Skip to main content

Time for another Enlightenment


Europe was labouring under the weight of a socio-political system when Enlightenment dawned on it in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Most European countries had a hierarchical system with the King or the Queen occupying the top position claiming to have derived his/her power directly from none other than God.  Then there were the priests of the Church who not only brought God’s power to the King or the Queen but also enjoyed a lot of benefits of that power in their own royal ways.  Below the clergy reclined the aristocrats.  All these three together sucked the blood of the common people who did all the work and paid all the taxes.

The philosophers who questioned this system usually belonged to the aristocratic classes.  But they possessed the sensitivity to feel the inhumanity of the system.  Thus Rousseau (1712-1778) lamented the chains that shackled man everywhere.  The encyclopaedists redefined ‘political authority’ and ‘natural liberty’.  The coeditor of the Encyclopaedia, Denis Diderot, is assumed to have said that salvation would arrive when “the last King was strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Locke, Montesquieu and others asserted that the ultimate object of government was to promote the happiness and dignity of the individual. 

These philosophers inspired the French Revolution with its motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.  The Revolution changed Europe radically.  Eventually, after much violence and bloodshed, democracy replaced the monarchies in Europe.  Every individual became important.

Two centuries after the Enlightenment, today we stand in need of another Enlightenment.  Democracy stands in need of some Saviour.  Democracy today has become the handmaiden of the politician and the trader.  The politician of today is the equivalent of the monarch of the old regime in Europe and the trader is the equivalent of the clergy. 

When Adam Smith argued for capitalism, he thought that self-interest would work for the common good.  “By giving free rein to individual greed and the private accumulation of wealth, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market would benefit society in the end, a formula sometimes characterized by the seemingly paradoxical aphorism ‘private vice yields public virtue’” [David S. Mason wrote about Smith, A Concise History of Modern Europe].  Now we are left with private vices without public virtue. 

And there are no philosophers left to inspire another revolution, it seems.  Or, maybe, philosophers have joined the traders.



Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. HemendraJuly 5, 2014 at 10:58 PM

    I think we are on the verge of such process. I remember, once our lecturer told us, there is a kind of relationship between capitalism and human development. Humans only came to know the worth of anything, once they are being deprived of that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 6, 2014 at 10:25 AM

      A century back Emile Zola predicted that the next revolution would be against capitalism. Revolutions take time to mature. Moreover, capitalism per se may not be the culprit; the way it is being practised is the problem. So a revolution may not be needed; some reforms will do, I believe.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousJuly 7, 2014 at 2:23 AM

    Great read. Indeed we need people to rise and stand against politicians, bureaucracy, etc whenever there is anything wrong. Revolution or no revolution,the only difference that could come now is when people make their voices heard and not fear anything.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 7, 2014 at 9:43 PM

      There's one section of the Indian population which has "nothing but chains to lose" (to use a Marxian phrase). It is only they who will bother to raise the voice against the socio-political evils. And unfortunately they lack the power and resources for doing it.

      Delete
  3. Donna BurmanJuly 7, 2014 at 11:09 AM

    Thus post reminds me of a documentary I watched. Inside Job. Though got more to do with the economic crisis facing the 21st century, yet similar sentiments were expressed by the director when he tried to portray the ways of the corrupt and the institutions they have corrupted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 7, 2014 at 9:45 PM

      Thanks for the mention of the documentary, Anu. Perhaps, capitalism as it is practised today has become so vile that it will require some Mahatma or Messiah to cleanse it.

      Delete
  4. UnknownJuly 9, 2014 at 10:19 AM

    I'm not sure if it's my pessimism or awareness toward reality, savior to our private greed will take a long time to come, if he/she will.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 9, 2014 at 7:39 PM

      No Saviour will come from the heavens, Pankti :) I'm not at all hoping for that. The only saviour possible is a human one, a good leader with the right vision...

      Delete
    2. UnknownJuly 10, 2014 at 10:54 AM

      I mean human savior only.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more