Skip to main content

Holon

Rain, boughs and the earth: holon


Holon is what you and I are.  Arthur Koestler coined that word to mean something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.  There are creatures like the ants and the bees which are autonomous individuals but choose to live as integral parts of a community.  They are ideal examples of holon. 

The whole cosmos is a huge organism and we are just parts of it.  But we are autonomous too.  We have carried that autonomy too far with our selfishness.  We have exploited the cosmos as best as we possibly could forgetting that it is a living system which has its own biological processes.  We have dumped too much waste into that system which is killing it slowly.

If only we understand that we are as much part of that system as a wheel is in a complex clockwork, we may realise the need to respect the cosmos.  Magic will be the result of that realisation. 

You are you, but you are also the others.  You are the rock on the mountains and the waves in the oceans.  You are the flower in the garden and the bee in the air.  You are the next person who sits beside you in a lounge.  You are the star in the heavens.  You are the sand grain on the roadside.

Instead we insist on being detached.  I have to be at the centre of the universe.  I need all the luxury possible even at the cost of other creatures.  That’s what we have turned the system into today.  That’s why the system is a hell.

There were much better systems.  The primitive people didn’t see themselves as apart from the cosmos.  They saw themselves as a part of the cosmos. Most tribal people who still follow their ancient systems know the magic of holon.  Unfortunately those who have set themselves as the centres of the cosmos have destroyed the healthy systems of the tribal people.  And lost the magic of holon in the process. 

We can always bring back that magic.  Start with seeing yourself as the stone in your yard, the flower in your garden, the man walking on the street.
PS. 8th post in the #BlogchatterA2Z series

Comments

  1. One of the best and most truthful blogs I have read in my life...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. I'm very glad to see a comment from you after a long time.

      Delete
  2. What a wonderful post! Truly a gem. It seems that Holon is the only word that could replace Tao.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, maybe the concept of holon has much in common with Tao.

      Delete
  3. It seems the concept is followed in the workplace hierarchy as well. How can exploitation be accommodated in the realm of coordination if we are to be a part of a team? How can I act on the philosophy of Holon here?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are two things when it comes to a teamwork. One, each member has to understand that she is an individual as well as part of the team. Two, when any member forgets one the system is corrupted. Moral: there's no alternative to understanding.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...