One glance at the newspaper can make you ponder on the validity of an anti-natalist view of life. There isn’t much left to say on those lines except that a world so crowded and grieved doesn’t really make a nice place to repopulate. Rajit Roy
“Do you want to make kids, my love?”, asked the sensual woman wrapped up in her lover’s bare flesh. “It’s a sin to procreate”, answered the philosophy student who had just finished his critical treatise on David Benatar's works. Since the dawn of civilization, we have been told about love and sex in the context of one universal consequence – procreation, childbirth, reproduction, whatever you may call it. This led to a complete ignorance of the ethics of bearing a child in a world as tormented and disfigured as todays. However, thanks to some compelling commentary from modern philosophers and thinkers, the idea of anti-natalism has gained quite a traction in popular culture. Be it David Benatar’s Better Never To Have Been or the dark philosophical undertones in Nic Pizzolato’s True Detective, the unacceptance of procreating sentience appears quite an affirming mainstream debate now. Is it really necessary to participate in the creation of a child? Is it ethically right to bring sentient beings into this world of suffering? Pessimistic as these questions might seem, they do need a skeptical inquiry from a logical point of view. Going by Darwin’s laws, reproduction is the only way by which a species ensures its survival in the web of life. However, our modern knowledge of genetics provides a much larger picture. It is the genes that really replicate themselves and populate the ecosystem with copies of information coded and conserved evolutionarily. Organisms go through a phase of sentience in which they thrive and compete with others to make sure they live long enough to bear offsprings that carry forward the genetic information in the same repetitive cycle. With animals, we aren’t yet sure how much suffering they can experience emotionally and whether they can actually contemplate on the reason of their being. Humans, however, are an exceptionally sentient race. We have individuals who are capable of retrospection about their own state of existence. This paradox compels us to ask – Is it moral to create such perceptive organisms without consent? (Sounds crazy, but worth a thought. Think about the monster in Frankenstein who abhors his own existence and goes on a quest to find his creator and punish him.) Moreover, there’s a more social context to this philosophy. One glance at the newspaper can make you ponder on the validity of an anti-natalist view of life. There isn’t much left to say on those lines except that a world so crowded and grieved doesn’t really make a nice place to repopulate. Rather than condemning suicides and crimes of existential passion, would it not be far better to not make people in the first place and then try to mend the world piece by piece, if that at all is possible? Perhaps it's high time we start talking about natalism in general rather than family planning. Condom ads can be made more creative and yes, philosophical!
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Most dangerous is the night The revolutionary Punjabi poet who was dubbed a naxalite and assassinated by fundamentalists reminds us of the predicament of the human soul. The Most Dangerous by Avatar Singh Sandhu ‘Pash’ (a translation of the Punjabi poet’s revolutionary verse “Sabse Khatarnak”) Most treacherous is not the robbery of hard earned wages Most horrible is not the torture by the police. Most dangerous is not the graft for the treason and greed. To be caught while asleep is surely bad surely bad is to be buried in silence But it is not most dangerous. To remain dumb and silent in the face of trickery Even when just, is definitely bad Surely bad is reading in the light of a firefly But it is not most dangerous. Most dangerous is To be filled with dead peace Not to feel agony and bear it all, Leaving home for work And from work return home. Most dangerous is the death of our dreams. Most dangerous is that watch Which run on your wrist But stand still for your eyes. Most dangerous is that eye Which sees all but remains frostlike, The eye that forgets to kiss the world with love, The eye lost in the blinding mist of the material world. That sinks the simple meaning of visible things And is lost in the meaning return of useless games. Most dangerous is the moon Which rises in the numb yard After each murder, but does not pierce your eyes like hot chillies. Most dangerous is the song which climbs the mourning wail In order to reach your ears And repeats the cough of an evil man At the door of the frightened people. Most dangerous is the night Falling in the sky of living souls, Extinguishing them all In which only owls shriek and jackals growl, And eternal darkness covers all the windows. Most heinous is the direction In which the sun of the soul light Pierces the east of your body. Most treacherous is not the robbery of hard earned wages. Most horrible is not the torture of police Most dangerous is not graft taken for greed and treason. (Translation by Dr. Satnam Singh Sandhu) We leave our mark on earth not as a species that is afraid to grow, but as a civilization that has the courage to ask questions. Nobody ever made sense of life, nobody can; what matters however is that we explored it the best way we could. Rajit Roy
“Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.” Jacob Bronowski in his epic work The Ascent of Man (a book and a TV series) dedicated an entire chapter to his own skeptical approach in epistemology. He argues for the validity of knowledge over belief despite the uncertainty and fuzziness that exists in the former’s pursuit. That knowledge is preferable to any reassuring tale of human worth in a seemingly infinite cosmos was one of Carl Sagan’s favorite anecdotes. Yes, knowledge is flawed. Since the dawn of human history, uncertainty about the universe is what has driven us forward in our curious endeavors. Quantum theory made it quite evident that any form of perceptive knowledge, the knowledge of physics and matter, always has a degree of non-conformity. However, the human quest for absolute answers has plunged us into the nadirs of pseudoscience and mythology. We have learnt to shield our ignorance with a pretension of knowledge. Even the modern concept of science in an industrial setup has chosen to divert from the quest to a mere application of knowledge, which is a tragic trend. We have grown intolerant of our own fallacies, afraid that our skepticism may lead us to reproach. What appeals to us is power and absolute control, and look what it has done to us. Contemporary science needs to be set free. We must realize that what Galileo and Darwin achieved in their lonely quests was invaluable to human empowerment. Despite the flaws that are unavoidable in any scientific pursuit, the very nature of human imagination is to be challenged. Applied science can do us as much good as religion or mythology has done, and they are important to human survival, but it is the desperation to know, to understand what seems incomprehensible, to be able to question established facts and beliefs, that ultimately leads to a liberation of the human spirit. Remember that ending scene from Jacob Bronowski’s documentary series where he stands at the Auschwitz concentration camp and makes a compelling observation on the human condition: “It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.” Despite the darkness that seems unconquerable, despite our fallacies which is only human, despite the uncertainty in our knowledge, it is our continuing quest for a reasoned, rational perspective of the world that makes human intellect worth a million years of evolution. We leave our mark on earth not as a species that is afraid to grow, but as a civilization that has the courage to ask questions. Nobody ever made sense of life, nobody can; what matters however is that we explored it the best way we could. Muktibodh cannot be loved perhaps, he can only be feared, but we aren’t capable of either. He is a myth, choosing to be lost in the realms of things misunderstood and forgotten. Rajit Roy
“मेरी आपकी कमजोरियों के स्याह लोहे का जिरहबख्तर पहन, खूँख्वार हाँ खूँख्वार आलीजाह, वो आँखें सचाई की निकाले डालता, सब बस्तियाँ दिल की उजाड़े डालता करता हमें वह घेर बेबुनियाद, बेसिर-पैर... हम सब कैद हैं उसके चमकते तामझाम में शाही मुकाम में !!” These lines speak of a tragedy of human sensibility, a corruption of our conscience. Muktibodh was a rebel in poetry. His words didn’t speak for a revolution, his verses were not Marxist or ideological otherwise, he only spoke for the human soul- one that was denied a voice in the counterproductive, materialistic culture. He titled his poem “Bhool Galti”, calling out to man’s flawed reason. Nevertheless, he was an anarchist, a symbol of revolt, but in his own lifetime he was just a poet everyone feared to read, lest to understand. Reading Muktibodh is tough, really. He is outspoken, a tad too much, but he is a bearer of truth. Like the Brahmrakshas in his celebrated epic, Muktibodh lies there unnoticed. The ruins of human principles, of rationality and reason, surround his presence. The waters are too deep to gaze into, as he writes in his poem; and as it goes- the words seem puzzling, yet there is a certain profundity that seems appealing. His territories are dark, but isn’t darkness honest too? The smoke of his bidi is suffocating our sense of honor, of our shallow pride and we breathe in the air of mutiny. It shall liberate us though. “तुम्हारी प्रेरणाओं से मेरी प्रेरणा इतनी भिन्न है कि जो तुम्हारे लिए विष है, मेरे लिए अन्न है।“ (Your poison is my fodder, I am so distant!) Muktibodh cannot be loved perhaps, he can only be feared, but we aren’t capable of either. He is a myth, choosing to be lost in the realms of things misunderstood and forgotten. |
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Rajit Roy
An existential romantic, an agnostic and a prospective biologist. Archives
September 2018
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