Friday, May 27, 2011

We live in a State of Nature.


Probably the state of nature that Locke, along with other contractarian thinkers, had conceived is not a matter of pure theory and has practical relevance. According to Locke, in a state of nature, man is brutish, isolated and only exists. The purpose of life is only to survive unlike the concept of life in Right to life (Article 21, Indian Constitution). So basically, every man cares about only himself and that too only to the extent of survival and there no concept as peaceful co-existence. This is how Locke describes the state of nature, the default mode from which humans proceed towards civilization by entering into a social contract, surrendering certain freedoms to the entity called state in return of certain securities such as from violence, etc. in the form of a police.

Anyway, coming back to the state of nature, I had the above realization coming from Nagpur to Raipur in a train, in a compartment with 5 adults and 3 kids in the age group of 4-5 years. So this is the cast for this scene – 1 jolly good south-indian grandpa (surprisingly), 1 typical south-indian grandma, 1 gult couple [gult mom and gult dad], 1 gult kid, 1 huge and scary Punjabi mom, 2 punjabi kids [older kid, younger kid].
I enter this overcrowded compartment with the only birth, that too the middle one, and see that the gult couple and the Punjabi mom and grandpa are not there. The three kids and the grandmom are there. The younger kid is hyper active, hyper angry and threatens everyone that his mom will come and beat him/her up. He is blocking the door of the compartment and not letting anyone enter or go out. The typical grandmom is helplessly telling that kid to not do so, but the kid ‘ain’t gonna stop’ because he is pnjabbee. This gult kid who was playing with the older kid goes to the younger kid and tells him to not do so. So this younger kid, who is almost the same age as the gult kid, first beats the hell out of him and then twists and chokes his throat with his forearm till the gult kid starts flowing rivers down his eyes. Meanwhile, typical southie grandmom, blabbers something in (I’m assuming) telugu, and again with the helpless expression on her face tells the younger kid to stop. Now enters a police guy who sits in the lower birth next to us and is made this ultimate threat for the kids by the grandmom. ‘If you do this, police uncle will take you away’ and the police guy calmly tells the younger kid that he’ll take him in a sack if he doesn’t behave well, to which the younger kid replies that his mom will beat the hell out of him. Meanwhile, the older kid seems embarrassed by the younger kid and starts beating him up with an empty plastic bottle, while exclaiming that this is the Punjabi way to correct him.
And at this juncture, the Punjabi mom enters, a huge giant truck-like figure with a juggernaut-like attitude and demeanor in the overcrowded entry door. That was when I realized how real the younger kid’s threats were. She came with ice-creams which she shoved down her kids’ throats to shut them up. The gult kid starts crying even more vigorously once she comes in. After the madrasi grandmom complained to her about her notorious kid, she slapped her younger kid, then shoved more ice-cream down his throat to stop him from crying and gave an ice cream to the gult kid with a smile. Later the grandpa came and the gult kid complained to him about the antiques of the younger kid to which the grandpa replies that the gult kid himself would have been at some wrong to have been strangulated by the younger Punjabi kid. Then came the gult couple with idlis and vada paos and everyone started eating. The gult kid seemed mannered enough to offer his food to everyone around, for which he was praised by everyone as a ‘good boy’, but the younger pnjabbee kid was still threatening him and this gult kid with the safety of so many matured adults around kept teasing the younger kid, knowing that the younger kid cannot beat him up there.

As entertaining as this whole account of events might have been, it is a brilliant depiction of what I started this post with – the state of nature. If you look at the kids, they are a pure and true of certain human instincts which get eclipsed in civilization, or the social contract. The kids don’t know about any social contract in terms of state, but they know about the social contract in terms of a safety/security of parents being around. Consider this situation, the kids are what they were in the beginning – without any parent around and with the presence of only the old helpless grandma. The so-called ‘good boy’ gult kid was getting rodded by the younger Punjabi kid. He was helpless, crying, and almost being choked to death. He was depending on his parents; he couldn’t do anything without them. This Punjabi kid, on the other hand, did have a safety net in terms of his road-roller mom, but was still taking charge himself, beating the daylights out of the gult kid.
On a larger picture, the gult kid was definitely what everyone should be and the Punjabi kid definitely what nobody should be. The social contract where one gives up his choice and freedom to do whatever one wants in order to respect the right of others to not be beaten up and be protected from violence was imbibed in him by his parents. The pnjabbee kid did not give a rat’s ass about the gult kid. And this is exactly where the problem of being good arises. The ‘good behavior’ in terms of mutual respect and peace, in terms of unselfish and caring behavior, quite like the utopia contemplated by communists, is truly possible and advisable when it is consensual. The moment a person deviates from this, he gets the better out of others. If you look at this definition of ‘good nature’ in the context of state of nature and not in the context of a social contract, you will be amazed to know how the definition of a desirable/advisable behavior completely reverses. To think about oneself is what the norm becomes. For instance, there is one free birth, and there are three people without confirmed tickets who want it, there are four possibilities – 1) anyone gets the birth and excludes the other two; 2) any two decide that it is better that two share a birth instead of three and therefore, exercise their influence to get the birth and exclude the other; 3) all three share that one birth and; 4) no one gets the birth. If all three have a ‘good nature’, then they will peacefully share the birth. If one of them wants the entire birth and the other two are ‘good and generous’ persons, then the one who wants the entire birth gets it. If all three want the birth with the exclusion of other two, then there is a head on collision, yes, a state of nature!

These kids had safety nets to fall back upon. But as people grow up, they become independent. They become the safety nets for others. The obligation increases. It is not only ‘each man for himself’ but it becomes ‘each man for himself and his dependants’. So the chances of a person giving up certain things for others also reduces because even though he may not mind giving up but he may mind his dependants giving up because of his altruist attitude. And as I had already explained how even if there is one person who is not caring much about others, the ones who are caring are the ones who suffer, which is wrong and unjust. Thus, people bring back the state of nature.

However, one balancing line that I have observed very commonly is that people will be ‘good’ by nature i.e. helping, selfless, etc. and if they encounter anyone who is unreasonable to them, then they will deal with that person differently. However, there is a certain irony in this in the form of an inconsistency. Also, it takes a similar logical structure as the ‘harm principle’ expounded by J.S. Mill. The harm principle states that you are at liberty to do whatever you want to as long as it does not harm anyone. Here, the balancing approach that I spoke of would be that you should be as caring, selfless and good to others as possible, as long as it does not harm your self-interest. Effectively, self interest is the first priority. However, the threshold of self interest beyond which being good to others is not desirable is different for different people which makes this approach not only redundant but morally dangerous because a person can be as selfish as possible but still cover it up under this approach, claiming a different threshold.

Hence, even as adults, the gult kid would be unsure as to whether he should be prepared to fight that younger kid back when he went to stop him from blocking others. The gult kid then, despite considering the younger kid to be at a fault, will not go to stop him, trying to avoid any consequences of messing with the angry and powerful younger kid. The powerful thus prevails over the good. Religion tells us that god is in being good and hence the power. But religion also tells us that god helps those who help themselves. Confusing, eh? The very structure of society is such that if one does not care about others, others face a threat from him. Therefore, the only consideration that might keep people to being ‘good’ is that they face a threat too if people are not considerate about others, that a bully can also be at the receiving end. For this, it becomes indispensable for the definition of a ‘good behavior’ to be not restricted to only caring for others but also to include ‘strength’ and the ‘capability to deal with any other behavior in an apt and effective way’. Thus, the ability to discriminate between good and bad gains significance in an advisable behavior.

However, my assumption so far, of a clear ‘good-bad’ dichotomy is not always true and the exercise of a counter force with the justification of it being for good assumes a high risk and potential for further disturbances, but that is a topic to deal with another day and rests heavily with what should be considered ‘good’ with the widest acceptance. The conclusion of this piece, therefore, is that along with being sweet, caring and sharing with others, the gult couple should also have ensured that their kid never cried but dealt with the younger kid himself.

No comments: