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July 10, 2003

Random Thoughts

Here is a copy of the mail which I had sent to some of my friends some days ago:

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A naive question here from the layman level.

I have observed that many of the radical philosophical and other developments took place in history when a country was ruling other countries - i.e. they had conquered other territories, became rich, and thus their people had more time to think.

For example, the startings of the Western Philosophy took place in Greece at the time of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle around 400BC, and that was when Greece was actually agressive and had taken over many territories surrounding it. So they were rich and had time to think.

The renaissance, industrial revolution and development of today's science took place in Europe when European countries had conquered other countries throughout the world.

Hendrik says one of the peak of Islamic thought was during when they ruled Spain.

Now that I think of it, the Indian philosophical developments took place during 1500bc-500bc, and I think it might be related to one king defeating other kings and occupying other kingdoms and thus becoming rich (as compared to the defeated one). But of course this is a wild guess, and most probably false.

Still I have these questions:

Major development in thought requires concentration of money and, in general, prosperity. Is this true or not?

Secondly, pre Second World War, the concentration of money was mainly determined by the conquering/occupation of other territories. Is this true or not?

Then, "assuming" that these developments of thought were "good" for society, can we extend this to say that this attacking, conquering and occupation of other's territories was good too?

In other words, if you were asked to make a moral choice between these two acts - conquering other territories by killing people which would result in increasing the prosperity of your country and making a lot of developments in thought, science, technology OR live and let live - which one which you would choose?

Then this leads me to think in this way:

"Natural Selection" of individuals takes place when nature selects the most fit for surviving the rigors of nature, "human-enacted selection" takes place when humans themselves fight among themselves to choose the fittest in terms of fighting ability with other humans, and I propose one more "society-driven selection", which takes place when the "society" selects the people who are more capable of serving the society to meet its demands of the moment (serving here providing any kind of service, even for exchange, for example, rich people who have served the society more by selling products, services that are required by the people, have a better chance of surviving by the ability to afford better living conditions and healthcare, people who can make music which
the society likes to listen, get more rich and hence survives better; by including this with the other two selections, I am also proposing that this kind of selection is quite natural and obvious)

It is important to understand that these three selections (there might be more) do not necessarily correlate in all cases, they diverge in many.

Today humanity (with its "human intelligence") tries to negate all three selections.

Natural selection is being negated by developing and giving medicines to ill people (think about genetically transmitted fatal diseases like cancer and others). Then the charity health organizations, where money is given to cure the poor ill people.

Human-enacted selection is being negated by having laws which specifically prevent violent action against other individuals. We have formed a Government, which "enforces" these laws. The law is a little weak when inter-country violence is considered, but, it is likely that very soon we will have laws banning the same.

Society-driven selection is being negated by having laws like the US Government paying stipends to the unemployed, or paying stipends to the mentally ill who are not able to serve the society, etc (think about genetically transmitted mental illnesses)

The negations are best seen in the Declaration of Independence [1] propounded by Thomas Jefferson (which is ofcourse based on earlier philosophical thought), which influenced the American society, and the rest of the world. (all nations followed suit after USA adopted democracy)

A "moral" decision is often the decision to choose in either the support of one of these selections or of their negation.

Now those territorial conquests were part of human-enacted selection. So they fall into the same dillemma.

No one doubts that those selections give good results in the long run, but their negations also give good results, so there is no definite answer in choosing one of the two.

Perhaps this can serve as one small framework for related thoughts.

All of this is uneducated, so flaws will abound.

What do you think?

-Gaurang.

1. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -- Opening Passage of the Declaration of Independence filed by British Colonies in N. America to form the United
States of America on July 4, 1776; written by Thomas Jefferson.
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