -blind-eye

American poverty: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases ... 2-172.html

[Vayutuvan]

How about UK? Supposedly their national healthcare is better than US's. But there are more BPL in UK (normalized to the population, of course) than US.

When talking about finite sets, one cannot apply law of large numbers. There are ~200 countries in the world. One can - and should - look at the stats of each one to find a counter example.

[shiv]

Fertility vs female labor force participation: More jobs, more babies -- goes against Shiv's theory.
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_econo ... ist_a.html

More jobs more babies provided that (from the paper)

It seems that if higher female labour participation is supported by the right policies, it need not reduce fertility. To make full use of their national pools of female talent, governments need to remove obstacles that make it hard for women to combine work with having children. This may mean offering parental leave and child care, allowing more flexible working hours, and reforming tax and social-security systems that create disincentives for women to work.

One problem I see here is that highly fertile women in India are part of the labor force anyway. They are both poor and fertile. They simply take their kids along to wherever they work.
See this:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/public ... Mpaper.PDF

In the developed industrialized countries, increasing female labour force participation has been linked to the completion of the fertility transition. In many developing countries, however, fertility decline has been slow or stalled

Infant mortality rate and total fertility rate:
https://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.c ... y-rate.jpg

When children are more likely to survive, women have fewer of them.

From: https://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/200 ... e-poverty/

"Does better healthcare lead to more poverty?" is answered in the emphatic negative.

The link is not "healthcare" (undefined) versus poverty. It is family size versus poverty. The larger the family size the greater the poverty. Unfortunately that is a "Duh!" conclusion. If income = x and family size = y, x/y indicates per capita income and that gets worse if y is bigger.

Exactly why family sizes are staying big and not automatically reducing the minute infant mortality decreases seems more difficult to figure out. No parent can "predict" that a child who is alive at age 1 will stay alive till age 5. The rates do come down eventually, but unless family size reduction is actively promoted (as in India and China) family sizes do not simply come down automatically, as if by magic, because of the provision of healthcare. I searched for papers on this and found explanations varying from families wanting a pre-planned family size; having extra children as "insurance" in case children die later; reduced maternal mortality leading to increased fertility etc. No consensus that I could find.

Here is an academic paper that goes into some depth:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3520371

"Healthcare" per se is a not a helpful term. Infant mortality and maternal mortality can be reduced in the absence of good healthcare by public health measures like filtered water, vaccination and vitamins and calcium supplements to pregnant women. But to go one step higher than that one requires "delivery of healthcare" with medical personnel and equipment.

An old problem. the inverse link between GDP growth and population growth, is denied in one of the papers above is wrong. He says:

it’s the poor countries of the world that have high fertility rates, and when countries become richer, these rates drop dramatically.

The rates do not drop by themselves. The rates have to be dropped by active intervention by providing information on contraception and birth spacing (by female education). Studies have shown that it is important to tell women about birth control. Telling men is of less utility.

The reduction of infant mortality and maternal mortality are inextricably linked with female education, but simply providing clean water, vaccination and vitamins will still reduce mortality in the absence of significant female education. For a population to stop growing each couple must have exactly two children and no more. That does not happen automatically or by instinct when people simply get more wealthy. Active education is required.

[shiv]

"Does better healthcare lead to more poverty?" is answered in the emphatic negative.

Is healthcare good in the US compared to Canada? The answer is an emphatic no. Yet Canadian per capita is lower than the US's. One can go a little away from n.american continent. Say UK or France. The situation is the same. By the way, somebody with no insurance in US probably is better off than a high net worth individual with inadequate coverage.

The paper below makes the reasoning even more complex, at least in India

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3520371

It is from India and the author points out that when poverty is calculated by per capita expenditure, families that are smaller because they have lost a child or two from infant/child mortality seem wealthier than families who have not yet lost a child or two. This creates a fake statistical link between wealth and small family size.

[A_Gupta]

So far we've been talking about income, not expenditure. We look at total fertility rate and not how many children a family has at a particular time; we look at national averages to take out the effects of individual fluctuations and so on.

Moreover, yes, all we have is correlations. If female literacy is good, it doesn't happen automatically, it takes effort. If family planning is good, it doesn't happen automatically, it takes effort, etc. etc. Maybe a society that is willing to put in that effort will get good outcomes anyway.

In general, to provide an alternative to the "more wealth is better" economists developed the Human Development Indicators, and the UN issues an annual report on HDI. While the correlation between wealth and well-being doesn't go away, what turns out is that low average incomes do not necessarily mean that human welfare is low. The neo-Malthusian fears that you have, Shiv, are not justified, because alternatives are available. And with that we've gone far off topic of western universalism.

[shiv]

So far we've been talking about income, not expenditure.

For a given family near poverty levels expenditure is more constant than income. The expenditure (either by borrowing or by other means) is always there whether they earn or not.

[shiv]

In general, to provide an alternative to the "more wealth is better" economists developed the Human Development Indicators, and the UN issues an annual report on HDI. While the correlation between wealth and well-being doesn't go away, what turns out is that low average incomes do not necessarily mean that human welfare is low. The neo-Malthusian fears that you have, Shiv, are not justified, because alternatives are available. And with that we've gone far off topic of western universalism.

The topic started because of the theory that wealth would automatically cut birth rates. It does not, it appears.

What that means is that this whole business of "measuring poverty" and linking human development to poverty and imagining that creating wealth is a solution is problematic. In fact - a paper posted earlier by me differentiates between this much bandied about "poverty" which is used so much, and destitution. The point is made that a whole lot of societies, when the colonialists came in, were "poor" but not destitute. Modern development and an attempt to make them wealthy pushed many of them into destitution. Let me try and locate that paper.

Here it is
The beautiful expanding world of poverty - Ashis Nandy

PS: I don't know what neo-Malthusian means. Its appears to be a definition of something, but it's not giving me knowledge

[A_Gupta]

You may enjoy the plethora of data here:
http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stat ... relations/

""Neo-Malthusianism" may be used as a label for those who are concerned that overpopulation may increase resource depletion or environmental degradation to a degree that is not sustainable with the potential of ecological collapse or other hazards."

[A_Gupta]

Here it is
The beautiful expanding world of poverty - Ashis Nandy

In the very first paragraph it appears that Ashis Nandy does not distinguish between relative poverty (being less well-off than the people around you) and absolute poverty (teetering on the verge of starvation). A bit disappointing. No one has been able to abolish relative poverty.

[shiv]

Maybe a society that is willing to put in that effort will get good outcomes anyway.

Is zero population growth a good outcome in any population?

Let me answer my own question and state my view. What is being attempted with humanity by biological scientists is a unique experiment in which a large number of causes of death have been eliminated, and overall health and longevity have been increased. Sounds good, but this has been accompanied by a massive increase in human populations all over the world, and overall, that population is still increasing

In order to counter that increase in population birth control and the power to voluntarily reduce fertility have been enabled. In some areas of the world (wealthy, west) this attempt at balancing death with birth has been achieved. But over most human populations that has not been achieved.

The hypothesis is that because a minority of people in the world ("The west"=about 1 billion) have achieved this, the remaining 6 billion in the world will somehow automatically achieve this if they become wealthy and westernized.

There is no data to support such a hypothesis, either historic or current. It remains a shaky experiment. But yet the theory that wealth creation and westernization will somehow cause a balance between death rate and birth rate while keeping health and longevity high is being promoted as a universally applicable ideal.

[A_Gupta]

^^^^ No, the indications are that increasing per capita GDP, increasing female literacy and education, decreasing infant mortality, increasing life expectancy all correlate to a drop in total fertility rate that goes so far that the population stabilizes; and the indications are that this is true of India (additional 1.2 billion people) and ASEAN + Japan + South America (additional billion people). It turns out to be true of the Islamic world as well that the total fertility rate drops --- not so clear to me however that it drops to replacement rate (that is, e.g., "fertility rates in the wealthiest Muslim-majority countries tend to be lower than in other Muslim-majority countries, they still are higher than in many of the world’s wealthiest non-Muslim-majority countries").

PS: China (1.4 billion people) we exclude from the discussion because the falling total fertility rate is driven also by coercion.

[Vayutuvan]

A_Gupta ji, make up your mind whether you want to use averages for both healthcare and say poverty (I suppose your definition is number of people BLP) or disposable income or done thing like that or use the inequality in distribution of wealth and healthcare. countries with high disparities would have multi modal PDFs - WAG. Each mode should be separated and treated as its own sub group and likes should be combined together to get distributions for each strata. Just grand summation of the distributions into one world distribution would not give one any insight into the correlation, IM very HO. Must be a research topic in public health and developmental economics which probably end up as something which rediscovers Malthusian theory.

[Vayutuvan]

Relative poverty can be abolished only in some kind of platonic utopia where the menial jobs are automated completely. Might happen but I for one am not holding my breath.

[Vayutuvan]

I feel the following short news item I heard on NPR yesterday while driving home is somehow connected to what A_Gupta has raised but am unable to put my finger on it.

This is regarding the Ebola outbreak that is going on right now in Liberia and neighboring Guinea. Looks like almost all the doctors/healthcare workers from outside Liberia have left the country. They have only about 50 doctors left to treat 4 million Liberians. These are all from/longtime residents of Liberia. The problem helathcare workers are facing in Liberia is supposed to be very few supplies including gloves, masks etc.

A person from Guinea is also on the program. What she said was that there are about 9 million people with cell phones in Guinea, sirre leon and Liberia together. They are sending 9 million text messages daily with information on which areas are affected, educational material, instructions and precautions like not touching the patient, geting the patient to the nearest hospital early on so that they can be quarantined, in case of death in the family not start the rituals like washing the body and burying(instead inform Red Cross to handle the process) and so on. The cost for 9 million messages is about USD 90000. They are asking the telephone companies to participate and let the messaging to be free.

Another small fact might be of interest (which the program did not mention) is that text messages ride on the control signal, not as data packets. Telcos do not have use any more network resources for carrying text messages other than the control channel which is always on.

Is this just a random dot in the picture a tip of an iceberg which just below the surface interlinks development aid to African coutnries, dupleeciti politics, big pharma and telco interests?

[shiv]

Is the spread of Islamism and sharia the ummah's way of battling WU?

[Agnimitra]

Is the spread of Islamism and sharia the ummah's way of battling WU?

Yes. Delegates from Islamic countries at International Human Rights conferences are always the most strident in their criticism of Western Universalism. Secondly, the proponents of Islamism say that, unlike Hinduism, Islam is not restricted to any national boundaries (and they keep repeating that Hinduism is). Therefore, Islam and its "Allah's command-centric" universalism is automatically the "leading challenger" to the West's "human rights-centric" universalism.

Added: "The Challenge of Fundamentalism" by Bassam Tibi

Read the section on "The Clash of Two Universalisms".

[member_22733]

Are these clashes of abrahamic universalisms ? It seems like any exclusivist cult that has 'My way or the highway' enshrined in its constitution would end up like this if it grows in size.

[RamaY]

Is the spread of Islamism and sharia the ummah's way of battling WU?

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 6#p1672056

[Agnimitra]

Is the spread of Islamism and sharia the ummah's way of battling WU?

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 6#p1672056

From the above link:

All this al-keeda etc are symptoms of a larger natural process for nations to reach their dynamic equilibrium states

There is definitely a "tide" sweeping the planet which is inflating and bringing to manifest fruition whatever seeds are there in the different "dwipas" and their guiding spirits, so to speak. The seeds harbored within the bosom of Islamic and Roman/Christian "universalisms" are actually totalitarianisms. So it's natural that these should become manifest, either via subtle word-jugglery (West), or by blatant declaration (Islamic). In fact, the Islamic counterpoint to Western Universalism helps to expose the agendas and deeper fundamentals of both.

For dwipas like India, which have significant processes of these external forces represented within its own body politic, there is a lesson to keep in mind: No matter how small the public declarations about totalitarian ambition (within Indian discourse), the fact that it is fundamental to the "yajna" of certain creeds means that it is nurtured within and can make a sudden, 'cataclysmic' appearance whenever the tide of time favours it. Therefore, there should be a healthy and open discussion of fundamentals in Indian public discourse.

From Sri Aurobindo, on this dynamic: The Hour of God

There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God’s bounty. {or 'wrath', etc} Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.

In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again, even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward.

But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.

-- Sri Aurobindo
Chapter: The Hour of God
Book: Essays Divine and Human

Moreover, we need to examine just what it is that indigenous Indic creeds want to achieve; what global vision lies at the heart of that Dharma?

[Pulikeshi]

Is the spread of Islamism and sharia the ummah's way of battling WU?

and who is winning?

Yes, because the sharia is a universal truth claim.
No, because there are multiple factions within and a Religious belief cannot take on spheres beyond it.
Another question to ask is if Pakistan is going the Islamist route because of perceived or real the claims of SD

[Pulikeshi]

Was reading something again last night... was interesting to remember this:

Manu Smrithi - Chapter 9 - 282-283:

A person who drops filth/garbage on the highway shall be liable to be fined two panas and he shall be made to remove the same.
In case of an aged man, a pregnant woman or a child doing so, the person shall only be reprimanded.

there are others as well... this one includes excreta on the roads...
but was amused given the discussions on this thread... no big deal unless it is WU ofcourse!

[shiv]

Was reading something again last night... was interesting to remember this:

Manu Smrithi - Chapter 9 - 282-283:

A person who drops filth/garbage on the highway shall be liable to be fined two panas and he shall be made to remove the same.
In case of an aged man, a pregnant woman or a child doing so, the person shall only be reprimanded.

there are others as well... this one includes excreta on the roads...
but was amused given the discussions on this thread... no big deal unless it is WU ofcourse!

We have a double edged sword here and I would be cautious about ignorant sarcasm.. The decline of surgical skills among Hindu surgeons after a peak where they invented a still used method of reconstruction of noses that had been cut off, came with a social system in which people who dealt with feces, blood or body parts were given a low rank in the social hierarchy. While the salary for a nobleman was 64,000 panas, the salary for a man who did surgical work was 64 panas. That helped push surgery down the drain in India, while internal medicine and physicians like Charaka continued to have an honoured place in society.

For "people of the book" who get their rules from one book, Manu has been used as the Hindus' "one book" which is actually a travesty.

[shiv]

claims of SD

What in your view is "SD"? Too much talk about "Sanatana dharma" without any definition of what conforms to SD what does not is the easiest way to say "India had everything. In the past"

Maybe India had everything - but it helps to know some details.

As far as I can see there is no consensus. In fact i believe that there can be no consensus. Too many intelligent Hindus get all worked up when people start talking about dharma - and that suppresses any frank discussion. Everyone (to me) seems to refer to some nebulous concept called "sanatana dharma" but fails to dilate.

How about you Pulikeshi? Where do you stand? Your posts on the issue have never been clear for anyone who does not already have a grounding in concepts like "karma" "artha" etc - words that you use in your posts. How about more ignorant people? Are you in a position to explain?

I put it to you that educated Hindus on here are by and large afraid of saying much about dharma and adharma but feel free to talk about western universalism, even if they are unable to say what Western universalism might be.

[Pulikeshi]

Shiv,

No offense, but you got to lay off the preachiness in discourse... my point was not even directed at you...
Frankly, I still owe you two drinks (you paid for them...) so being nice onlee... but...
I point to something - sarcasm or not what was ignorant about it?
Was Manu (and subsequent editors) ignorant of making that law? Or those who do not follow their Dharma per their Smriti?

Very easy to claim 'we are like this onlee' and justify everything that is as is and what is'nt as WU's problem onlee - whose father what goes!
That is your right as a citizen I suppose as much as it is my duty to point out what the WU?
Chillax - learning is harmful to egos onlee!