Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the series Understanding Natural Phenomena.

The birth of our universe, namely the Big Bang, is described by scientists as a ‘quantum event’. What does that mean?

All natural phenomena are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. However, much of our day-to-day activity and experience can be well-explained in terms of the laws of classical mechanics, propounded, among others, by Newton. Classical mechanics is a good approximation (but only an approximation) of quantum mechanics under certain conditions. Newton’s three laws of motion are examples of laws of classical mechanics.

When does the approximation become invalid, and it becomes necessary to invoke laws of quantum mechanics directly for explaining a natural phenomenon? One situation is when the spatial dimensions are extremely small. A tennis ball is so big that classical mechanics is adequate for describing its trajectory. An electron is so small that only quantum mechanics can explain its behaviour properly.

Is an electron a particle or a wave? Experimental evidence says that it is both. An electron has a certain mass and electric charge. If we apply an electric field, we can accelerate the motion of the electron, which we can correctly calculate by assuming that it is a particle having the known mass and charge. So it is a particle.

But now consider the famous double-slit experiment first performed by Davisson and Germer in 1927. They shot a beam of electrons through two parallel slits, and recorded the positions of the electrons on a flat screen on the other side. What they found was that the electrons behaved, not as particles moving in straight lines, but as waves, forming a diffraction pattern like the one you would expect from a beam of light. This established the wave-particle duality of elementary particles like electrons.

There are serious consequences of this conclusion. A particle can be assigned a certain position or ‘coordinates’ in space. But we cannot do that for a wave. Consider the familiar sound waves in air. As a sound wave travels, there is compression and rarefaction in air. Some of this vibration of air reaches your ears, and you sense the sound. But can you tell that the sound wave is here, and not there? No. It is everywhere; with different intensities, of course.

So, if an electron has wave properties, it means that it is everywhere at the same time! We say that it is delocalized. This is one of the shocks that quantum theory inflicts on us. There are many more. And yet, it is the most successful and the most thoroughly tested theory, or model of reality, ever.

The wave nature of electrons is a reality. Otherwise we would not have been able to build the very important and much used electron microscopes. In these devices, electrons do what is done by light in an optical microscope.

Just as electrons have wave properties, light can also behave as if it is a collection of particles called ‘photons’. This was established in 1905 by Einstein for an experiment involving the so-called ‘photoelectric effect’, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1921. We say that electromagnetic radiation (which includes light, as also X-rays, gamma-rays, etc.) exists as discrete packets of energy, or ‘quanta’, called photons.

Now consider an experiment in which an electron is more conveniently interpreted as behaving like a particle, rather than a wave. We can assign a position and a momentum (or velocity) to it. In a 1-dimensional situation, the position is, say, x, and the momentum is p_x. Let ∆x and ∆p_x be the errors or uncertainties in the measurement or specification of these quantities. In classical physics, it is possible for these errors or uncertainties to be arbitrarily small, even zero. Not so in quantum physics. There is this famous principle called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, according to which the product ∆x.∆p_x cannot be less than a certain quantity of the order of the Planck constant, h. The principle says that ∆x.∆p_x ≥h/(4π). Of course, the Planck constant is a very very small quantity, but it is not zero.

This principle implies that if ∆x is nearly zero, then ∆p_x is extremely large, and vice versa. And large ∆p_x means large uncertainty in kinetic energy (because momentum and kinetic energy are directly proportional to each other).

There are several ‘conjugate’ pairs of quantities for which the Heisenberg uncertainty principle must be obeyed. Energy E and time t are another such pair, and the principle states that ∆E.∆t ≥h/(4π). This provides a very important loophole (!) in the principle of conservation of energy, because the uncertainty principle says that energy conservation can be violated by an amount ∆E, provided it occurs for a time less than ∆t.

Back to the Big Bang event. This was a quantum event because the spatial dimension of the system was extremely small: ∆x ≈ 0.

And this, in turn, means that ∆p_x, and therefore ∆E, could become arbitrarily large at the moment of the Big Bang. Our universe was born out of such a quantum fluctuation.

This energy fluctuation got sustenance from the fact that the gravitational interaction was born at the same instance, and the rest of the story is as given in Part 2 of this series.

Admittedly, this is a simplistic narrative, but should be enough to convey to the lay person how something could emerge out of ‘nothing’, without having to postulate the pre-existence of a Creator.

For those who can stomach it, here is an excerpt from a book by Seth Lloyd (2006):

Quantum mechanics describes energy in terms of quantum fields, a kind of underlying fabric of the universe, whose weave makes up the elementary particles – photons, electrons, quarks. The energy we see around us, then – in the form of Earth, stars, light, heat – was drawn out of the underlying quantum fields by the expansion of our universe. Gravity is an attractive force that pulls things together. . . As the universe expands (which it continues to do), gravity sucks energy out of the quantum fields. The energy in the quantum fields is almost always positive, and this positive energy is exactly balanced by the negative energy of gravitational attraction. As the expansion proceeds, more and more positive energy becomes available, in the form of matter and light – compensated for by the negative energy in the attractive force of the gravitational field.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Natural Phenomena 2: The Big Bang
2. Understanding Natural Phenomena 1: Introduction
3. Quantum Quacks and Nano Scams
4. Philosophy With Selvi #2 – Understanding Logic
5. A Rational Approach to Understanding the Irrational Behavior of Indians
6. Victor Stenger on The Future of Naturalism

Editor’s Note : A translation of this article in Polish is now available at the Racjonalista blog.

An honest reflection on a draconian practice in our societies

It was the spring of ’05, in the beautiful valley of Karora village in Northern Haryana, when the sun had bid farewell and the full moon accompanying by a cluster of stars appeared in the darkness, Manoj had fallen for Babli. Although this Haryana lad couldn’t figure out the extent of his fall, he somehow got convinced that it had been a free-fall into the abyss, in love with Babli. At his first encounter with his lady love, he acted rude, for he had been stoic all his life, and his friends referred to him as ‘stone hearted’. To Manoj, she was just a woman, but as time passed, and seasons cycled, Cupid set his arrows to strike at Manoj’s young heart. It didn’t take long for Babli to feel the same; on the trajectory they had to encounter agony, grief, pain, distress and a load of sacrifices. A year later the young couple began to feel their souls in each other, and decided to love for a lifetime. Just as a means of formality, they had to turn to their elders for approval. However, the approval never seemed like coming.

Babli pleaded with her father, who was adamant about caste. Manoj belonged to a different caste, relatively “lower” than Babli’s. Desperately in love, the couples decided to elope. They did, but only a hundred miles away, where Manoj’s friends helped in the registration process. A week later, Babli’s brother Suresh found their whereabouts and coerced her to leave Manoj, with a threat of murder. Little did he know that, threat of death would send fear signals to landlords, mafia dons and politicians, but not for those in love. Babli bravely defied her brother’s threats. As social stigma spread in the neighbourhood, Babli’s father Charan Das ordered his son Suresh to fulfill the family’s wicked wishes and save the family’s “honour”. Not tough enough to handle the “shame” caused by Babli, her brother Suresh set forth to redeem the lost “honour”.

On June 9 2007, Manoj and Babli were found dead near a canal. The scene was terrifying as the couple was brutally slaughtered to death. The investigating authorities confirmed it was a cold-blooded murder. The electronic media for the first time, awakened to the enigma surrounding the motive behind the killing of newly wed couples; to their astonishment and largely to the world’s, they discovered it was an incredibly disturbing one. It was baptized with the name “Honour Killing” – a license to kill for the “shame” caused by the girl, as a pretext for preserving the family “honour”. In this case it was effortlessly carried out by Babli’s family members – her brother Suresh, her cousin and her uncle – with clear instructions from her beloved father Charan Das.

At his first hearing, Charan Das openly justified his actions, on the grounds of rituals that were practiced for centuries. To support his position, the self-proclaimed Panchayat legal body – the vicious ‘Khap’ panchayat – openly lauded the assassins, and protested against the civil bodies and human rights groups for interfering in traditional matters. The local bodies of law initially dismissed the case for lack of proof. But the extent of savagery on the part of the alleged were enough to evoke considerable media attention. Even though the Haryana politicians sought interference, hoping to submerge the case, the voices of sanity resisted with thrust. Three years later in March 2010, after raging outcry from civil society, human rights groups and the media, the accused were sentenced to capital punishment.

The Indian media and legal experts hailed it as a “landmark judgment”, a victory over the infamous assemblies which acted as parallel judicial bodies with impunity for years. After the judgment, in a Parliament session, Home Minister P. Chidambaram proposed a bill that included “Public stripping of women and extermination of young couples from villages and any act which is humiliating will be punished with severity”, and that would “Make Khap dictated honour killings a distinct offence so that all those who participate in the decision are liable to attract the death sentence”.

The iconic human rights organization Amnesty International says this about the concept of “Honour Killing”: “The regime of honour is unforgiving; women on whom suspicion has fallen are not given an opportunity to defend themselves, and family members have no socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain on their honour by attacking the woman”. Over the years, this form of killing has taken centre stage in third world countries. Human Rights Watch reported that countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Indonesia, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have a high degree of oppression of women, in the form of rape, torture, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, domestic violence, repressive societal norms, honour suicides (suicides generally by women victims of rape, to further protect family shame. In some cases, they are coerced to kill themselves by family members), public flogging and stripping, forced marriages and stoning to death.

Murdered Couple in Haryana (photo courtesy Outlook)

It is estimated that nearly ten thousand people are killed in neighboring Pakistan every year, for the alleged crime of causing “shame”. Salman Rushdie’s upsetting and brilliant psycho-profile of Pakistan, in his 1983 novel Shame, rightly laid emphasis on the crucial part played by sexual repression in those regions. And that was before the Talibanization of Afghanistan, and of much of Pakistan, too. It is popularly called “Kharo-Kari” in Urdu. Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens summarizes the situation of a backward Pakistani Muslim society like this: “Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame which is the noble word ‘honor’ becomes most commonly associated with the word ‘killing’. Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter.”

The story of India doesn’t appear bright either, at least a thousand people have been done to death each year owing to “honour” killings and the country needs to introduce stringent legislation to deal firmly with the heinous crime. The website www.honourkilling.in is exclusively dedicated to raise consciousness about this issue and halt this barbaric crime once for all. It uses such beautiful phrases like the one that says “No Honour in Killing” and “Don’t try to be God if you are not one”. On that note, there is possibly nothing more that anyone could offer to cure this draconian ailment. The other worrying trend, that most human rights organizations virtually suspect, is the flow of such thoughts into the veins of educated urban societies. The pressing need of the hour lies on counseling the youth, raising public awareness, schooling on reason and rationalism and formulating stricter laws.

Women are arguably the worst victims of social stigmas, faith based dogmas, wars and tyranny for ages. These evils peaked in the dark ages in Europe, the horrifying stories of ‘witch-hunts’ and ‘burning of adulterers’ will haunt us forever. In these days, feminism has drastically failed in some parts of the world; Afghan women are forced to surrender to the brutality of obscurantist male folk, while the situations have worsened in the radically charged tribal belts of Pakistan, where women are sentenced to caning for alleged “immodest behavior”.  A French government study shows that, women make a negligible number in acts of crime and terror; shockingly over 95% of suicide bombers and militants in the world comprise of men. At the same time, there is a tremendous rise in atrocities against women all over the world. It is important for the world media and civil society groups to stand united against misogynistic societies and governments. Only when women are free from the chains of social repression can we possibly claim to be living in a civilized world.

Related posts:

1. A Murder In The Holy Shrine

Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the series Understanding Natural Phenomena.

How and when did our universe begin?

According to the most acceptable scientific model at present, our universe was born ~13.7 billion years ago. A so-called ‘Big Bang’ occurred at the moment of the birth of the universe, and this moment was also the Time Zero for our universe.

But how can something emerge out of nothing? Is that not a violation of the law of conservation of mass and energy? Was there not a Creator involved? No.

A proper explanation requires reference to what is called quantum field theory. But I shall attempt a simple explanation here, just to convey the point that there was no net creation or annihilation of mass/energy involved.

We all know about the force of gravity that the Earth exerts on all objects. If your mass is m, then your weight is mg, where g is ‘acceleration due to gravity’. The mass is a measure of the quantity of matter. The weight is a force; the force the Earth exerts to pull you towards its centre. [Newton's second law of motion says that force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration: F = m x a; and a is the same as g in our example.]

Your weight on the Moon would be one-sixth what it is on Earth because the Moon has a lower mass than the Earth, with a correspondingly lower value for its g.

The gravitational force or interaction is one of the four fundamental interactions of Nature. It is an attractive interaction (rather than a repulsive interaction). There is a force of gravitational attraction between any two objects. It is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. For example, if the distance is doubled, the gravitational force of attraction becomes one-fourth.

Consider an object (say of mass m₁) that is so far from everything that there is no gravitational force on it. This is really not possible, but just imagine it as an idealization. We say that it is a ‘free’ object, free from any gravitational force acting on it.

Next, consider another object, of mass m₂, at a certain finite distance from the first object. The two attract each other. Physicists speak of this as a negative-energy configuration, because (positive) energy needs to be spent to take the two objects so far away from each other that they are free of each other’s force of attraction. By contrast, a positive–energy configuration would be one in which the two objects repelled each other, rather than attracting.

So, the gravitational interaction makes a negative contribution to the overall energy.

The other big idea I have to introduce here is that mass and energy are inter-convertible. This fact is embodied in the famous Einstein equation: E = mc². Here c is the speed of light in vacuum. The equation says that if a mass m disappears, an equivalent amount of energy E would be produced or released.

This is how energy is produced in our Sun (by thermonuclear reactions). The mass of two atoms of hydrogen is a little more than that of an atom of helium. In the interior of the Sun, conditions are right for the fusing of two atoms of hydrogen and the creation of one atom of helium, and the balance mass appears as energy. We receive some of this life-sustaining solar energy on Earth.

Similarly, in a fission-based nuclear reactor we produce energy by losing a little mass of, say, uranium. The nucleus of an atom of uranium captures a neutron to form a ‘compound nucleus’. This then splits (fissions) to two different nuclei the sum total of the masses of which is a little less than the mass of the compound nucleus. The balance mass appears as kinetic energy (same as heat energy) of the particles involved.

What happened at the Big Bang was that there was a simultaneous emergence of the gravitational interaction. There was an explosion of sorts, in which radiation (and, a little latter, matter) emerged. The universe has been expanding ever since then. Expansion means an increase in the distances between the celestial bodies. Such ever-increasing distances mean a build-up of negative energy, which gets compensated by the creation of an equivalent amount of matter.

This is how mass gets created out of ‘nothing’, and there is no violation of the law of mass/energy conservation. This ‘nothing’ is actually a vacuum, which has some remarkable properties which can be described in the language of quantum mechanics only. Further, according to Einstein’s theory of gravitation (to be described in a future post), the existence of a certain ‘cosmological constant’ can endow empty space with mass/energy.

But let us not get into those details yet. For the time being, suffice it to say that our universe emerged out of nothing, and this did not require the intervention of a Creator. The book by Hawking & Mlodinow explains that in some detail.

Of course, there are other models which compete with the Big Bang model, and the final word has not been said yet. Science is open to all ideas, subject to rational analysis and experimental verification. One such model postulates a cyclical set of events, involving an endless series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. But then, in such a model, there is no need to argue how matter can emerge out of nothing.

Image Source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Universe_expansion2.png

Related posts:

1. Understanding Natural Phenomena 3: Quantum Mechanics
2. Understanding Natural Phenomena 1: Introduction
3. Philosophy With Selvi #2 – Understanding Logic
4. A Rational Approach to Understanding the Irrational Behavior of Indians

This is a review essay on Eckhart Tolle’s books The Power of Now and A New Earth:

Like Tolle, naturalists challenge conventional wisdom about the self, but their beliefs about reality are more credible. What naturalism offers in terms of enlightenment – construed as becoming less attached to the self’s agenda, with the psychological, moral and existential benefits non-attachment entails – is therefore more realistic and achievable.

1. Introduction
2. Tolle’s System
3. Evaluating Tolle’s System
4. Enlightenment and Acceptance
5. Moral Conflict and the Limits of Enlightenment
6. The Power of Questioning Choice

Introduction

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a simple, permanent solution to the problem of life, of being a desiring self, caught up in ambition, fear, hope, loss and frustration, and facing the prospect of death? Many suppose that there is such a thing: achieving the personal transformation known as enlightenment. Although construed somewhat differently by the various traditions within what Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy, enlightenment usually has both a cognitive and practical component. The cognitive component is to realize one’s true nature: that the ordinary, grasping ego-self masks one’s fundamental identity with ultimate reality, the ground of being. Seeing this metaphysical truth about ourselves then brings the desired practical result: petty personal concerns lose their psychological sway over us. Enlightenment is to achieve non-attachment, a state in which the ego is sent on permanent vacation. What a relief!

The attractions of enlightenment are undeniable for those, perhaps the majority of humanity at some point in their lives, who find existence a matter of greater or lesser frustration and suffering. Who wouldn’t want to be relieved of the apparently Sisyphusian task of protecting the self and its agenda against the inevitable reverses and disappointments handed out by the world? How much simpler if we could just let it all go, and find a deep, quiet invulnerable place from which to live, unburdened of the desiring self.

It’s no wonder then that the quest for enlightenment has taken so many forms (e.g., Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism, contemplative Christianity) that survive into the present era, and that new recipes for self-transcendence are eagerly snapped up. These days, two books by Eckhart Tolle (pronounced Toll–ee) have sold millions by promising a permanent solution to life.¹ He says your true self is Being, the Unmanifest, and if you could directly experience this fact then abiding peace will be yours. You can even face death with equanimity, since in a sense you’ve already died: the false self has been killed off.

Tolle’s understanding of our true nature and its practical consequences partakes of the traditional Eastern conception of enlightenment which recommends that the seeker penetrate the illusion of an abiding, permanent ego by means of various meditative and attentional practices. If all goes well, these practices eventually induce experiences that directly disclose the deeper underlying ground of being, whether we call it Brahman, Cosmic Consciousness, the True Self, Suchness, or Emptiness. The successful seeker, although she of necessity continues to act in this world, is no longer attached to achieving outcomes that reinforce the merely apparent reality and worth of the little self. Instead, she becomes non-defensive, open, compassionate, giving, spontaneous, joyful, light, and always in the moment, acting decisively and appropriately. Letting go of ego has the paradoxical result that we become what the ego in its better moments always wanted: to be a more altruistic, effective agent, unburdened of self-concern and the need to prove its own worth and effectiveness. When this happens, we become more worthy and effective. Who wouldn’t want to be such an agent? The enlightenment project is doubly attractive: not only do we escape the burden of self-concern, we become morally and practically better as well.

For Tolle, achieving enlightenment is to help bring about the apotheosis of universal, pure Consciousness, which he says is the fundamental goal of existence. This adds yet another attraction to the enlightenment project: the prospect of transcending the mundane and transitory concerns of life to discover something cosmic and everlasting. In realizing who we fundamentally are, we participate in the self-realization of existence itself, and what could be more inspiring than that? There could be no higher purpose, no more glorious prospect than what Tolle offers us; hence the title of his latest best seller, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Is there anything to this? Is it possible to send the self on vacation, forever, in service to the very purpose of existence? Is there an invulnerable place – our true, imperishable nature beyond ego – to which we can retreat from disappointment and loss and struggle? To ask a somewhat deflating but reasonable question, how does Tolle know about the fundamental nature and goals of existence? How can he and the rest of us be sure he’s got reality right, that there is such a thing as Consciousness struggling to realize itself, and that it needs our help to fulfill its destiny? Before jumping on the enlightenment bandwagon, riders will want to know that it’s headed in the right direction. Otherwise we may end up in delusion, quite the opposite of enlightenment.

In evaluating Tolle’s system, we must admit that what he’s aiming for, and perhaps has achieved in his own case, are not inconsiderable goods. As we’ll see below, from a naturalistic perspective his conception of our true nature is unrealistic (literally) because it takes uncorroborated subjective experience to reveal truths about the world. But this isn’t to say that some of the goals of enlightenment aren’t worthy of pursuit at least in some measure. We therefore might want to reconceive the enlightenment project so that it becomes naturalistically plausible and even achievable – not the elusive prize gained by just a few special adepts. Perhaps, as sociologist and author Paul Breer has suggested, we can understand enlightenment as a process of self-actualization that’s consistent with a naturalistic understanding of who we most fundamentally are.²

Tolle’s System

From moment to moment we all experience the sense of separate personal identity that for Tolle is the primary deception of everyday mind. We strongly feel that we are a discrete physical organism, with a private subjectivity, unique character, personal history, hopes, ambitions, worries and regrets. Moreover, we experience a fairly constant stream of conscious thoughts and feelings about all this. Few would deny the material and psychological salience of this sense of self, whatever else we might believe about our identity. It’s an indisputable experiential fact that we exist (at least) as separate physical bodies, and inhabit the personal psychology of a self-concerned self most of our waking hours. On a naturalistic view, our bodies and psychology are standard operating equipment given to us by evolution – a functional physical form and an adaptive egoism to go with it. We are naturally inclined to work very hard to insure our organismic integrity, which helps to maximize chances for reproductive success (whether or not we’re personally interested in reproduction). This explains why we’re here: less egoistic creatures didn’t reproduce themselves as successfully.

But Tolle says this sense of being a separate ego is a fundamental illusion that distorts our perception of reality:

The word ‘I’ embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending on how it is used…In normal everyday usage, ‘I’ embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego. This is what Albert Einstein…referred to as ‘an optical illusion of consciousness.’ That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further interpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion. (pp. 27-8, A New Earth)

The real you can be found if you can manage to transcend this illusion:

When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but that I Am. (pp. 56-7, A New Earth)

Tolle says that if you carefully observe your thoughts and feelings with alert attention and without judgment you discover, behind the roiling contents of egoic consciousness, pure consciousness itself, a simple presence or awareness without form. In enlightenment, you disidentify with the drama of the little self and identify instead with this awareness, which has no content to cling to. This is “the power of Now”: discovering that in the present moment, if you pay full attention to it, there is a deeper, inner, more basic Being beyond time that’s the real you. This true Self is imperishable, has no worries, no ambitions, no place to get to, and thus finds itself content in the eternal present. Once you realize via direct experience that you are most basically Being, Spirit and the Unmanifest – not ego – then you become invulnerable. The slings and arrows of life pass right through you since their target is no longer running the psychological show:

Having gone beyond mind-made opposites, you become like a deep lake. The outer situation of your life and whatever happens there is the surface of the lake. Sometimes calm, sometimes windy and rough, according the cycles and seasons. Deep down, however, the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the surface, and you are in touch with your own depth, which remains absolutely still. You don’t resist change by mentally clinging to any situation. Your inner peace does not depend on it. You abide in Being – unchanging, timeless, deathless – and you are no longer dependent for fulfillment or happiness on the outer world of constantly fluctuating forms. You can enjoy them, play with them, create new forms, appreciate the beauty of it all. But there will be no need to attach yourself to any of it. (p. 195, The Power of Now)

In Tolle’s system, achieving personal non-attachment is to participate in a truly cosmic undertaking: the evolution of consciousness, both on the planet and beyond. Further, this process has important local and practical effects that transcend the individual. Just as personal enlightenment solves the problem of one’s own life, so too will the evolution of collective consciousness heal the fundamental insanity of our destructive consumption-driven planetary culture. The stakes couldn’t be higher:

When consciousness frees itself from its identification with physical and mental forms, it becomes what we may call pure or enlightened consciousness, or presence. This has already happened in a few individuals, and it seems destined to happen soon on a much larger scale, although there is no guarantee that it will happen. Most humans are still in the grip of egoic consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don’t get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen if human consciousness remains unchanged? (pp. 101-2, Power of Now, original emphasis)

As Tolle describes it, freedom from the insanity of egoic mind is to escape the world of forms for the Formless, the manifest for the Unmanifest, the time-bound for the Timeless, the transitory for the Eternal, doing for Being, the conditioned for the Unconditioned, and the material for the Spiritual. The root dualisms of surface vs. depth, change vs. permanence, and form vs. essence are what set up the possibility for radical self-transformation. Enlightenment is to trade the superficial changeable particulars of one’s body and personal psychology for that which is imperishable and universal, an identity that’s radically impersonal. But our participation in the enlightenment project is not just for our own sake, it’s to play a role in the evolution of consciousness itself, an evolution that can heal the planet. So on Tolle’s view there’s a collective moral motivation for the pursuit of enlightenment.

Evaluating Tolle’s System

So what should we make of all this? First, we should see that the truth of Tolle’s worldview is established primarily by direct personal experience. The knowledge that we are much more than the little self is non-discursive and non-conceptual; it isn’t a matter of thinking through a set of propositions or gathering evidence. To know the true nature of reality, one has to experience it for oneself, which means that the awakening of enlightenment is its own verification. Once experienced, its truth is not open to question:

…fear and pain will become transmuted into an inner peace and serenity that come from a very deep place – from the Unmanifested itself. It is ‘the peace of God, which passes all understanding.’ Compared to that, happiness is quite a shallow thing. With this radiant peace comes the realization – not on the level of mind but within the depth of your being – that you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source. (p. 220, The Power of Now

From a naturalistic standpoint that takes human experience as a necessarily fallible guide to reality, Tolle’s claim of certainty is extraordinary and implausible. There’s no doubt that mystical or meditative states can involve the experience of overwhelming certainty, but whether or not they accurately reflect the world outside the head is another question altogether. This question can only be answered by checking to see whether there’s something in the world that corresponds to our strongly held conviction about it. This involves exactly what Tolle says isn’t necessary for certainty: external evidence or proof. Tolle of course interprets his experience in the light of the Perennial Philosophy handed down by generations of mystics and sages, but this philosophy is just that which claims that properly trained subjective experience is a reliable guide to reality. Each successive generation of mystics, the latest of which Tolle is a member, reiterates the claim, but that doesn’t help to make it plausible.

This basic disagreement about how we reliably know things is perhaps what most distinguishes devotees of Tolle and other enlightenment gurus from scientific naturalists (and more generally anti-naturalists from naturalists, see here). I won’t explore this disagreement here, or attempt to convince readers that they should side with naturalists on this question, except to state the obvious: unverified intuitions about the world, however widely shared and however compelling, can be wrong. Millions upon millions of people can be, and have been, deluded about the nature of reality as delivered to them by religious traditions, mystical and meditative experiences, gurus, and books promising a permanent solution to the problem of life. Beliefs about the world delivered by science are generally far more reliable precisely because they require external validation by means of observable objects and evidence outside subjective experience. That the findings of science often don’t confirm our deepest hopes is prima facie evidence that we’re not being deluded by wishful thinking when conducting scientific investigations, as is all too often the case with intuition, mystical revelation or the wisdom of the sages.

We should therefore be skeptical of Tolle’s claims about reality that stem from his mystical experience, including the nature of the true self, consciousness, and the purpose of existence. When we attend carefully to experience and become witnessing observers of our mental states, do we then encounter something immaterial and essential within us, a pure awareness beyond form that transcends the little self? When our obsessive self-concerned thinking slows down, and perhaps stops altogether, we may have the experience of such a transcendent encounter, but we can account for that experience naturalistically as a certain configuration of brain states, involving perhaps the deactivation of neural networks that normally instantiate the feeling of an embodied self. The purity of our awareness is simply the absence of the brain-based self-representation that normally is with us all our waking hours. Unless we can show using third-person science that something immaterial exists apart from the brain to which the experience refers, then this deflationary naturalistic explanation should win our (provisional) assent.

A science-based naturalism also doubts the root dualism of Tolle’s picture of reality. There is not, in addition to the basic constituents of the cosmos as physical theory describes it, which combine to form everything we discover in nature, including ourselves, a further unmanifest realm of spirit. There is no evidence for an uppercase Being or Essence that escapes change, or that exists outside the space-time continuum. Instead, as far as science can tell, the cosmos is of a piece, of a single nature, not split into the material vs. spiritual or form vs. formless. Persons, fully included in nature, are material constructions without an inner essence. Their identity is completely a function of how their physical, perishable forms manage to create psychological continuity of character and motive over a limited period of time. There is not under naturalism an invulnerable, imperishable place for us, a deeper identity to which we can retreat.

We should also be very skeptical about the possibility of cosmic consciousness. Is there any evidence that consciousness on a larger scale – planetary or cosmic – could exist, or is evolving toward the goal of some universal self-realization? Not so far as science has been able to determine. As far as we reliably know, consciousness is only a property of individual physical organisms or systems, it isn’t planetary or cosmic since planets and the cosmos aren’t the sorts of things that could be conscious. There isn’t any evidence that they possess the information-bearing, representational capacities that the leading scientific theories of consciousness suggest are required support such things as thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, and intentions. Nor is there a way (thus far) for individual consciousnesses to join together to become a transpersonal conscious entity. This means, therefore, that there is very likely not a cosmic evolutionary purpose to achieve pure consciousness that we can latch onto or promote via our own personal enlightenment, at least as far as science can determine.

Indeed, the very idea of a cosmic purpose of any kind, conscious or not, seems untenable. After all, it takes an intention-bearing entity to assign purposes to things, or to have purposes itself. Since existence as a whole necessarily includes all intention-bearing entities, it can’t be assigned a purpose, and since it doesn’t have any discernable intentions it doesn’t have its own purposes. Existence therefore offers us no obvious reason for being, as much as some might wish it would.

Enlightenment and Acceptance

Such deflationary conclusions seem to doom the enlightenment project as Tolle conceives it. To reiterate: the naturalist’s unified view of the world finds no spiritual essence apart from changeable physical forms that we could count as our true nature. Neither is there any evidence that consciousness is evolving or transforming itself into something transpersonal, planetary or cosmic, or that consciousness has the resources or mechanisms to do so. Nor can we participate in a purpose for existence taken as a whole, since there can be no such purpose. So the naturalist’s view of the metaphysical aspect of Tolle’s system – his understanding of the nature of reality – is decidedly, perhaps terminally, skeptical.

But this leaves some psychological aspects and practical goals of enlightenment more or less intact. We don’t need to buy into Tolle’s supernatural metaphysics of identity, consciousness, and existential purpose to find some value in enlightenment understood as transcending, at least to an extent, the grip of ego-driven conflict and self-concern. We might be morally, practically and existentially better off were we to send the self on at least a temporary vacation.

This can be accomplished, says Tolle, if we can accept the present moment in its entirety, whatever its content. Resistance, protest, and non-acceptance of one’s current situation are all characteristics of ego, so when resistance ends so too does ego. What’s left is a surrender to the moment: we’re free from supposing things could be any other way than they momentarily are. It’s that supposition that gives rise, from the perspective of the enlightened individual, to an unnecessary, painful reactivity which worsens what might already be a bad situation, and which makes it far more difficult to engage each moment skillfully and compassionately, whatever its character. So acceptance, as opposed to resistance and reactivity, is the key.

But what’s the key to acceptance? In Tolle’s system it’s to become fully present in the now of one’s psychological moment, to pay full attention to it, which means observing carefully and non-judgmentally the contents of the mind – things such as thoughts, feelings, hopes, regrets, and worries. This effectively distances oneself from the contents, so identity shifts from that of a reactively-driven participant in one’s personal drama to that of a dispassionate witness, which in turn ends the cycle of resistance. Regarding this dynamic, Tolle replies to a skeptic who says (quoted in italics):

“The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant or awful.”

It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary or possible.
Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life. (pp. 35-6, The Power of Now)

Whatever its powers, the skeptic will likely doubt the power of now can “miraculously transform” his whole life, or that he can be entirely free from external conditions, or that he is capable of unconditional amor fati – of completely aligning his desires with what happens. Just as Tolle’s metaphysics seems unrealistic, so too does the psychological reach of the enlightenment he offers (and staying constantly in the Now seems a bit too much like work). Of course, those who believe that observing the mind accesses a higher, evolving consciousness might also be disposed to think their lives will be miraculously transformed (and thus stay on task). After all, what could be a more compelling reason to think you’ll completely revolutionize your life than the conviction of participating in a cosmic project of self-actualization? Naturalists don’t buy this idea, so can’t avail themselves of its motivational push when setting their expectations of what the power of now might accomplish.

But naturalists can still avail themselves of the psychological benefits of acceptance even if these fall short of a complete psychic makeover. It might well be possible to gain some distance from the self-agenda, in particular that portion of it which increases mental suffering, by engaging in meditative and attentional practices, and by restructuring one’s beliefs about the self. None of this requires abandoning the cognitive commitment to good science and evidence that underlies naturalism.

Naturalism has its own route to acceptance. On a naturalistic understanding, persons are bio-psycho-social constructions whose thoughts, feelings and actions arise as a complex but likely deterministic function of the interaction of the body, brain and external circumstances. Although we are identifiable agents that have control over our behavior and thus over our environment, we don’t have in addition an indestructible non-physical soul or mental essence that stands apart from these states and circumstances to exert an uncaused control over them. This means that each moment in our mental and behavioral lives arises as the perfect expression of the causal working out of the person-environment interaction. If you were to stop at any given moment to consider why your thoughts, feelings and behavior are the way they are right now, you would see that they are the fully determined culmination of your life trajectory thus far as it’s played out in time and space. Same for the next moment, and the next. There is nothing in you that could have transcended the unfolding causal transaction between you and your environment. Understanding this makes it easier, perhaps, to accept moments not particularly to your liking.³

Now, Tolle supposes that there is something more to us that can causally transcend the moment. In a striking misconstrual of Buddhism, he says that

[We can be] free from the illusion that you are nothing more than your physical body and your mind. This ‘illusion of the self,’ as the Buddha calls it, is the core error. [We can be] free from fear in its countless disguises as the inevitable consequence of that illusion – the fear that is your constant tormentor as long as you derive your sense of self only from this ephemeral and vulnerable form. And free from sin, which is the suffering you unconsciously inflict on yourself and others as long as this illusory sense of self governs what you think, say and do. (108, The Power of Now, original emphasis)

Unfortunately, Tolle has it exactly backwards. The illusion of self the Buddha sought to dispel – the core error – is that there is something permanent and abiding beyond the ephemeral body and mind, something like an immaterial immortal soul with contra-causal freedom. An empirically well-founded acceptance of the moment stems from seeing that there is indeed nothing behind the naturally concatenated form that we consist of, a form fully embedded in its context. There is nothing and no one that exists outside the causal web which could have done otherwise in producing the moment you now experience. It’s this insight, presaged by the Buddha and backed up by science, that might pry you loose from unnecessary reactivity: from protest, anger, regret, and other unproductive emotional responses to your situation. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t improve on the present moment in ways you might want, so it isn’t an invitation to passivity or hopelessness – determinism isn’t fatalism, it shouldn’t demoralize us. But it is to understand the fundamental connectedness of the self to its causal surround, and such understanding is the basis for a profound naturalistic acceptance of what is.

This of course is a top-down cognitive strategy for achieving acceptance, in which an idea – of our fundamental and complete causal connection to the world – might influence our emotional states. Just as Tolle’s idea that our fundamental nature is Being or Consciousness can inspire acceptance, so too can the naturalistic conception of our fundamental nature, but it has the considerable advantage of being empirically defensible and thus more believable. Really believing something is true has more psychological impact than merely supposing or pretending something is true. Naturalists really believe on good evidential grounds that there is nothing supernatural in themselves that stands outside the causal unfolding of nature in its human form, so they are in an excellent position to reap the psychological benefits of that belief.

But the impact of Tolle’s enlightenment project also derives from having direct experience of what he thinks is our true nature, an experience that can have a profound transformative effect. What can naturalists offer here? Well, for a start we can happily go along with Tolle’s recommendation to see what happens when we pay close, non-judgmental attention to the present moment. We can do this in sitting meditation, for instance, by focusing attention on our breath, or by assiduously watching the contents of consciousness each successive instant without getting sidetracked into a mental digression that distracts us from being fully present (as so easily happens – just try!). We might experience, to a greater or lesser extent, a slowing down of the mental commentary that normally infests our consciousness – a relaxation of the reactive mind. Depending on how deep it goes, this experience can be mildly pleasurable and restorative like a good nap, or it can be a revelation. The revelation isn’t that one encounters one’s true nature as Being or Pure Consciousness, as Tolle supposes, but that it’s possible (according to reliable reports by accomplished meditators) to be fully conscious without feeling like a separate conscious entity. This is a radical refreshment indeed. For the naturalist, this experience of no-self might be explained, for instance, by the deactivation of the neurally instantiated self-model that normally accompanies all waking moments.⁴ But such an explanation doesn’t explain away the profound attractions such an experience reportedly holds; there’s a reason monks spend a good percentage of their lives sitting still on round cushions. Nor does it change the fact that in having it we non-cognitively feel what cognition says is the case: that we are fully embedded in the natural world. So the naturalist can avail herself of the same experience as Tolle describes, but interpret it in a way that integrates it seamlessly into her science-based worldview. Although she doesn’t take the experience of no self as a direct knowing of reality, it can be transformative by virtue of emulating the reality of her complete connection to nature as science describes it.⁵

Moral Conflict and the Limits of Enlightenment

The naturalist doesn’t suppose that such an experience can permanently lift us out of the everyday mind of being a self-concerned ego, for that’s an ineliminable psychological characteristic of being a physically separate organism. The self always returns from vacation – refreshed, perhaps wiser, but still more or less the same. You still have the same personality and you still have your hopes and ambitions. You don’t and can’t give up your self interests, nor is it morally incumbent upon you to do so. Were we all to become completely altruistically self-sacrificing we would soon exhaust our own resources, making us victims of our own altruism. So not only is it inevitable to be egoistically self-concerned, it’s morally permissible. But this nevertheless sets up the basic, inescapable moral dilemma: just how selfish are we permitted to be?

Tolle’s account of enlightenment suggests that there is a permanent solution to this problem, which helps make his account so appealing. We can, he says, entirely disidentify with the demands of the little self, so the problem of moral conflict disappears. Our true nature as Being has no agenda that could collide with anyone’s interests, so we can in effect relax once we reach enlightenment, achieving a kind of moral invulnerability.

Once again, the naturalist finds this an impossible dream since the undivestible interests of diverse persons, including ourselves and our peers, often end up clashing. We can’t escape moral conflict. But the more realistic, naturalistic version of enlightenment can nevertheless be of service by mounting its own challenge to conventional wisdom about the self. This challenge is just as profound as Tolle’s, but truer since it refuses the false consolations of Being and an ultimate cosmic purpose.

By understanding persons as natural constructions, whose characteristics are fully caused outcomes of genetic and environmental circumstances, naturalism shows the inherent equality of persons before impersonal causality. There are no intrinsically good persons whose qualities are ultimately self-chosen by a freely willing self, nor are there intrinsically evil persons whose faults can’t be traced to factors ultimately beyond their control. This insight backs up the basic egalitarian moral intuition that I don’t occupy a privileged position among my fellow creatures, so my interests don’t count for more than anyone else’s, even if I’m lucky enough to end up being good.

The naturalistic conception of personhood also grounds a deep and universal compassion, since we see that but for circumstances of birth any one of us could have ended up as the least fortunate among us. Since there are no supernatural souls that can rise above the causal stream and do otherwise, we can’t assign the sort of deep credit and blame that so easily blocks an empathetic understanding of another’s suffering. That suffering was not ultimately self-chosen: you too would have been similarly situated were it not for the luck of the draw. Like the intuition of equality, compassion is a moral virtue, so a naturalistic enlightenment that challenges the existence of the freely willing self can help make us morally virtuous: less self-centered and more cognizant of the needs of others.

But the naturalistic path to virtue doesn’t extinguish the demands of the self, constructed though it be, so enlightenment can’t solve the basic ethical quandary: how much self-sacrifice is morally necessary? There isn’t any obvious algorithm to decide how much of our pleasures and comfort we should sacrifice for the good of others (ethicist Peter Singer gives 30% of his income to charity) or for future generations, so we can’t avoid struggling with this question, however deep our enlightenment. But at the very least, naturalism pushes us in a more egalitarian, compassionate, and therefore altruistic direction when it comes to deciding between self and other. If we happen to end up in fortunate circumstances, we can see that we don’t ultimately deserve our good fortune, which can prompt generosity. If we end up in personal disputes, the insight that our opponent is fully caused to act badly helps to keep our temper in check. And should we be in the wrong, it’s easier to admit as much once we see that our foolishness can’t be chalked up to a freely willing self that could have done otherwise.

To Tolle’s credit, he too is intent on drawing out the beneficial moral consequences of his (supernatural) enlightenment. These follow pretty directly since after all, once we stop identifying with the self-centered demands of ego and instead take up residence in Being, we very likely end up more compassionate, forgiving, and receptive to others; less defensive, prideful, guilt-ridden and fearful. Both his books include many plausible instances of this dynamic: as ego diminishes, openness and selflessness increase, both on a personal and social level. Our priorities shift from the pursuit of materialistic success toward an engagement with larger concerns of reducing conflict and achieving global sustainability, which is very much what the world needs now. So the naturalist, and indeed anyone concerned with pressing moral issues, whatever their worldview, will likely sympathize with much of Tolle’s practical agenda even if they doubt his metaphysics.

The Power of Questioning Choice

On the personal level, Tolle sees the positive ethical consequences of challenging the notion of choice: if people don’t freely choose in the contra-causal way we ordinarily suppose, it becomes easier to let go of the contempt and anger that might arise when contemplating their faults. But as we see in the passages below, his good sense about unenlightened choice is compromised by the questionable idea that when enlightened, our choices somehow transcend conditioning circumstances:

I know that the word choose is a favorite New Age term, but it isn’t entirely accurate in this context. It is misleading to say that somebody ‘chose’ a dysfunctional relationship or any other negative situation in his or her life. Choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. Until you reach that point, you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind. (p. 226, The Power of Now).

…if you still harbor resentment about something [your parents] did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice – that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity. Almost everyone is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realize this, there can be no more resentment. How can you resent someone’s illness? The only appropriate response is compassion. (p. 228, The Power of Now, original emphasis)

Yes! The naturalist can only applaud Tolle’s recognition of the transformative power of questioning choice. Tolle sees that compassion arises from understanding that people couldn’t have done otherwise, given their conditioning circumstances. This is among the central consequences of naturalism in the moral domain, and it’s wonderful to see it acknowledged in this supernaturalistic context. But because of his supernaturalism, Tolle goes off the rails to suppose that enlightenment could make us unconditioned choosers, or as Daniel Dennett amusingly puts it “moral levitators.” No, on a science-based view of who we fundamentally are, there is no such thing as an unconditioned choice. After all, on what basis would choices get made if they weren’t determined by needs, wishes, wants, hopes, fears, ambitions and all the rest of our natural motivations? Only a motivated and thus conditioned self has the power to choose. If it were possible to attain the nirvana of pure consciousness, without content, we’d have no reason to do anything.

Since this isn’t possible, at least not for any extended period of time, we don’t have to worry about staying motivated. We’ll always find ourselves with a greater or lesser complement of desires, clamoring for fulfillment. To want enlightenment is yet another desire, so the quest to free ourselves from ego smacks of ego itself, which Tolle nicely recognizes:

…even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free of desire or ‘achieve’ enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be ‘the awakened one,’ which is what the word buddha means.” (p. 31, The Power of Now).

Whether becoming present as the observer of your mind will lead you to Buddhahood, understood as the complete cessation of egoistic concern and judgmental reactivity, is an open question, only answerable by undertaking meditative and attentional practice. By all accounts it’s a difficult path, the goal rarely attained in full measure. But there’s no reason we can’t engage in practices and study philosophies that lead us to question the conventional wisdom about who we are, and in so doing gain at least some freedom from illusion, some peace of mind, and some moral guidance. Seen from a naturalistic standpoint, Tolle’s way, that of the Perennial Philosophy, is unrealistic and misleading in many respects, but its heart is very much in the right place. The naturalist can take from his books the moral wisdom of his tradition, his deep personal and planetary humanism, his meditative techniques, and his many practical recommendations for achieving equanimity, while passing over his worldview. The route to a naturalized enlightenment is still in its early stages, still being worked out, so it’s good to have even supernatural models to study and learn from.

Image source: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-380961723

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According to Logotherapy, we can discover the meaning of life in three different ways :

1. Through what we give to the world, through what we do, what we contribute, what we add to life, what we create (Creative values).

2. Through what we receive from life, what we take from life, what life gives us, what we experience (Experiential values).

3. Through the attitude we take when we are faced with situations in which we can do absolutely nothing, as in the case of an incurable disease viz., an inoperable cancer, or being stricken with blindness, or losing a leg or arm. Nevertheless one choice remains and that is the choice of our attitude towards it. This according to logotherapists, is the last of human freedoms — the capacity to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances. The noblest appreciation of meaning is reserved for those who, when faced with what looks like an unalterable situation, rise above it and grow beyond themselves by the attitude they take towards their predicament (Attitudinal values).

Discovering meaning through Creative values

The chief duties of a human being is to get to understand as much of the universe as he can and then on the strength of that knowledge, to do his utmost towards making it a better universe than it would have been if he had not happened to be born, by creating some bit of a new value, though it may only be making two blades of grass where one grew before, or mending the broken leg of a sparrow, or making some difference in the world, but not the kind that suicide bombers do now-a-days. It is for each of us to decide in what way, given the powers and gifts that we possess and the situations with which we are confronted, we can add value to the world around us and in doing so, discover the meaning of our life.

It does require a lot of creativity to write poetry or prose, to be a novelist or write a non-fiction book after research, to paint pictures, whether portraits or landscapes, to write lyrics for a song and compose music for it, to produce a film or even a TV serial, to learn to bowl a googly in cricket or become a Bradman-like batsman. It does require creativity to start a new enterprise and run it profitably. The work of value engineers involves a lot of kaizen or continuous improvement. Scientific research leading to a Nobel prize or at the least resulting in the publication of a paper in a peer-reviewed professional journal, involves a lot of creative effort.

However, for the ordinary person who cannot do exceptional things, doing something to the best of one’s capabilities, doing it slightly better than what was done earlier, is realizing creative values.

One way to realize creative values is to stop watching like a zombie, the meaningless soaps on the TV, and taking up instead a guitar or violin and learning to play it. It may sound cacophonous to others. But what matters is that you are accomplishing something by yourself. As long as you are playing it a wee bit better than yesterday, you are creating meaning in your life. There is a lot of creativity involved in cooking different tasty but at the same time nourishing meals.

Discovering meaning through Experiential values

All people cannot be very creative but they can certainly enjoy the creativity of other people or the creation of nature. Thus they can enjoy the cooking done by their spouses, enjoy the music created by others, enjoy reading the books written by others, see the films produced by others, or they can enjoy the creations of Nature viz., a sunrise or sunset, a waterfall, or the waves near a beach or the smile on a baby’s face.

This is the area of life where we receive things that we have not earned, where life gives us free gifts.There are many things of value that come to us in this way:

Natural Beauty and creativity of Nature : sunset and sunrise, mountains and sea, flowers and trees — all these are bestowed on us freely without money and without price.

Creativity of Humans : The great teachers, painters, writers, poets and music composers have given of themselves freely. We could not by ourselves have achieved what they have to offer. Yet it is ours for the taking.

Thirdly, our most beautiful human relationships are a free gift : We did not pay in advance for the motherhood that bore us all or the maternal love that nourished us. All this was poured out freely.

We can thus find meaning in all these three experiential ways.

Discovering meaning through Attitudinal values

It should be remembered that experiential and creative values are not the only sources of meaning in our lives. Even if we are facing a fate which cannot be changed, there is still meaning available in our lives. Logotherapists say that when you can no longer change the situation, you may change yourself, which means you may change your attitude towards your fate. Changing yourself in such cases means rising above yourself, going beyond yourself. Suffering in itself has no meaning, but we can assume meaningful attitudes towards events that in themselves are meaningless.

An example from Hindi movies

I recall a beautiful movie I saw in 1971 called “Anand”, starring Amitabh Bachhan, Rajesh Khanna, Johnnie Walker and others. Rajesh Khanna is the hero and suffers from an inoperable terminal cancer. He is aware of it and also aware of the fact that he has only 3 months time on earth.

He had 3 options available to him. He could say to himself ” why do such bad things happen to good people like me ?” and make himself miserable and make everybody in his universe miserable. Secondly, he could buy a AK 47 or 56 or a country made revolver from the underworld and shoot down all the bosses who had harrassed and humiliated him in the various places that he worked, with impunity, because by the time the law catches up with him and makes the connection, he would have died anyway. However he chooses the third option. He does some marital counselling to patch up differences in a friendly couple, tries to learn a new language so that he could speak to a beautiful girl who doesn’t know other languages and tries to courageously face his predicament. Isn’t that nice ?

Attitudinal values is taking the proper stance or posture towards tragedy in our own lives. It is the courage we show in facing up to the trials & tribulations of life. Some people who are visually-challenged or hearing-challenged, or handicapped in other ways cannot be very creative or cannot realize experiential values, in the sense that they cannot do memorable feats or even enjoy beautiful sights or beautiful music. How then can such people create meaning in their lives ?

I have noticed that such people come to terms very quickly with their handicap and try to surmount it by trying to achieve something in their own small ways. People without upper limbs try to paint and write with their feet, blind people or rather visually-challenged people take up singing or active appreciation of music. When life hands them a lemon, they make a palatable lemonade, by squeezing the juice into a glass of water and adding sugar to it. But then, there are those amongst us who, when life hands them a lemon, think that they have to eat only the outer rind, throw away the fruit and wonder why life is so bitter.

Cases from real life

Stephen Hawking of U.K. suffered from a motor neuron disease at the age of 20 and he was given only a couple of years to live by the neurologists, but yet he survived. He completed his Ph.D after getting the disease and all his unique research on Black Holes was done much after that, when he was virtually paralyzed, and he couldn’t talk and was confined to the wheel chair. He was depressed for all of one month ( ! ) but through sheer determination, persisted in carrying out his research work, which is now admired all over the world. He is 69 years old today and his thinking is as clear as ever. It is quite obvious that Stephen has made his life meaningful by realizing Creative & Attitudinal Values.

Terry Fox is another example of courage against adversity. For this young Canadian, the necessity to reflect on the meaning of life was thrust upon him early in life. Two days after his 18th birthday, Terry learned that he had a cancerous tumour in his right knee. His leg had to be amputated immediately, since the cancer could spread through the rest of his body.

He spent little time wallowing in the trap of self-pity. Two weeks after surgery, Terry began chemotherapy. The cancer clinic and the painful treatments were a reminder to him that almost half of all cancer patients never recover. He decided he wanted to do something for the people who were still there. He decided to run with his artificial leg all the way across Canada to raise one million dollars to fight cancer. He would give this money to the Canadian Cancer Society.

On Sept. 1, 1981 after running three-fifths of the way across Canada, Terry Fox had to leave his errand. The cancer had spread to his lungs. By the time of his death, in June 1982, he had raised over 24 million dollars. Can anyone say that his life was meaningless ? Like Stephen Hawking, Terry Fox too made his short life meaningful by realizing Creative & Attitudinal Values.

Conclusion

So a human being can make his or her life meaningful by realizing any one of the three values at a particular instance. All the three values need not be simultaneously realized.

Don’t you consider yourself lucky that you are endowed with physical and mental abilities which many cannot take for granted, which offer you the potential to realize all the three kinds of values (unlike many unfortunate others), to make your life tremendously meaningful ?

Well then, please get down to it, and wish you all the best in life.

Related posts:

1. Are You A Freethinker? Naturalism, Life and Meaning in a Causal Universe

Editor’s note: Prof. Dayanandan is a Botanist by profession and has been a student, teacher and researcher at the Madras Christian College and the University of Michigan. He has inspired students for more than 40 years. Prof. Dayanandan is passionate about communicating Science to school students and general public and believes that even the most sophisticated concepts in Science can and should be shared with non-specialists. Recently, he was an invited speaker at Chennai Freethinkers’ Thinkfest 2011, where he delivered a lecture ‘Chimpanzee is our cousin. So is the Neem Tree.’  His other research interests include Evolutionary Biology, Art History and Tamil literature.

‘Space travel’ holds much fascination. If sending human beings to Mars has to come true what would we need in terms of catering to the nutritional requirements of the astronauts? What kinds of experiments are conducted at the International Space Station that keeps orbiting the earth? Does Space research have a tangible benefit for people on earth? Space Biology is an interesting topic and this FAQ seeks to whet your appetite on some of these issues.

This FAQ is summarized from a Mini Review that appeared in the December 2011 issue of Journal of Biosciences, a quarterly journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.

1) What is Gravitational and Space Biology?

Life evolved during the past four billion years under the influence of the Earth’s massive field of gravity. Several features of life were shaped by gravity as organisms adapted to living in water, air, land and on trees. Gravitational Biology explores how organisms perceive and respond to gravity and how gravity influences the structure, development, function, evolution and behavior of organisms (Morey-Holton 2003). Space Biology is often used as an all-encompassing term to describe the functioning of life processes in normal and altered gravity conditions on Earth and in space.

2) How does gravity influence life?

Corn shoot : negatively gravitropic

Of the four fundamental forces only electromagnetism is directly involved in biological processes. No direct role is known either for the strong or weak nuclear forces or gravity in any biochemical process. Gravity influences living organisms indirectly. Gravitational force is infinite-range acting, and positively acts on all particles with mass/energy. Any object with a mass at the surface of the Earth accelerates towards Earth’s center at approximately 9.81 m/s2. This acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s surface is generally treated as 1 g (one Earth Gravity). The dilemma of growing in 1 g environment and responding to it can be seen in nearly 400 million-year-old fossil vascular plants and their descendants.

4) What is Microgravity?

Microgravity refers to considerably less than 1 g force, usually in the range of 10^-4 to 10^-6 g. Microgravity in this range can be provided for short duration by generating free fall conditions close to the Earth’s surface with sounding rockets and airplanes in parabolic flight and drop facilities (Clement and Slenzka 2006). Space vehicles are unique biological laboratories. Space Biology experiments are generally carried out in Low Earth Orbits (LEO), at altitudes less than 1% of the distance from the Earth to Moon. Space vehicles moving in circular LEO experience actual microgravity environment because of free fall around the Earth. The centripetal force towards the Earth is counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration resulting in free fall.

Pictures of oats (Avena) taken at 0 hr and 24 hr after laying the shoot horizontally. The well-defined pulvinus shows bending in response to gravity.

5) What are the observations regarding the effect of microgravity on plant growth?

A miniature rose grows in a special Astroculture chamber as part of a 1998 space shuttle mission experiment to study new scents in space. CREDIT: NASA

Microgravity affects normal plant growth by interfering with the supply of water, minerals and oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide from the root zone. These problems are now overcome by development of appropriate delivery systems (Wolverton and Kiss 2009). Ethylene gas functions as a natural plant hormone at low concentrations. Ethylene build-up inside the space vehicle was found to be the major cause of reproductive failure in microgravity. When ethylene concentration is controlled, wheat, peas and Arabidopsis plants could be successfully cultivated to produce viable seeds in space. Potato leaf and stem cuttings were cultured in Astroculture facility and mini-tubers were harvested. The tuber size, morphology and starch granules were all similar to ground controls.

It appears that microgravity does not adversely affect genetically determined developmental processes and that as long as the environment of the cabin is controlled, growth and development of plants might proceed normally without affecting important processes such as gas exchange, photosynthesis and reproduction. The growth of four consecutive generations of peas in space has given the confidence that food plants can indeed be grown for space travel and colonization. Unusual and unexpected responses too were observed. A miniature rose that bloomed in microgravity in the Astroculture growth chamber on a shuttle produced unique essential oils and rose-fragrance that was subsequently commercialized.

6) Does gravity have an effect on animals too?

In the animal kingdom response to gravity has been studied in all major groups. Organs such as the Johnston’s organ in insects and the vestibular apparatus of higher animals detect gravity for proper orientation. The musculo-skeletal system evolved to support the body mass and provide structural and postural stability to land animals as they moved about in search of food. The sensory-motor system evolved so that organisms can recognize the gravity vector and orient themselves and move about. A vestibular system evolved in the fish for efficient swimming. The versatile design of this system, with minor modification in nerve-motor connections, was retained by amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals for navigation in water, air, trees and land. Human beings have inherited many of these evolutionary adaptations (Highstein et al 2004). The vestibular system is the key to human senses of balance, motion, and body position. The otolith organs allow humans to sense the direction and speed of linear acceleration and the position (tilt) of the head. The semicircular canals help sense the direction and speed of angular acceleration (Coulter and Vogt 2004).

As a bipedal erect animal the genus Homo had to adapt to gravity for at least 2.4 million years. Their ancestral bipedal hominins faced this dilemma nearly 7 million years ago. The cardiovascular system helped maintain adequate pressure and supply of blood to various parts of the body, especially the head.

7) How have animals fared in space? What is the effect of microgravity on animals?

The Space Age dawned in 1957 when Sputnik I was launched into successful orbit around the Earth. This was followed by space flights of Gagarin and Shepherd in 1961 and Glenn in 1962. The history of animals in space, however, is more than 229-years-old! In 1783 a French team sent a rooster, duck and sheep on a hot air balloon and successfully recovered them. Tipton (2003) described the history of animals in space under three eras – the balloon, rocket-missile and biosatellite. Now, we are in the era of Space Station and Nanosatellites which continue experiments with animals as well as with plants, bacteria, yeasts and organic chemicals.

C Elegans (wild type)

About 40 different animal species have so far been flown in space. Invertebrates such as jellyfish, sea urchins and pond snails have been used to study fertilization and development of graviperceptors. C. elegans can reproduce and progress through several generations in microgravity without major structural changes. Recent studies on C. elegans offer hope for treatment and control of muscle degradation (Etheridge et al 2011).

Currently fish, birds, amphibians and small mammals are the favorite organisms for developmental studies in microgravity. Medaka (Oryzias latipes) and swordtail fish (Xiphophorus helleri) were studied onboard the Spacelab for embryogenesis and otolith development. In microgravity fish exhibit a peculiar looping behavior. Successful mating of Medaka in microgravity was first observed in 1994. Viable embryos resulted and the fry had no abnormalities. Normally, the fertilized eggs of frogs rotate before further development. In reduced gravity frogs were found to ovulate but the fertilized eggs did not rotate. Yet the tadpoles emerged and appeared normal, and when returned to Earth metamorphosed and developed normally (Morey-Holton 2003).

The Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix) is another favorite space animal and a potential source of food for future space colonies. On Mir fertilized quail eggs developed normally but the hatchlings had trouble orienting. A chick would spin and tumble unless held in hands by an astronaut. In young rats bone loss, accompanying muscle loss and delay in bone fracture repair are serious adverse effects of microgravity. Such studies have helped develop countermeasures for long term human occupation of space vehicles (Morey-Holton et al 2007).

8 ) What is the effect of hypergravity and microgravity on human beings?

Human beings can tolerate only 4 to 5 g for up to 10 min. During launch and reentry humans normally experience 3 g conditions. Hypergravity above 50 g even for a few seconds causes serious injury or death. In an orbiting space vehicle microgravity field is typically in the range of 10^-4 to 10^-6 g. This has a deconditioning effect leading to abnormal physiological changes (Clement 2003; Davis et al 2008). Calcium depletion can lead to up to 1-2% loss in bone density per month. Muscle fiber loss can lead to up to 40% reduction in muscle function. In addition space radiation, sensory deprivation and absence of circadian clues and the artificial environment all have adverse effects on human beings. While most conditions disappear on return to Earth some such as bone calcium loss take a long time to or never recover. That humans can indeed stay for extended periods in microgravity is shown by the fact that Mir was home for 125 astronauts from more than a dozen countries while 196 astronauts from 8 different countries have visited the ISS from 2000 to 2010. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov has stayed in Mir for 437 days.

NASA currently addresses human health and safety issues through its Human Research Program. Prospects of return to lunar surface and long-term space missions require that in addition to safety and countermeasures advanced technologies, diagnostic devices and remote-controlled protocols should be developed for astronauts themselves to solve problems, respond to emergencies and self-administer medical care.

9) What are the key findings with regard to microbes and cells?

A recent study has established that the small size of microbes help them withstand extreme hypergravity conditions (Deguchi et al 2011). Young plants can tolerate only about 10 min exposure to 40 g while 20 g can be lethal for rats. Four species of bacteria and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae could proliferate even at 20,000 g. Paracoccus denitrificans and E. coli survived and even proliferated at 400,000 g. A major conclusion from recent experiments with cell culture on bioreactors such as CBOSS on ISS is that many cell types – human blood, kidney, liver, tonsil, immune system tissue, and colon cancer cells – can be cultivated in microgravity and that such cells have normal form and function as cells and tissues in ground controls.

10) What is Astrobiology?

Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe. Astrobiology deals with such questions as origin and evolution of life on Earth, possible existence of life elsewhere in Universe, future of life, and living on celestial bodies other than the Earth. Many questions can be raised: Are the low levels of gravity force on the Moon (1/6 g) and Mars (3/8 g) sufficient for providing threshold levels for normal functioning of plants, animals and humans? Can life continue to evolve in such low gravity fields and return to Earth and successfully adapt to Earth’s 1 g environment? Mars poses many challenges for humans: a hostile and lethal atmosphere, ionizing radiation, low gravity and light and prolonged isolation from familiar community, lifestyle and biodiversity. The most challenging of all problems of colonizing any extraterrestrial body is providing a permanent life support system. An ambitious theoretical proposal is to terraform a planet by converting the surface and climate to make them suitable for life (Davies et al 2003; Fogg 1995).

11) What are Bioregenerative Systems?

Space travel and space colonization require a life support system that mimics the environmental conditions, including the supply of food that humans and other living things are used to. A complete life support system is variously known as Bioregenerative System (BRS), Advanced Life Support System (ALSS) etc. A BRS is based on the fundamental principles of biospherics, namely, imitating the ecological and environmental elements that make life self-sustaining in the Earth’s biosphere (Eckart 2010). The three major components of a bioregenerative life support system are: plants, people and microbes. Plants produce biomass including edible food, release oxygen during photosynthesis and transpire water that can be condensed and collected. People consume food and use oxygen but release carbon dioxide and water and solid waste as urine and feces. People also use water for washing and bathing and this is termed as ‘gray water.’ The human waste, inedible biomass from plant and the gray water can all be used in a microbial bioreactor for recycling into nutrients and carbon dioxide.

Current research is also focused on how plants respond to hypobaria, or low pressure. Atmospheric pressure on Lunar and Martian surface is less than one per cent of what it is on Earth. Plants interpret low pressure as conditions of aridity and activate drought sensing genes even if water is plentiful and humidity is high. This may lead to closure of stomata, poor photosynthesis and leaf shedding. The thin atmosphere, space radiation and particle bombardment will seriously affect human and plant health on Mars. It has been suggested that first human and agricultural settlements could be underground or in natural Martian caves such as those around Arsia Mons. Light may be piped down from solar collectors, and plants grown initially hydroponically (Salisbury et al 2002). Carbon dioxide is not a constraint since the Martian atmosphere consists of 95% of this gas. Recently Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft detected a large cave on the Moon which has been suggested as a potential place for a future lunar outpost.

12) What is Space farming?

Section of a shoot bent in response to gravity stimulation. Scanning electron micrograph (SEM). This is a picture of a grass (Muhlenbergia) shoot pulvinus after bending 90 degrees in response to gravity. This longitudinal section shows finely graded elongation response of cells of various organs.

Growing plants in space in BRS is popularly described as Space Farming. ‘Space Crop Plants’ should be: nutritious, highly efficient in utilizing low light, compact in growth habit, resistant to microbial diseases and have high harvest index (NASA Science 2001). Such plants, already cultivated in space vehicles include: rice, wheat, and salad leafy greens and vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, peppers, mustards, tomatoes, onions, Swiss chard, broccoli, radishes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, soybean, cowpea and strawberries. Super-dwarf cultivars of wheat (Apogee and Perigee) and rice have been developed, and Apogee wheat has already been grown from seed to seed in microgravity. Ornamental plants such as tulips are considered to be ideal for aesthetic and positive psychological ambience.

When India takes up space biological studies it will find that common greens such as species of Amaranthus and Alternanthera sessilis and Mentha spicata qualify as ideal space plants. It is estimated that a five-year mission to Mars would require about 3,125 kg foods per astronaut. This could be met if food is produced in space in BRS and the astronauts themselves process and cook some of their meals. Plants such as lettuce, cabbage, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, spring onions, radishes, peppers, strawberries and some herbs could be cultivated in space. Some harvested food can also be processed and sent in advance in unmanned spacecrafts to Mars.

13) What are the applications of Space Biology?

Space biology has potential applications in medicine, biotechnology, molecular synthesis, crop improvement, alternate agricultural systems, nutrition and food preservation and improving environmental quality and sustainability of life. Technological development can lead to space product development and technology transfer benefiting society (Hertzfeld 2002). Research in space biology may provide solutions to common problems such as shrinking productive land, low crop yield, pollution and vector-borne diseases. Gravitational and space biology is a multidisciplinary field drawing expertise and inspiration from such diverse fields as astronomy, physics, biology, medicine, material sciences, nanotechnology, agri-horticulture, and information technology. It has the potential to ignite young minds, even school students, thus promoting interest in science and scientific temper.

14) What is the scope for the study of Space Biology in India?

India has a presence in Space Science and Technology but not in Space Life Sciences. Gravitational biology and Space Life Sciences are not taught in any Indian university. ISRO’s Space biological studies are limited to a balloon based experiment carried out in 2001 and repeated in 2005, and the forthcoming Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-II). The balloon experiment collected samples from the stratosphere between 20-41 km. Twelve bacterial and six fungal colonies were recovered which included three new species of bacteria. The SRE-II will carry out three different biological experiments in microgravity. ISRO’s ‘Space Vision India 2025’ statement includes Planetary Exploration and Human Space Flight Programme. An ISRO Orbital Vehicle might carry a 2-3 member crew to a LEO before 2020.

With clear mandate and adequate funding, research can be initiated in universities and especially in ISRO and its units such as Space Application Centre, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, the proposed astronaut training centre and through Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre’s RESPOND program. Government agencies should encourage and fund research and popularize Space Life Sciences. Students’ initiatives in Space Sciences are now encouraged in academic institutions such as the SRM University and Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamilnadu. These and other institutions should be encouraged and supported to pursue research in Space Biology.

Summarized from the original article by Geetha T.G.

No related posts.

Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the series Understanding Natural Phenomena.

14^th November is Nehru’s birthday, and it is celebrated as Children’s Day in India. Nehru was a rationalist.

Through this post I want to highlight the great injustice being done by most parents to their children.

Minds of young children are highly impressionable. They are strongly influenced by what they learn from their parents and teachers. It is only much later that some of them make a near-complete break from the childhood conditioning, and strike on their own. My own rejection of the unscientific and irrational way of thinking at the age of ~17 years is an example. But most people are not able to make this kind of a break. In particular, it is very difficult for them to undo the brainwashing regarding religion and God etc.

Ideally, enlightened parents should strive to create conditions in the family in which the child can grow to become an independent thinker, unencumbered by the views his/her parents or teachers may hold. Credulity in a child is an evolutionary necessity. It suits the child as well as the parents. But every child has a right to be exposed to all streams of thought before making a choice.

Imagine a scenario in which a child learns to have full confidence in the scientific method, and therefore in science. Such a person will not waste energy and time fighting what science has to say. Instead, he/she will take even the counter-intuitive quantum mechanics for granted, all the time fully conscious of the fact that there is nothing dogmatic about the concepts and theories of science, and even the most cherished scientific ideas can be abandoned if the new evidence so demands. Such a person will be able to have a rational and objective view about the (failed) hypothesis about God, even when he/she does not have the expertise to understand the advanced scientific ideas used in, for example, Hawking’s book I mentioned in the previous post.

The present situation is pathetic and alarming. In India, in most cases even a six-month old child gets exposed to religious mumbo jumbo. Around that age the child gets the first solid food and, sure as ever, the event abounds in religious (‘auspicious’) trappings. How sad.

What right the parents have to impose their views on a child? The child should be able to make a choice after learning about the various streams of thought. Is that asking for too much? Are we being fair to our children?

Needless to say, the parents do it with good intentions. Most of them believe that a religious upbringing will instil moral values in the child. But do they succeed? I don’t think so.

How moral is it to kill in the name of religion?

How moral is it to perpetuate social injustice in the name of religion?

How moral is it to stifle the intellectual growth of a child in the name of religion (e.g. by teaching creationism)? If you teach your child that something is true simply because the ‘holy book’ says so, you are destroying something very valuable, namely the urge to go on questioning things till a rational and sensible answer has been obtained.

How moral is it for parents to teach a child that their religion (or caste) is superior to all others?

I can go on.

Now contrast this with a situation in which a child has imbibed the spirit of the scientific method, and has blossomed into a rational, mature person who realizes that there is no God up there to intervene and help us in case we mess up our affairs on this planet. That Mother Earth is our collective responsibility, for which we should cooperate with one another, rather than waste our energy and resources in mindless conflicts in the name of religion.

Imagine a world in which human beings, after they grow up from childhood, are no longer children in their emotional get-up, but are mature, responsible, and mentally strong persons, who hold nobody but themselves accountable for all their actions. They do not need a father figure (God) to whom to go crying for help like a child does. They are noble and moral because it feels good to be so, rather than because they believe that God will punish them if they are not good. And what kind of God is this which first makes people do what he wills, and then punishes them for their actions? Nonsense.

By adopting a strictly logical, honest, and objective approach to observations and data, humanity has been able to achieve so much. To appreciate this properly, and to take pride in our scientific heritage, your child should understand the basics of this approach. In particular, he/she must learn to admire the indomitable human spirit which, in spite of the hostile conditions in which it had to progress, came up on top by adopting THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD of interpreting natural phenomena.

‘Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional’ (Brian Greene).

Do you really want to deprive your child of this empowerment, and cripple his/her mental growth? Think about it.

Richard Dawkins has recently written a book, The Magic of Reality, which explains to children how the scientific version of reality has far more magical beauty and fascination than any of the prevailing myths about reality.It is designed to be intelligible to 12-year olds, perhaps with some help from enlightened parents. How about buying a copy of the book for your child?

Click here to view the embedded video.

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg

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1. Anti-gay Court Prevents My Sister From Adopting Abused Children

Editor’s Note: This is the first article in the series Understanding Natural Phenomena.

In the beginning, science did not have a large and strong edifice of knowledge and techniques. But modern science is a force to reckon with. There is a recent book, The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life, by Hawking and Mlodinow (H&M) (2010), which demolishes the God hypothesis quite convincingly. This book even overcomes the vexing first-cause problem. Read it. It takes on, and answers, some of the deepest questions we all think about.

Science does not have all the answers, but the power of the scientific method is such that our answers keep improving with time. In any case, there is no other method for answering any question about Nature.

I summarized this book in an online article. But that is no substitute for the original book.

In a series of posts I shall try to explain some salient points made in this book in a simple language. But the question I want to address first is: If scientific explanations are so good, why is it that so many people do not know about them?

This is very tragic. Most people have not learnt even elementary science, leave alone the kind of advanced science needed to answer certain fundamental but difficult questions about our universe. I did not have any difficulty in understanding and enjoying this book because I am a trained physicist and therefore have the basic familiarity with most of the concepts used in H&M’s book. But what should be done about people who do not have a background in science?

Writing popular-science books is an obvious solution, but that is easier said than done. Advanced science tends to be very mathematical. On top of that, laws of Nature, for example the laws of quantum mechanics, are highly counter-intuitive. For me this is not difficult to accept. After all, laws of Nature have been there long before we humans came on the scene. There is no reason to expect that the laws must always be easy for us humans to understand. And yet it is crucial that this important feature of reality be understood and accepted by the public at large. This highlights the importance of bringing up children in an atmosphere in which they appreciate, at a very early age, the essence of the scientific way of interpreting any information or data. I shall dwell on that in the next post.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Natural Phenomena 3: Quantum Mechanics
2. Understanding Natural Phenomena 2: The Big Bang
3. Pseudoscience: A Brief Introduction
4. Introduction to “The God Market: How Globalization is making India more Hindu”
5. Heretics, Rebels, Reformers And Revolutionaries – Introduction
6. Secularism, Free-thought and the Internet Revolution- An Introduction

This paper was presented at the  International Conference on Science Communication for Scientific Temper 10-12 January, 2012 New Delhi

Abstract

From prehistoric times, humans have evolved as a pattern-seeking and storytelling species. While the capacity to find patterns and infer meanings had obvious advantages for survival, the brain is not always successful in distinguishing meaningful and meaningless patterns. In fact, “pattern finding” and “order seeking” mechanisms form the basis for nearly all existing myths, superstitions, cultural taboos and ritual practices all over the world. The same mechanism also makes us extremely vulnerable to all kinds of deceptions and manipulative techniques that impair our critical faculties. We may imagine things that don’t exist, make false judgments, accept uncritical claims, misinterpret facts and arrive at conclusions that are completely at odds with reality. The scientific age is riddled with intriguing contradictions and human-made follies. The technology-driven consumer culture and entertainment industry has fueled the growth of primitive superstitions, myths and new age beliefs. The need to promote a rational discussion on science, technology and equitable social development has never been so pressing. The first thing to guard against such trends is to be aware of the subtle persuasive techniques, marketing strategies and advertisement gimmicks that make us increasingly helpless consumers in the scientific age. Conveying the excitement of science and scientific discovery is no doubt an essential part of science education and public outreach activities. But equally important is to learn to draw the distinction between unsubstantiated claims and factual findings based on sound reasoning and evidence. Discerning magical thinking and vague ideas from the realm of possibilities that lie within limits of physical laws is therefore important to inculcate scientific temper. In this article, some major ways that can lead to sloppy thinking, misplaced apprehensions and faulty reasoning in our daily lives are discussed. The paper includes examples to illustrate how erroneous beliefs are formed and why healthy skepticism and critical inquiry is necessary to avoid common pitfalls.

Introduction

Our grand universe was born with a ‘big-bang’ about 13.7 billion years ago. In this marvelous expanse, Earth, the only known planet to harbour life, was formed some 4.5 billion years back in the solar system. Over the last 3.7 billion years or so, life on earth has evolved from a unicellular organism to highly complex and assorted forms. In the intervening period, several million species flourished and have gone extinct. To our knowledge, in this tree of life no other species was endowed with an inquisitive brain that was sufficiently advanced to ponder over things and indulge in abstract reasoning. Hitherto, the inhabitants of earth were impervious (not by choice though) to the secrets and wonders of the Universe around. Compared to the enormous time scale, the arrival of humans on Earth is very recent. It is only about 5-8 million years back that we had split from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and evolved as a separate species. It wasn’t until the emergence of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago that the vast Universe wrapped in grand mysteries was ready to be explored. The evolving human brain had just begun to marvel at the impressive regularity and remarkable spectrum of events occurring in the physical world.

Watching a clear night sky, dotted with seemingly innumerable stars, journeying almost like a divinely ordained fashion, must have been the most amazing and inexplicable experience for early human beings. Right from prehistoric times, people were driven by genuine curiosity and reverence arising from the observations of periodic motion of the heavenly objects. For thousands of years, humans have understood the cycle of changes occurring in the night sky, discovered familiar patterns of stars and also struggled to make sense of rare events like lunar and solar eclipses or an unexpected arrival of a comet. As a species, humans are predisposed to look for visual and auditory patterns and assign meanings to them. From the survival viewpoint, this instinctive ability had clear evolutionary advantages as it helped primeval beings guard against real or imagined threats that often lurked in hostile and dangerous environment.

The relentless struggle to understand the heaven and earth also laid the basis for supernatural beliefs, cultural taboos and numerous superstitions and ritual practices to please and appease the powerful and ill-tempered gods who allegedly controlled the destiny of earthly beings. It is not at all surprising that most civilizations around the world have developed their own fascinating stories resembling myths about the Universe. These primitive belief systems were eventually transformed into organized and powerful religions forcing people to dogmatic conformity and servitude.

Lessons from Optical Illusions

Figure 1: Lessons from optical illusions

As pointed out, we prefer an orderly, meaningful and simplistic world as opposed to the random, purposeless and chaotic arrangement of things. Keen observation with predisposition to detect pattern and make connections has also led to several scientific discoveries. However, there is a downside to this “pattern finding” and “order seeking” mechanism. By looking at certain patterns, we can get thoroughly deceived and may conjure up things that really don’t exist. How easily the mind and brain can be misled is understood from the simple optical illusions illustrated in Fig. 1. Reexamination or some kind of mental exercise will not make these illusions disappear. The cognitive deception, however, is not confined to optical illusions alone. In general, it forms the basis for holding erroneous beliefs, making false assumptions, arriving at wrong conclusions and most importantly pushing aside good judgment and rational thoughts while interpreting facts.

Now take a closer look at Fig. 2. It gives us an idea of the complexity of the world we live in. Good or bad, what these images show is a direct outcome of our convictions, our conflicts, our aspirations and our beliefs. Scientific approach and rational thinking have largely triumphed in understanding several aspects of our physical universe. The meteoric rise of science in the last 400 years has in fact altered the very landscape of human existence. Basic research and gradual advancement in technology have thus far exceeded expectations of ordinary minds. Science has not disappointed those who knew how to harness its latent power. Despite many noteworthy achievements, modern societies are also deeply mired in all sorts of contradictions, absurdities, propaganda and irrational practices. We have created many divisive walls and dangerous ideologies based on religion, ethnicity and racial differences. The unfolding climate change, global warming and dwindling natural resources are all emerging crises for humanity. On top of that, irrational impulses of dominance and greed make the future look pretty bleak.

Technological onslaught

Figure 2: Triumphs and tribulations of the technological age

The information age is not free from its perils. This may sound like an oxymoron. But there is a growing body of evidence that clearly raise serious concerns of increasing influence of technology in our daily lives. We are constantly bombarded by an enormous amount of information flowing from the Internet, television and other forms of mass media. Our brains are not tuned to process a message – dense and often conflicting stream of information. Whatever we see, read or hear could be skewed in one way or another.

Sometimes it is hard to discern relevant from frivolous, good from bad and desirable from deceitful. For lack of better skills, we fail to make an independent and critical evaluation of what we see, what we read and what we hear. The problem worsens when the information is deliberately distorted to mislead the recipient in some predetermined way. The dividing line between useful and useless, genuine and fraudulent, just and wrongful, factual and fictitious, true and false, thus becomes blurred. This is where someone else can take control over our critical faculties. The lack of critical and independent thinking, for example, makes people extremely vulnerable. It compels them to seek guidance and personal cure from sources that are hardly benign and authentic.

At another level, irrational faith can become a breeding ground for collective indoctrination, forcing absolute compliance to supremacist authority of one kind or another. Uncritical acceptance of claims results in convoluted thinking and wrong reasoning. Despotic leaders, popular cult figures, religious heads and soothsayers, for example, often take advantage of basic human psychology and the veil of ignorance. They appeal to people’s deepest fears and irrational hopes before taking control of their lives.

In recent years, the celebration of religious festivals, superstitions and rituals have become regular practices in many research and educational institutes in India. The case of the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) is particularly appalling. The achievements of India’s space programme are commendable, but when it comes to the responsibility of developing scientific outlook and rational thinking to fight the social ills, the organization perhaps did not quite live up to the desired standard. Instead of spearheading a campaign (by virtue of its privileged position and wider resources) to eradicate superstitions and illiteracy, ISRO officials often hit the headlines for wrong reasons. You may wonder why the name PSVL-C13 was missing from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) series. This omission was purely based on widely held belief in numerology about the number 13 which is considered unlucky. Following the advice of some numerologist, ISRO had chosen to skip the problematic number and name the next space mission as PSLV-C14 after PSLV-12. Last year, the success of India’s first mission to moon, Chandrayaan-1, was an astounding feat. As usual, before the launch, ISRO officials visited the Tirupati temple to offer special prayers for the success of the mission. Trajectories of modern space flights are not controlled by prayers, but meticulously computed from the orbital mechanics derived from Newton’s law of motion and gravitation. Deity puja and godly faith cannot fix a technical fault. In fact, attributing success to higher powers and seeking divine interventions grossly undermine the capabilities and achievements of human ingenuity. The proven success of the moon mission was solely due to the diligent efforts of individuals and nearly flawless engineering design.

The alarming manifestation of religious zeal in public sphere is a mighty blow to the Nehruvian legacy of scientific temper in India. Someone must explain why such ceremonial gesturing is necessary or even desirable when we fully understand how reactionary and communal forces exploit these myths to unleash social violence. Public display of personal beliefs and religious fervour is not just irrational and regressive, it also violates the foundational principles of our Constitution. A distinction that we should not fail to make as science communicators.

Consumer Market and Entertainment Industry

The consumer market and entertainment industry too have forged an unholy alliance with technology to exploit the gullible public. The mass media and digital technology has emerged as a most powerful instrument of propaganda and persuasion. In his book, Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, T.H. Qualter defines propaganda as “the deliberate attempt by some individual or group to form, control, or alter the attitudes of other groups by the use of instruments of communication, with the intention that in any given situation the reaction of those influenced will be that desired by the propagandist“.

Emotive words and false analogies are drawn to promote free market ideology by depicting the consumer as a king and the market as an empire. Subtle ideas and values are ingrained through clever visual imagery, tantalizing graphics and sound effects. Products are embedded in popular entertainment, movies and other media forms. Children are highly susceptible to propaganda and become soft targets for mind control. Findings indicate that more 90% of pre-children group want to buy things that are advertized in television commercials. They are made brand conscious right from a tender age and grow up as trained and loyal customers. ‘Catch them young‘ is an unconcealed motto for many brand managers. It is not terribly surprising that companies hire the best psychologists and designers to invent ways that entice kids to buy their products and foster a life time allegiance for the brand.

Advergaming is another new concept where brands are introduced to the audience through online games. In United States alone, advergaming is expected to grow to a $68 billion industry by 2012 (Business Standard, 7 January, 2010). Closer home, we can take the example of the recently made science-fiction movie Ra.One. The marketing budget of the movie was well over 52 crore of which 15 crore alone was spent for online publicity (The Tribune, 5 Nov, 2011). Special video games and electronic gadgets were launched to lure the techno-savvy audience before the movie was released worldwide. The official online store of Ra-One sold over 40,000 merchandise items (e.g. coffee mugs, mobile pouches, video cameras, tee shirts, caps, school stationary and toys) in just about 15 days. The order for additional 100, 000 items was awaited. That is how technology is used to create a maniacal obsession for celebrity culture and almost insatiable desire for consumption and non-stop entertainment.

The increasing numbers of 24×7 TV channels are willing to cater to anything that will amuse people to death. The lucrative entertainment business thrives on sensational soaps, family dramas, tele-shopping, paid news, advertizing, doomsday theories, reality shows, mythological serials, fear mongering, superstitious themes, faith preaching and dedicated time slots for highly paid astrology, feng-shui, vastu and yoga experts. In particular, the live telecast of religious festivals (e.g. Kumbha Mela, Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri etc), and big sporting events has been shown to boost the TRPs.

Serious issues, no doubt, fail to touch the conscience of the nation. Otherwise, a country that is constantly struggling to meet its fuel and energy demand would not have chosen to disgrace itself by burning a whopping 2-lakhs liter of petrol to host a rather infamous Formula-1 racing event (Indian Express, October 24, 2011). The dazzling show was endorsed by most famous sports personalities, business tycoons and cinema stars. Our national media, especially the English TV channels, who otherwise never shy away from pontificating to bureaucrats and politicians, colluded in this show-biz propaganda in an almost hysterical manner. Most ‘prime time shows‘ were virtually transformed to high-pitch ‘sale time shows‘ with a singular agenda to impress upon viewers that pride, prestige and prosperity of India was solely hinging on this one mega event!

There are many other examples how technology is used to (mis)educate and enslave people. These techno-hyper challenges pose a greater threat to the advancement of scientific temper and critical thinking among people. Someone seriously engaged in spreading science education, rational inquiry and developing scientific temper should also be prepared to deal with such pressing issues. We cannot stop propaganda, but we can certainly take some discrete steps to stay immune to it. The goal is not to spot other people’s weakness and follies and laugh at it. The efforts should be directed, as Baruch Spinoza has famously said, ” … not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” First thing we can do is to learn how to identify various forms and means of propaganda and understand how human thinking can go wrong. Many ways in which errors and biases in human judgment can occur are explained with some well known examples.

Misinterpretation of existing theories

Theories can influence observations. This happens when new findings are wrongly interpreted to seek conformity with known theories. For instance, Christopher Columbus had set out on a westward journey with the hope to reach Asia that was well known for silk, spices and opium. He landed in the Caribbean islands and found people using red chilies which he mistook for pepper and wrongly thought that he had arrived in India. Another well known example of misrepresentation of scientific theory is social Darwinism. It is based on the misplaced notion that the biological principle of evolution and natural selection also regulate the social order and hierarchy among humans. Those who are rich and powerful are innately considered better than those who are weak and poor, thus legitimizing the existing structures of power and dominance in society.

Usage of scientific jargon

Products are sold with scientific sounding words and labels to fool people who are not quite familiar with their precise meaning. That explains why books written on quantum healing, thought waves, subtle energy fields, scientific astrology, trans-dimensional energy etc are so popular among the highly educated class of people!

Anecdotal and after-the-fact reasoning

Untested and ambiguous claims of miracles and magical cure are forcefully advanced based on personal experiences and experiences of others. Abnormal behavior of animals and birds is reported in the aftermath of major natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis! Rumors of miracles spread like wild-fire. Claims such as Ganesha drinking milk, blood flowing from Jesus statue and Sai Baba’s moon miracle are assumed true by followers without casting any doubt! The Internet is full of studies claiming a positive effect of prayers on healing. But upon close scrutiny, it reveals more about the expectations and biases of the people conducting these studies than the efficacy of the prayer itself.

The burden of proof

Figure 3: Independent evidences for the spherical shape of the Earth

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“. The burden of proof lies with those who make the claim at the first place. For example, there is hardly a shred of scientific evidence to support intelligent design. On the contrary, many line of evidences (genetics, DNA sequencing, evidence from fossil records etc) exist which independently prove that life has evolved on earth. Similarly, the spherical shape of the earth can be independently established from different observations as illustrated in Fig. 3. A belief should come from the positive evidence supporting the claim and not from the lack of evidence for or against it. For example, one cannot disprove the existence of aliens, fairies or ghosts. It does not mean that they exist; neither does it imply that they don’t exist. Carl Sagan had conveyed it succinctly, “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

Confusing coincidence with causation

Just because two events follow one another, it is assumed that one is responsible for the other. Coincidence and correlations do not imply causation. We have a strong tendency to remember false positives and ignore misses. Changing the bat at a particular stage of the game, wearing the left pad first or keeping a red handkerchief in the pocket while fielding, are some of the common forms of superstitions among cricketers!

Limitations of the experiment

Experiments are performed to deny or prove the validity of a particular claim and also deepen our knowledge of the phenomenon. However, the outcome of an experiment is limited by the range and sensitivity of the instrument. For example, the size of the fishnet cannot be used to infer the size of the largest or smallest fish in the ocean. Likewise, the knowledge of the observable universe is constrained by the size of the largest telescope available.

Unexplained is not inexplicable

It is said that our knowledge is limited but our ignorance is infinite. Given the limitations of human intellect, it is likely that many things will remain beyond the realm of our knowledge. Scientific frontiers are always stacked against terrains that are unknown and unexplored. What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? Can we ever cure cancer and AIDS? How does human brain function? Why does the placebo effect work? We do not yet know answers to these questions. But unexplained does not imply inexplicable. Instead of drawing premature conclusions and attributing mysteries to the supernatural power, it is better to be agnostic and hopeful before they are understood.

Experimenter effects

Figure 4: Observation and experiment influencing the observed

Observations and experiments can change the observed phenomenon. For example, to detect an electron it must interact with light photons. But the very interaction of photon with electron changes its state, i.e., speed and direction. The expectations and biases of anthropologists studying a tribe can alter the behaviour of its members. This may explain why only certain groups or individuals are able to perform a particular experiment. Psychologists use blind and double blind tests to minimize the effect of observations. Interestingly, a scientific study carried out to examine the impact of prayers on cardiac patients found no significant effect on health recovery. However, a slightly higher rate of complications was reported for patients who knew that they were receiving the prayers. In this case, as the researchers later explained, “patients’ knowledge that they were the subject of intercessory prayer might have induced a form of performance anxiety or made them feel doubtful about their outcome.”

Wishful thinking

The skeptic dictionary defines wishful thinking as, “interpreting facts, reports, events, perceptions, etc., according to what one would like to be the case rather than according to the actual evidence.” One of the classic examples of wishful thinking is those who believe that ancient scriptures (e.g. Vedas, Quran or Bible) contain solutions to every problem in the world – be it global warming, terrorism, or chronic illness. Some people have well meaning, but intense wishful desire to see India becoming a superpower by 2020! The assumption that science and technology alone will solve all our problems is another example of wishful thinking. Genetically modified (GM) crops are expected to yield an “ever green revolution!” The energy crisis has to be met by import of nuclear reactors. It is safe and really green!

Glittering generalities

This is a technique of associating a product or an idea with some universally held virtue and emotions. Words like patriotism, democracy, honesty, liberty, justice, morality, freedom, spirituality, national pride, truth, scientific, logical, love, human values, etc, have positive connotations that are not only effective in concealing the ulterior motive of the perpetrator but also grant a certain degree of legitimacy and appeal to the idea. A significant surge in cigarette sale was recorded when the tobacco companies in the West explicitly tried to portray smoking as a symbol of women’s liberation. A literate person is more likely to believe in scientific astrology and scientific Vastu as opposed to using astrology and Vastu alone. A perceived threat to national security is generally used to quash citizen’s rights and genuine aspirations. A higher sale is expected when a consumer product is advertising with slogans like be Indian buy Indian! The support and justification for Iraq war was built on empty rhetoric of bringing ‘democracy and freedom’ to the Iraqi people!

Name calling and ad hominem attack

Figure 5: Myths, ideological propaganda and social violence

Name calling and ad hominem attack is used as a tactic to arouse hatred and xenophobic feelings with intent to demonize and discredit the opponent. These fallacies deflect the focus from the main argument to personal attacks and baseless allegations. If you criticize someone’s closely held beliefs then you will be called arrogant or atheists! People advocating Indo-Pak peace are labeled as traitors! In a vicious propaganda the Nazi blamed Jews for every malady that the Germans were allegedly suffering from. Senator Joseph McCarthy lead a witch-hunt in the 1950s in which he accused thousands of Americans, including Einstein and Charlie Chaplin, as Communists spies! In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the right wing tabloid ran an insidious campaign against Barack Obama linking him to some secret Muslim brotherhood! Dr. Binayak Sen, a well known human rights activist, was wrongly implicated of charges of sedition and waging a war against the state on flimsy grounds. A strategic alliance is sought by peddling myths such as: “India is surrounded by powerful enemies from all sides. Hence, we must become a superpower by aligning economically and militarily with other superpowers!” All kinds of conspiracy theories are propagated to target and question the patriotism and loyalty of certain religious groups!

Overreliance on authority

People have a tendency to place too much confidence in authorities. What we don’t realize is that authorities too can be fallible. Trusting authorities when the matter lies outside their field of expertise is even more problematic. For example, there is a widely held belief that during the full moon there is high rate of crime, violence, suicides, and mental illness. Apparently, the popularity of the myth can be attributed to many mental health care experts and medical professionals who strongly believe in the phenomenon. Studies conducted so far, however, have failed to establish a credible link between the full moon and human behavior (e.g. see ref. 7).

Uncertainly and fear of the unknown

The human desire for certainty and simple explanation of events interferes with our ability for sound reasoning and critical analysis. The anxiety of unforeseeable events such as unfortunate accidents, death of near and dear ones, fear of financial loss in business, relationship breakup and visitation of a dreadful disease etc drives people to seek help from fortune tellers, astrologers, faith healers, psychics and new age gurus. Fake investors and insurance industry is known to exploit deep-seated fears and uncertainties to expand their business. Mystics, swamis and mullahs make use of irrational fears to spank more religiosity and obedience towards the leader.

The preceding description of myths, superstitions and ideological propaganda is neither rigorous nor complete. For a comprehensive and detailed study, the interested reader should consult a vast amount of published literature and excellent books written on the subject.

Conclusions

The underlying cause of erroneous beliefs and propaganda machinery which reinforce and exploit human fallibility for communal, political and financial purposes cannot be completely eradicated. It has to be compensated by cultivating certain habits of the mind that promote critical thinking and sound reasoning. An acquaintance and understanding of various kinds of myths, superstitions and propaganda tactics can reduce the likelihood of deception and entrapment. The habit of raising doubts and asking questions can prevent the formation of dubious beliefs. The authenticity of claims should be checked from credible and independent resources. One cannot expect to get a fair coverage of an event or a breaking story, if for example, the reporters are given patronage by interested lobbying groups (WEF: Red Spider, Black Spider Redux, The Hindu, November 24, 2011).

Another important thing to realize is that worldly events are not completely deterministic. Everyday life experience presents us only with limited and biased samples of information. In the real world, we have to deal with incomplete and unrepresentative datum. Developing an awareness and appreciation of the provisional nature of things can reduce the discomfort of uncertainties. Collecting and analyzing data from different case studies can be a valuable exercise in developing a rational approach and methodology to understand the role of chances and probabilities in real life experiences. Most importantly, greater familiarity and involvement with scientific concepts, methodologies and measurement processes can help in weeding out dubious and questionable propositions. Errors and uncertainties in data can teach us the importance of statistical reasoning to handle claims and counter claims based on numbers and prophecies. A valuable exposure to conduct control experiments is necessary to clearly recognize the significance of variables that can alter the outcome of an experiment in many possible ways.

Modern science and democracy have common origins. Making realistic and informed choices is the essence of democratic principles. Just as it is imperative to combat the menace of various forms of superstitions, pseudoscience and irrational practices in the society, it is equally important to recognize and resist the sophistic ploys and sly practice used by the entertainment industry, marketers and mass media that reduce people to helpless and passive consumers. The struggle for scientific temper and rationality has to overcome many such obstacles. In doing so, let me recall the inspiring words of George Orwell, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.“

References

1. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, by Michael Shermer, Holt Paperbacks publication (2001)
2. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, Ballantine Books (1997).
3. Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson,  W. H. Freeman (2001)
4. 4.      Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, retrieved from www.idph.net.
5. How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas D. Gilovich, Free Press (1993).
6. Propaganda And Psychological Warfare by Terence H. Qualter, Literary Licensing (2011).
7. M. Owens and I. W. McGowan, Madness and the Moon: The Lunar Cycle and Psychopathology, German Journal of Psychiatry. Vol 9(1), 2006, pp. 123-127.
8. P. Jhingan and B. Lusignan, retrieved, Propaganda and the Information Revolution: The Effect of Communications Technology on War Rhetoric in India and Pakistan. retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/
9. http://www.skepdic.com/wishfulthinking.html

Related posts:

1. Where We Get Superstitions From
2. Yukti 2011, a Workshop to Promote Scientific Temper
3. In Defense Of Scientific Temper
4. Narendra Nayak and FIRA on Karnataka CM Yeddyurappa’s Black Magic Superstitions
5. A Scientific View of the God Delusion and it’s Implications
6. Naturalism: Scientific, Philosophical and Socio-Political.

When it comes to the usage of word “bitch”, many people agree that it is derogatory when used against a woman – damning and vilifying her person; it’s even wrong to use against a man by trying to portray him as a woman, or a subordinate. Traditionally, “bitch” is also used to refer to a female dog. But usage of “bitch” in its original context – to refer to a female dog – is widely acceptable. I shall primarily present my arguments against the usage of word “bitch” under any context and circumstance. I shall try to draw analogy from hypothetical scenarios and from usage of other similar offensive words like “fag”.

Merriam Webster gives us the following meaning of the word “bitch”:

1: the female of the dog or some other carnivorous mammals

2a: a lewd or immoral woman b: a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse

3: something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant

Note that the second and third meaning are already explained in the summary section of this post; and most people agree that it is a derogatory and offensive word to use against a woman and even against a man. There is not shred of doubt that it should be abhorred under all circumstances. However, when we consider the first meaning conveyed by the word, the unanimity seems blurry and unclear. In simple terms, most people find it acceptable (or rather, not offensive nor objectionable) to use when referring to a female dog. Are they right? Perhaps they are. After all a female dog can’t take offense and won’t know in any case what does the word mean? Is it oversensitive when somebody takes offense?

However, I shall argue why it can be wrong to use “bitch” even in such cases, through hypothetical scenarios and thought experiments. Consider the following scenario:

Scenario – 1

You are jogging in a lawn and you encounter one of your female friends, jogging with her pet dog. Incidentally, the pet dog she carried her with is a female dog. You greet your friend, “Hello, good morning”. And, after exchange of greetings, you also ask her about her pet dog, “How is that bitch doing?” Your friend gives you a puzzled expression hearing the word “bitch”.

From the above scenario, though hypothetical, but not highly unlikely, we get to learn that usage of word “bitch” even while referring to a female dog can distract one’s attention, and disturb the audience present, especially if there are women present among them. The word is often used in a derogatory and offensive manner, and has a history of negative connotations and derogatory baggage, which can affect the sensibilities of your audience even if you don’t mean it. It reminds them of the discrimination and oppression they are still subjected to. It can be demeaning, alienating and infuriating to a woman. The point I want to stress is, words have different meanings and contexts, and even when one uses a word which has a history of bigotry without such intention or context, it can disturb the target audience.

I will further explain the disturbing nature of such words using another example using the word “fag”.

Now, the word “fag” too has different meaning. “Fag” can mean:

1:  Cigarette

2:  A derogatory and offensive slang to denigrate homosexuals. Fags were often identified with a bundle of stick used to burn heretics and sexually “deviant” persons in medieval Europe.

Now, considering the following scenario illustrating the usage of word “fag”:

Scenario – 2

You are having a good time in a coffee shop with your friends. One of them is gay and you are aware of that. You feel the urge to smoke and you express it to your friends: ‘Guys, Let’s smoke some fags! ‘   After hearing this, your gay friend gives you a concerned and puzzled expression as if to express his displeasure.

In these above scenarios , the words “bitch” and “fag” were used in an innocuous manner with no derogatory intent. Yet, they had the unintended effect of disturbing the target audience present. The negative history and associated oppression affects and reminds people of the continued discrimination they still face. This shows that sometimes, not only intention, even mere usage of those heavily loaded words can be misleading and offending. The point that I want to stress is, why use words which have fallen into misuse and can be which misleading and offending even when used in seemingly innocuous manner as illustrated above? Surely we can use alternative words that are both civilized and acceptable?  The alternatives to these words are more popular and readily accessible than these specific words. Please think about it.

Some people might object– “It’s difficult to keep track of so many words that have fallen into misuse and it won’t be practical to keep eliminating them”. However, as facts from history suggest, many such derogatory and offensive words with racist, sexist and ablist connotations have become obsolete. As society changes with time, its values and language evolve alongside. It’s a slow gradual change. I don’t aim to ban words nor encourage maintaining a list of such words and keep referring to them when required. Rather, I ask for introspection and self-censorship whenever required. There are people, less privileged than you, for whom words like “bitch” and “fag” are alienating and infuriating. As Melissa McEwan of Shakesville writes in her post “On ‘Bitch’ and Other Misogynist Language”,

“What I am is more sensitive to how misogynist language affects women, because I am one. People of color are more sensitive to racist language (particularly racist dog whistles, for example) than I am; that doesn’t mean they’re too sensitive. When a reader pointed out to me that my use of the word “lame” to mean “stupid” could be offensive to disabled Shakers, it wasn’t that she was too sensitive; it was that I was not sensitive enough. It means that (duh) I still have… to learn in this world. ”

Moreover, the onus is not on the oppressed to not get offended; the onus is on the privileged to not engage in said offense. So, justifying usage of derogatory words by telling someone to get over it, is an unacceptable excuse. When an opportunity is available to prevent such situations from occurring in the first place, it is imprudent and unethical to use such words. Language plays a crucial part in perpetuating prejudice. So, it is essential for  freethinking humanists to use language that can further along their humanistic goals. There are many alternatives to the words in question which are more commonly used: “dog”, “female dog” and “dam” when referring to the female of the species “dog”. As for ‘fag’, there is “cigarette”, “ciggy”, “smoke” etc.  The alternatives are so common that one doesn’t even have to refer to a dictionary to know about them. Using alternative words is both practical and possible, and it doesn’t affect the quality of discourse either. This becomes even more important in social gatherings, both online and real-life - a Facebook group, a workplace, a dinner party, a classroom, a conference – where people in the group do not have the benefit of knowing you well – i.e. they cannot be sure “where you’re coming from” or “what you really meant”. Another thing to note is that using such words in casual language trivializes their context, and creates an environment where people who really do mean them as slurs can do so without fear of criticism.

An objection that is often raised whenever self-censoring of derogatory words are being discussed is “reclaiming” of words is more effective than banning or discouraging usage of words. The reasoning given is such a reclaim is empowerment. Examples of  reclaimed words like queer and gay are often cited to support their argument. There is no doubt that people have successfully reclaimed those words to a greater success. However, historically it is also known that reclaiming of words is very difficult , if not impossible. Many ethnic, racial, sexist and homophobic slurs which possibly originated in a totally inoffensive context have never been reclaimed. They are almost always replaced with more acceptable words. However, a few important points need to be remembered concerning reclaiming of words:

1. Reclaiming is the prerogative of oppressed and marginalized groups, not people of privileged groups.
2. Reclaiming requires acceptance with an overwhelming majority among the marginalized group. A word can’t be called successfully reclaimed if there is no overwhelming majority on its usage. e.g. feminists have tried to reclaim the word “bitch” with “Bitch Magazine“, “Godless Bitches” and the like, but still there is disagreement amongst feminists whether the word can/should be reclaimed. Here is a blog post  that explores why such a reclaim may not work.
3. Words reclaimed should only be used for purposes and contexts in which they have positive and assertive power.
4. A word reclaimed is to be used by the marginalized groups who have reclaimed it. A woman using the word “bitch”, as an compliment, after reclaiming, is not same as a man using it. An LGBTQ person using the word “queer” is not same as a heterosexual man with straight privilege using it.

Some people object that a language check doesn’t address the root cause of such behavior,  i.e. it can’t help reduce homophobia, misogyny, racism and so on. This cannot be further from the truth. Language is the medium of propagation for ideas – both good and bad. Language has played a crucial part in our history and continues to do so. It is both empowering and enriching. However, with such a powerful tool, there often come dangers too. It is the medium through which malicious ideas and prejudices also get propagated. So, it is absolutely essential that language is examined with scrutiny. I understand that this would not solve the world’s problems but it would be a better place to live in. We might even strike at the root of the problems sometimes – e.g. if people feel compelled to hide their homophobia via such language checks, then they are also being denied the opportunity to spread such beliefs.

Freethinking and secular humanism come with certain responsibilities guided by sensitivity and ethical reasoning. We must realize why it is imperative to civilize our vocabulary with self-scrutiny, and adopt a self-questioning, self-correcting attitude. By discouraging the usage of marginalising words, we are not only promoting our cherished humanist values, we are also helping in making the usage of such words obsolete. This post is not to encourage censorship and micro-monitoring in a free and democratic forum. There is a difference between censorship, and civilized, sensitized language, and I hope I have adequately explained that in this article.

(Thanks to Gayathri Iyer, Lalit Mohan Chawla and Sunil D’Monte for their valuable inputs.)

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