Dharma and Systems Theory

A term that has made a major comeback in our vocabulary these days, is "dharma"-- which is used in various senses, including: righteousness, religion, duty, ethics, divine law, etc. 

None of these interpretations make this term any better or unique, than the notions that we already have. We already have several terms to use as religious or faith based constructs for us to package all our insecurity and desires, and hold on to it with righteous indignation. 

Growing up with a "scientific" upbringing, I had thus ignored this concept altogether and had gone on to pursue advanced scientific studies like systems theory, and focused my inquiry on non-linear dynamics and complex systems. But thanks to one chance encounter, I came to revisit this concept of dharma that we grew up with, from the lens of systems theory. 

And what I have found is that these ideas are beyond profound, and can perhaps explain why Indian thought survived for thousands of years, and how for all the cutting edge challenges we have today, dharma-centric designs may actually offer plausible solutions. 

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One of the first things I ask anyone who wishes to discuss dharma, is whether they believe that dharma as a concept is applicable on Mars or Jupiter today, where there is no life. Most of the time I receive a response that dharma is a social construct, and has got to do with our sense of right and wrong, and therefore it is meaningless to use dharma when speaking about Mars or Jupiter. 

It only tells me that they have not understood the concept. 

Similarly, any sentiment based definition of dharma-- like working with purity of intention, righteousness, respect for elders and society, having "humility", leading a "simple" life, etc. all have missed understanding the meaning of this important term. 

The definition of dharma is ".. that which sustains is dharma". And "that which sustains" is not some other-worldly cosmic principle revealed by magic or divine creatures. That which sustains, depends on the systemic context we are talking about. Given any system of being, a set of factors can collectively "sustain" the system by making the system resilient, and able to absorb shocks and perturbations and remain in a given state of being. 

Resilience is the primary characteristic that drives sustainability. And that which makes a system resilient, is dharma. 

Any complex system of interactions is continuously changing its features because it keeps getting affected by both internal and external factors. But, not all complex systems are chaotic. There are chaotic systems like turbulence that are basically unmanageable. But a lot of complex systems, have one or more states where they are relatively stable, and can absorb external perturbations (to some extent) and revert back to their stable state. For instance, as biological creatures, all of us are complex systems with something or the other happening within and outside of us all the time. Yet, despite this, our "life" remains stable. Even biologically, there are a set of factors that keep our vitals (body temperature, blood pressure, etc.) stable even when we are perturbed by factors like external demands, internal illness, etc. These set of factors that sustain us (not just biologically, but our entire sense of self), is our dharma. 

Similarly, there are a set of factors that keep the characteristics of Mars and Jupiter stable, without them getting destroyed by perturbations like asteroid strikes or solar flares. So, the idea of dharma applies there as well. 

Dharma is not a social construct-- it is a physical construct. We don't have to believe in dharma or push dharma as an ideology (some form of "dharma-ism" for example). It will hold regardless. Just like gravity affects us whether we believe in it or not. 

Hence to act with dharma, what we need is not (just) purity of intention or righteousness of action, or some social construct. What we need is a clear understanding of the factors affecting our system under consideration, and what will make the system resilient. Hence, dharma changes from one systemic context to another. It does not mean, dharma is a system of "relative ethics" (I've seen such definitions as well!)-- it is just that what makes a system resilient, changes depending on what is the system are we talking about. 

Upholding dharma is not just about intention or virtue or morality-- it is about strategy. 

If we are living next to the sea or a large river, upholding dharma entails strategising for protection against possible floods and hurricanes-- something which may not be applicable in some other area. Similarly, for a town in the mountains, upholding dharma involves creating relevant strategies to handle occasional land slides, mountain sickness, or other such risks. 

We cannot uphold dharma without an understanding of the system under consideration. If some idea has worked somewhere, and we just implement the same idea in some other system acting with the best of intentions and with a pure heart-- it does not mean that the outcomes will be the same. The outcomes depend on what sustains the system under consideration. We see this happening often. Someone imposes some idea on us with the best of intentions. And when the outcomes are disastrous, they justify their actions saying at least their intentions were good. 

Upholding dharma does not just require a pure heart-- it also requires a strong intellect. 

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Dharma is not the same as righteousness or ethics. Both righteousness and ethics need to be derived from dharma. Dharma is hence, the physical basis for several social constructs as well-- it is the "is" from which, we can derive the "ought". 

When we equate dharma with righteousness, and treat dharma as a standalone virtue in and of itself, we can often get into sticky situations. Because, human lives are not just about dharma-- although dharma is the basis on which human life functions. 

For instance, I remember in our childhood just about every petty trader with his small shop, used to shortchange their customers some way or the other. And they used to call it "Vrutti dharma" (the dharma of their profession). When we interpret dharma as duty or righteousness, this basically means that, it is the duty of a trader to shortchange customers, and it is the virtuous thing to do for a trader! And because just about every trader was practising this, consumers had no choice, making this configuration stable! 

What they were actually doing is to protect their trade and maximise profits by cutting corners. And before we bring out nasty stereotypes about "Hindu banias" it helps to realize that such kinds of "Vrutti dharma" is still practiced today at a much bigger scale by major corporations-- misleading ads, dark patterns, behavioural nudging, etc. All of these are done with "integrity" (that is the term used today in corporate-speak) by the designers to protect the profits of the company. 

Not all states of dharma are fair, just, equitable, etc. They are just stable states from where it is hard for the system to come out of. 

For instance, a state of poverty is more sustainable and resilient, than a state of wealth. It is easier to lose wealth, than lose poverty. 

We often heard the saying that there is "dharma in poverty" and "adharma in wealth", and we translated it as: "there is goodness in poverty, and evil in wealth", or that "poor people are somehow righteous, and rich people are crafty and evil," and started celebrating poverty! Well, no. It just means that poverty is more sustainable than wealth-- it does not mean that poverty is desirable over wealth! 

Similarly, dharma is not about achievement of something extraordinary. We may achieve something extraordinary, but it may not sustain. For instance, we achieved the extraordinary feat of putting humans on the moon. And dreamt that within a few decades we would be having weekend trips to the moon. But it did not sustain. We also achieved supersonic passenger flight. And it could not sustain. 

Sustaining something is a very different challenge from achieving a goal or reaching a destination. We are so attuned to think of progress in terms of reaching some target (growth mindset), we often forget that the bigger problem is not to achieve some feat, but to sustain that achievement. 

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In Indian thought, human lives are modeled not just by dharma-- but along four dimensions that are collectively called the Purusharthas-- dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. 

From a systems lens, these can be understood as resilience, capability, autonomy and liberation. 

Resilience is something that sustains us, while capability is something that aids us in achieving something. Capability can be of many kinds including knowledge, wealth, physical strength, political power, social standing, etc. All of these help us achieve something. But the question of sustaining this achievement is a different problem altogether. 

Similarly, kama refers to our autonomous desires. All forms of autonomous, creative pursuits that one performs for a sense of gratification, forms kama. And moksha from a systemic lens, refers to being non-constrained or liberated from obligations and debt. 

We see that these four dimensions hold whether we are talking about an individual, a family, a country, or the entire world. We can also see that these dimensions are not a matter of ideology or some -ism. There is no such thing called Purushartha-ism. We don't have to believe in Purushartha-- it would still hold. As humans we strive for sustainability, capability, creative autonomy and liberation, whether we believe in it or not. 

We can also see that every ideology puts one of the Purusharthas in the center, and makes the other as subservient to it. For instance, capitalism and fascism put artha or some form of capability (monetary or power) at the center, and considers all the others as supporting elements. Socialism believes that equality is dharma and puts that at the center, and insists everything else serve this primary objective. Similarly, liberalism puts individual autonomy (kama) at the center, and insists that everything else serve this primary objective. 

But the science of sustainable systems is not that simple, and cannot be reduced to a linear configuration with some idea at the center and everything else revolving around it. As mentioned in the Chanakya Neeti,  "the root of a happy life is dharma, the root of dharma is artha, the root of artha is enterprise (autonomous action or kama)". But kama pursued as an end in itself, leads to adharma. 

We cannot build resilience without building capability. We cannot build capability, without empowering individual autonomy. But then, at the same time, building our entire lives around individual autonomy, may undermine our resilience or capability.  

That is why we see that too much focus on capitalism may make essential services like basic healthcare unaffordable, and also undermine individual autonomy. I found a recent saying about life in America:  "They gamified survival, and called it freedom!" Similarly, too much focus on individual autonomy may make us incapable of organising ourselves for building capability or collective resilience. 

Once we really understand these terms from a systemic lens, we can actually start thinking differently and develop a science of human lives, rather than just treat it as machines that are driven by ideology. 

Can the "ought" be derived from the "is"?

Recently, I had the privilege to speak one on one, with Swami Sarvapriyananda on the topic of AI Ethics, and also present our work in this area. We presented two of our approaches: one is called "Computational Transcendence" that is aimed at making AI agents act more responsibly, and the second called "Theory of Being" that we argue would be the next evolutionary step in AI-- from "agents" to "beings". We shall not go into the details of our work in this post, and instead, focus on the philosophical talking points that I took back from our discussion. 

Firstly, my thanks to Oxford Dharma Centre and its dynamic founder and volunteers who made this happen, and also for the rest of the members of our initiatives on exploring dharmic foundations for a post AI future (not mentioning specific names here, in case there are any privacy considerations).

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The theme of our discussion can be described by the question: "Can the `ought' be derived from the `is'?". 

Scientific inquiry has predominantly focused on understanding "what is" rather than resolving "what ought to be". The "is-ness" of physical reality is presumed to be impersonal and indifferent to what ought to be the case. And all questions involving AI acting ethically and responsibly seems to be squarely rooted in the realm of "ought". 

The question of ethics is sought to be explained and resolved on the basis of different hermeneutic schools, each of which, identify some fundamental attribute that ought to be pivot for our ethical actions. For instance, utilitarianism is the ethical view that an action is right if it produces the greatest overall happiness or least suffering for the most people, while consequentialism is the broader idea that the moral value of an action depends mainly on its results rather than on the act itself. Deontology takes a different approach, arguing that actions are right or wrong according to expected behaviour in a role-- involving requisite duties, rules, or principles, regardless of the consequences. Virtue ethics in contrast, focuses not on rules or outcomes but on the "character" of the agent-- asking what a good or virtuous person would do. Similarly, Reciprocity is the principle of mutual fairness and exchange, often expressed as treating others as you would like to be treated. Other important ethical views include ethics of care, which emphasises empathy, relationships, and responsibility; divine commandments, which grounds morality in God’s commands; and so on. 

In all of the above, the idea of ethics is grounded in some form of "ought", which makes all schools of ethics as some form of ideology. Indeed, all human social systems are sought to be explained within some ideological framework or the other. 

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But somehow, the worldview in which we were brought up in, we never saw ethics as a matter of ideology-- it was always something deeper and something more fundamental, and rooted in the very fabric of how nature functions. 

Even today, there are several thought leaders who endorse medieval thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, who, in his work Leviathan, describes the "state of nature" (life without government or law) as a "war of all against all." For Hobbes, humans are driven by a constant, relentless desire for power and self-preservation, and are inherently competitive and violent. In this view, morality and ethics are not innate but is a social contract; we agree to act "ethically" only because we fear the chaos of the state of nature and the punishment of a sovereign authority (the state/law) that keeps us in check.

From the worldview that I have been brought up in, this is as alien as it can get. We were taught to regard ethics and morality as something divine-- not in the form of divine commandments that we ought to follow or be liable for punishment-- but as something that represents a refined form of being. A king for example, is evaluated not by his power, but by how well he performs his "Raja dharma", which in our English-medium schools was translated as "duties of a king". Similarly, we learnt that families are run based on "Grihasta dharma" which was then translated as "duties of a householder". 

It is hence not really surprising that the term "dharma" is seen as a confused, overloaded term, and is variously translated as "righteousness", "duty", "divine law", even "religion", and what not-- making our worldview just another form of not so well defined, normative system. 

Before I come back to dharma that forms the grounding for our notion of ethics (and just about everything else), let me also take up one more question: Is ethics a purely objective construct? In other words, can I act ethically in a system where I bear no consequences of my actions? 

For instance, a robot that has been sent to kill a human being (of which, there have already been several documented instances) can justify its actions based on any of the above schools of thought. It can argue that killing that person was necessary for upholding "greater good" (utilitarianism), or by killing the said human, it has performed its expected role properly (deontics), or killing of that person was its way of upholding the virtue of justice, or whatever. 

But there is a different between a robot offering such a justification, and a human who had committed this activity, offering a justification. In the latter case, the human has a stake and is subject to judgment and maybe prosecution. A robot has no such stake. Hence, the "ethical" action of the robot is quite different from that of a human. 

Also, while a robot knows what it is supposed to do, it does not really know why it is doing this activity. For instance, suppose a robot sent to kill a person were to see that the person is already injured and is unable to offer resistance, or if the person is offering to surrender-- it does not change its behaviour, unless it has been explicitly programmed to watch out for these signals and change behaviour accordingly. It does not encounter a "change of heart" suddenly upon seeing the human side of the adversary. Similarly, one cannot use a strategy like "appealing to conscience" of a rampaging robot, to make it stop its destructive activities. 

If we claim that we have resolved "ethics" without the involvement of the subject or their conscience, I'm not sure we have really resolved the question. 

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The emerging post-AI society has reached such a quagmire, where the existential dilemmas are so subtle that people can actually be convinced that a rampaging autonomous robot is acting ethically, and all the damage it has caused in this process, is actually justifiable!

What we are seeing now is the saturation point for machine hermeneutics-- which for the past couple of centuries, has been the dominant interpretive framework worldwide, and which is considered the only framework whose explanations can be considered scientific. In this hermeneutic framework, the universe is seen as an impersonal automaton, grounded in material reality, and driven by the laws of physics, where life somehow emerges out of a large number of random interactions, and in turn gives rise to social constructs like ethics, morality, and consciousness. 

Indian thought (at least most schools of Indian thought) has rejected this idea of material grounding for life and consciousness, since at least 5000 years. In Indian thought, the fundamental substrate of all reality is a triad-- sat-chit-ananda (loosely translated as existence-consciousness-bliss). This is not three separate entities, but one entity that is the ground of all three. The grounding of all physical (material) reality-- the "is" that is investigated by science, as well as the grounding of all humanist concerns including our sense of self, ethics, morality, freedom, etc. and the grounding of all "Axiology"-- that is, our sense of beauty, aesthetics, art, poetry, etc.-- is this same fundamental reality sat-chit-ananda that is the entire universe. 

The dynamics of the existential universe that is grounded in this reality, is itself characterised by different states of being. Each state of being where the system settles down is called its "dharma"-- that represents a sustainable (resilient) state. Each resilient state in turn has different extents of capability (artha) and creative autonomy (kama). (For our purposes, we will not consider the fourth element of Purushartha, that is moksha). 

We can see that while non-living ecosystems (like the surface of Mars) can have different sustainable states, it still represents a lower form of "dharma" as it cannot support life (the chit and ananda realms of reality). A better state of being would be a resilient state where capability for life (including wealth, power, etc.) and creative autonomy are also maximised. This would form the basis for a king to administer his kingdom, or for a householder to run his family.

So yes, our sense of "ought" was indeed derived from the "is". 

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As part of our conversation, Swamiji also narrated an anecdote about Maa Sharada, where she once admonishes a disciple who throws away the broom after sweeping the floor. She asks him to "treat the broom with dignity"! 

While at first, it may appear as someone being overtly sentimental about the "dignity" of inanimate things, this kind of thinking stems from the hermeneutic that treats humanistic constructs like dignity and ethics to be grounded in reality, rather than ideology. While today's India itself has lost much of this kind of approach to life, it can still be seen in other Asian societies. In Japanese culture for example, many practices reflect a deep respect for inanimate objects and physical spaces, treating them as worthy of dignity, care, and even a kind of spiritual presence. This can be seen in traditions such as Shinto, which honours the sacredness of nature and the idea that spirits, or kami, may dwell in places, objects, and natural features. Everyday customs like removing shoes before entering a home, carefully maintaining gardens, wrapping tools with respect, and cleaning public spaces all express the belief that environment shapes behaviour and that order is not merely imposed from outside but cultivated through attention and reverence. This attitude gives objects and spaces a natural sense of civility, as though harmony is embedded in the world itself and should be preserved through disciplined, thoughtful conduct.

The Web and Dharma

Almost everyday as I drive to work, I witness this episode. In one of the traffic signals on the way to work, there would inevitably be this one guy, dressed as Hanuman, and begging for alms from the vehicles that have stopped at the signal. 

I have witnessed this for the past several years, and it is quite clear that the aim of his activity is to get some money for himself or the racket that he is part of (unless of course, he is some kind of an undercover agent pretending to be a beggar). 

But why is he dressed like Hanuman? Why is he not begging as himself? 

Actually, such a practice (of asking for alms being dressed as a deity) has a long history. In earlier times, people used to sometimes undertake long, arduous journeys to pilgrimage centres that would have taken several months or years to complete. Such arduous journeys would be made once in a lifetime, and some of them of course, would never return. And not everyone had the means to fund such a long journey. In order to raise funds for their journey, they often went on this crowdfunding campaign, dressed as the deity that they are going to visit, and ask for support from others, on whose behalf they would visit the deity as well. 

Today of course, the guy at the traffic signal is most likely just begging for alms. If he had plans to visit some pilgrimage centre, he would have done so long ago-- given that he has been at this activity for several years now, and we have good transportation options, and affordable package tours to most pilgrimage centres. 

Crowdfunding, is not a new concept at all in our society. And it is not just crowdfunding, there were several more "open-source" initiatives that were an integral part of Indian culture. 

Another notable feature of life not too long ago, is the concept of dharmachathra. These were community-owned institutions that would give free shelter and boarding to travellers and wayfarers who often set upon long journeys by foot. These institutions relied upon donations and support from the village or town where it was situated, and it was often expected for the travellers who used the facility to help out with the upkeep of the place. Some of them who had money with them, also made donations. 

Similarly, university towns had this concept called Vaaradanna, where, students who were studying in the town would be able to visit one household once a week (vaara means week), for their meals. For the household, hosting a few more students once a week would not be too much of a burden, and for the students, they got to get to know several families in the town and dine with them. 

Yet another notion is that of community-owned farms and enterprises, which are called cooperatives these days, where groups of interested people sharing a common concern (like say, promoting increased use of their farm produce, in the population) would work as an organisation, but without strict organisational hierarchies. 

And it is not just about organisations, even concepts of democracy and republics, which were called janapada (literally "foothold of the people") have existed in India much before similar concepts took roots in ancient Greece. 

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These and several other structures and practices were designed based on an underlying concept called dharma-- referring to the state of sustainability of a system of being. The main idea here is that any system of being-- be it our individual bodies, or a town or a country, has some states of being where it is stable and resilient against perturbations. Understanding and upholding these states of being in a society for instance, helps make the society free enough to develop its creative pursuits and agency. For instance, a state of health, financial fitness and social harmony makes our individual lives stable and resilient-- which allows us the latitude to pursue our interests, experiment with new ideas, and exercise our agency. 

The above is quite an obvious statement-- and does not need any holy book or commandment for it to hold. The idea of dharma is not a decree or commandment-- it is a postulate, that can be empirically verified. There is no one authority for dharma (although, some subcultures in India had Dharmadhikaris-- who would arbitrate on issues where conflicting views were expressed by different parties, around what constituted dharma.) 

Just about any social construct in India has been historically designed around considerations for dharma-- that is, for improving systemic resilience. These include, joint families, a largely vegetarian diet, ahimsa or non-violence, and various community-driven practices that we saw above. 

Dharma is not about ideology-- it is about the science of building resilient systems. No priest or king can decree what is dharma-- it has to be argued out with empirical evidence and logical proofs. Dharma is not a political movement nor is it something specific to a culture. It is a physical property of systems-- much like gravity or magnetism. 

The idea of dharma was developed in a time when we had complex societies, but not complex machinery, and the examples used to explain this concept hence, have tended to be from the social realm, rather than from the physical realm. In fact, one of the ways I see if someone has really understood the concept of dharma, is to ask them whether the notion of dharma is relevant on Jupiter or Saturn today-- where there is no life. The concept of stable, resilient states of a system, are relevant everywhere-- not just to human societies.

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But thanks to increasing influence of the "modern" worldview on our education, media, administration and even upbringing, many of these conventional notions and worldview are dying fast, and replaced by very simplistic narratives about our past. Social organisation today, is increasingly moving away from a systematic inquiry into the science of sustainability to be replaced by several ideologies like capitalism, communism, imperialism, socialism, etc. 

The "modern" paradigm has its roots in the industrial revolution characterised by the factory, where impact and scale took greater precedence over local resilience. Factories can sustain only when they can create economies of scale-- that is in turn, achieved by mass production and standardisation. 

But the importance of local resilience started making a comeback in modern society following World War II, where our manufacturing abilities had reached such a peak, that destroying the world several times over in a nuclear holocaust, was a distinct possibility. The Cold War took this possibility to a peak, with major nuclear powers keeping several armed nuclear warheads on a hair-trigger. 

It is in this backdrop, we started exploring resilient infrastructures. The Internet, for example, was designed to be a decentralised network that could be resilient against nuclear attacks. The idea behind the TCP/IP protocol that powers the Internet today, was to build mechanisms where routes between sources and destinations can be dynamically discovered on the fly, if some part of the network were to go down. 

This increasing emphasis on resilience lead to several "open source" and community driven initiatives that resonate very well with the dharmic worldview. 

In the 1980s AT&T gave away all of its source code for the Unix operating system, for free. This helped create an ecosystem that formed the basis for modern-day computing. Similarly, key components of the Internet and the World Wide Web, like TCP/IP, HTML, HTTP, etc. were released to the public, on a royalty-free basis, forever. In addition, open source movements like GNU started by Richard Stallman, heralded what might be called the present information era. Even today, much of the Internet servers are powered by open source software like Linux operating system, Apache web server, etc. 

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Indian history can be characterised as the struggle between community-driven decentralised systems, and approaches focused on power and impact that tended to organise society into strict, stratified structures.

A very similar struggle is underway today on how the Internet and the WWW is evolving. The web has moved far beyond its initial vision of a decentralised, community-driven information infrastructure for the benefit of humanity as a whole. 

Today, there are at least two forces that tend to consolidate power on the web, and increase their impact. The include commercial entities, and political entities. Both of these entities aim to centralise control and knowledge, in order to increase their impact and further their interests. 

Increased impact and profits, often result in collateral damage that promote unsustainable configurations. Increased profits for a media house or for a political entity for instance, may come at the cost of mental-health issues, addiction, and increased social distrust in the population. 

In response to this, ideological battle lines are drawn among different segments of the society, resulting in the Hegelian dialectics of the clash between thesis and anti-thesis. 

But in the midst of all this, what we are losing out on is the science of sustainability. In today's discourse, the choice is between either this or that. We have to for example, choose between exclusive categories of nation or world-- not realising that nations are part of the world, and a healthy world comprises of healthy nations. Similarly in India today, we have to choose between civilisation or constitution-- not realising that our constitution was itself a result of a civilisational movement asserting for freedom and self-rule.  

Today, we are quick to classify people and societies into ideological buckets and organise ourselves against the "other"-- without a thought towards how can we holistically work towards sustainability. Nations, commerce, civilisation, family, gender, military, and anything else that we train our guns on, do have their place in the scheme of things. As are notions that transcend these constructs-- like trans-national structures, trans-commercial structures, trans-civilisational concerns, etc. 

The question is not whether we need the nodes or the edges of a graph-- we need both, in order to make a good network. What we need is to focus on what makes a "good" network-- something that is resilient against perturbations, and promotes capability and agency. 

Engineering as intervention

Engineering today, is dominated by what may be called "creation science." Much of what we study in engineering is in the form of creating something-- be it a machine, software, structure, etc. Most of our effort goes into designing our creation and implement it in a way that makes it effective. 

But every engineering deployment is actually an intervention into an existing live system. Be it creating a building, a bridge, a car, a software, a gadget, or whatever, we are not only creating something, but this creation is intervening into an existing system and affecting the way it functions. 

Of course, by creating something, we wish to affect the way something functions. Like for example, by creating an automobile, we are affecting the way people commute. But for every creation, there is an intended affect, and many forms of unintended or collateral affects. 

In many cases, our created solutions can be so good that it can become a victim of its own success. For instance, suppose a brand new road is constructed to link two parts of a bustling city. This new road passes through relatively less populated areas, and hence, vehicles can zip through these to reach the other end of the city very fast. The very success of this brand new road, will now cause the land adjacent to the road to go up in value, and attracts many new businesses, residential properties and industries. Each business locating themselves there would use this brand new road as their locational advantage. Soon, this area becomes so crowded that any time advantages obtained earlier is lost. 

When we only focus on the design of our creation and its intended affect, and not really understand how systemic intervention works, we get into situations like these. 

If we want to bring about changes in a sustainable fashion, we need to change our perspective of engineering, from creating a solution, to designing interventions. 

The axiom of sustainability: One of the key things to understand about systemic interventions is the axiom of sustainability. Essentially, this states that any bounded system of being, when perturbed, strives to reach a state of "low energy" or stability. In Indian thought, this has been called the principle of dharma, since several thousands of years 

An atom for instance, is organised into "low energy" configurations, where electrons occupy specific orbits around the nucleus. When we excite an electron by giving it some energy, it may move up to a higher-level orbit. But very soon, it would shed its excess energy and come back to its low energy state. Similarly, if we intervene in an atom and knock out an electron, it becomes ionised and unstable. This causes phenomena like static or lightning, where the system that is the atom is trying to reach back to its low energy configuration. 

Similarly, what we call as solids, are actually intricate and tightly knit patterns of atomic interactions. When we try to deform a solid by pulling it out or pushing it in, it strives to come back to its original low energy configuration. This is what we call elasticity. 

Similarly, all biological creatures settle down into optimal states of being, where it has the maximum health, strength and pleasure that it can afford, given its circumstances. This is called homeostasis. When we perturb homeostasis (like for instance, illness or injury), an elaborate biological system kicks in, to bring the being back to homeostasis. 

This is one of the most fundamental axioms that we need to consider, when we're intervening in an existing system. Be it building a new road, adding a new train track, creating a new web service, building a new car, or bringing a new mobile device into the market, we will need to consider how will this intervention perturb the system and where the system is likely to settle down. 

The engineering solution may provide the intended outcomes soon after its deployment. But over time, the system responds to the intervention, and the state it settles down may be very far from what was intended. 

Intervention science-- dealing with understanding how complex systems respond to engineering interventions, is something that is not taught in engineering curriculum today. There is a dire need to develop this science systematically, and introduce it in our engineering curricula. 

Practical dharma

One of the most misunderstood concepts these days is the idea of dharma (and other related terms like karma). Dharma is variously translated as "duty", "righteousness", "ethics", "divine law", and even "religion"-- all of which, are incorrect definitions. 

Dharma is the most fundamental of the four "drivers" or purusharthas of human behaviour: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. The most accurate translation I can give for these terms respectively, are: sustainability, capability, agency, and liberation. 

The term dharma comes from the root dhrt- which means something that sustains or prevails. Dharma refers to the property of a system of being, that remains invariant through the life cycle of the system.  Dharma is what gives us our resilience to prevail across varying, adverse conditions and not be consumed by causal forces. 

Dharma is not just a property of "living" beings-- it is a characteristic of all systems of being. The field of statistical mechanics in physics uses a postulate very centrally in its inquiry, which says that, every bounded system has one or more "stable" states which represent low energy or low stress states in its neighbourhood, into which, it settles down, when left alone. For instance, electrons in an atom settle down into specific orbits. If we excite an electron with some energy, it moves to a higher orbit-- but also becomes unstable. It would quickly discard the excess energy and come back to its stable state of being. 

As complex living beings, these stable states of being are what constitutes our dharma. The principle of dharma holds whether we are talking about human societies, or the formation of crystals, or states of matter, or the climate, or the solar system, etc. 

One of the tests I use to see if someone has understood the concept of dharma, is to ask them whether dharma exists as of now, on Jupiter or Pluto. If their understanding of dharma is only in social terms like duty or religion, they would say that dharma is not applicable on Pluto. 

The most frustrating error of course, is to equate dharma with religion. Recently, I was listening to a talk where the speaker clarified the difference. Religion (or "faith" as understood in the dominant Western narrative today), is something personal and subjective, while dharma is an objective entity. The speaker gave an analogy of toothbrush and toothpaste. While we can share a tube of toothpaste, our toothbrush is personal. Dharma is something that is shared and depends on all of us, while religion or faith, is personal. 

Dharma is not righteousness either. But protecting and upholding dharma helps in righteousness and civility to prevail. Dharma is not our duty as well. But protecting and upholding dharma helps us in performing our duties. Dharma is not ethics either. But protecting and upholding dharma helps empower ethical practices. 

So how do we protect and uphold dharma? To do so, we need to understand the system of being that we are inquiring about and the environment (Vidhi) in which it is operating. As individuals, we are a system of being ourselves; and our family, work, society and even the physical environment around us represents the Vidhi in which we operate. Similarly, an institution could be the system of being whose dharma we are interested in, and its Vidhi represents the economic, cultural, social and physical environment in which it operates. 

We need to then understand what is the set of invariant properties that characterise our system of being. What is it about us that remains constant across time and the various interactions that we perform? Similarly, for institutions, we ask what is it that needs to prevail, that makes the institution what it is. 

Once we understand this, we then need to understand the "game" of interaction between the system and its Vidhi. Our Vidhi places lots of demands on us, for which we need to provide our best response. 

A being operating in its Vidhi (under certain conditions) is guaranteed to have at least one state of equilibrium. This can actually be proven mathematically! The state of equilibrium represents the "mutual best response" function-- meaning, this is the best that the being can do given the demands of its Vidhi, and this is also the best that the Vidhi can demand, given how the being is operating. 

Let us call the state of dharma of the being as 'd' and the state of equilibrium with the Vidhi as 'e'. The difference between 'd' and 'e' is our existential stress-- it is the difference between what sustains us and what is demanded of us. This formulation of existential stress remains the same, regardless of whether we are talking about individuals or institutions or communities or families or countries. 

To uphold our dharma, we can adopt various strategies. We can improve our capabilities (artha) to find a different stable state of being which is closer to 'e'. Or we can change our Vidhi to find a different environment whose equilibrium state 'e' is closer to our state of sustainability 'd'. Or we could change the "game" or the nature of our interaction with our Vidhi so that it forms a game whose equilibrium state 'e' is closer to our 'd'. 

All these are very different from doing our duties, or complying with orders, or upholding righteousness. We can do our duties or uphold righteousness these only after we can uphold our dharma in our Vidhi. 

The Sustainability Paradigm

In today's formal education, creativity is a primary virtue. The initial rote learning, compliance and discipline that students are subject to, are eventually meant to make them creative "self actualising" individuals. 

Creativity takes on various forms. It could be in the form of creating a piece of technology, or creating artistic expressions. 

But regardless of the nature of creativity, in order to be creative, we need to get into a frame of mind, or "paradigm" that promotes creativity. We need to "see the world differently" or imagine possibilities, and so on, in order to become creative. 

Oftentimes, we are not even aware of the paradigm that drives our thinking and it takes a lot of introspection to discover how our thoughts are structured, and what other paradigms could there be. 

Creativity, as a paradigm, has specific characteristics. In order to get into a mindset of creating something that is not there, we need to be fundamentally unhappy or dissatisfied with what we have! Indeed there are schools of thought, that believe that creativity stems from suffering, and in order to be truly creative, we need to suffer! 

Given that creativity is a virtue, and a virtue is something we need to advocate to the world at large, we are in effect-- in our institutions and homes, encouraging everyone to suffer-- so that they may become creative! 

Creativity is also fundamentally minimalist as a paradigm. Creation is goal-oriented, where at each step, we evaluate and optimise our resources and efforts towards the end goal. Anything that is not helpful towards the end goal of creation, are useless, and are discarded. Hence for instance, if our end goal is to create a mango orchard, anything that does not contribute to this end goal, becomes extra baggage and needs to be weeded out. For instance, suppose our mango orchard in the making, has a number of tomato plants. In this paradigm, unless these plants can be shown to be useful to achieve the end goal of producing more mangoes, they are useless, and are weeded out. In this paradigm, suppose we need to use a fertiliser that maximises our mango yield, but which would be harmful to the tomato plants, we would go ahead with it, because mango is our fundamental goal-- not tomatoes. The fact that tomato is a legitimate plant in itself has no bearing in our goal-oriented approach.  

One who has internalised the creativity paradigm tends to become elitist, and view society in terms of "higher" and "lower" classes. Even in the Maslow "hierarchy" creativity or actualisation comes at the "top". In an internalised paradigm of creativity-- creativity itself is the goal, and the objective of our lives is to work towards achieving this goal. Clerical activities that "merely" support creativity are considered lower in the hierarchy than creativity. The character of Sheldon Cooper from the TV series "The Big Bang Theory" where he grants a "high honour" to his friends by getting them to drive him to work, portrays this stereotype well. 

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Traditional Indian culture based on the concept of dharma or "sustainability," has a fundamentally different paradigm. Here, creativity or self-actualisation is not an end in itself. All forms of pursuits-- be they creative or service or clerical activity-- are rooted in a paradigm of sustainability. 

Sustainability as a paradigm is fundamentally different from creativity. Sustainability aims to preserve or sustain what is there, rather than create what is not there. 

Sustainability, by its very definition is not "goal-oriented" approach. It is a "state maintenance" approach. State maintenance has no end goal. We need to maintain a desired state (of life, society, etc.) for as long as possible-- knowing fully well that, nothing can sustain eternally. 

The pursuit of sustainability may need us to become creative, and invent stuff that. is not there. But creativity is not a goal in itself. It is an element of a larger pursuit towards sustainability. Similarly, creativity is not "higher" in some pecking order than other forms of non-creative, clerical activities. Sometimes, clerical bookkeeping may be more critical towards sustainability, than creative outputs. 

Sustainability or preservation is also fundamentally "maximalist" in nature. The very definition of preservation urges the sustainability paradigm to aim to preserve everything-- unless there are specific reasons not to do so. Sometimes, preserving something may adversely affect the sustainability of everything else in its vicinity, in which case, it makes sense to let it go, to maximise sustainability. 

For someone who has internalised the sustainability paradigm, efforts like "save the tiger" makes no sense. Sustainability does not focus on a single entity in an ecosystem. Sustainability aims to "preserve the forest" rather than "save" a specific species. Sustainability also doesn't agree with the concept of "keystone" species-- where one species (typically a predator) is considered to be the keystone, that keeps the entire ecosystem running. The idea of a keystone represents a hierarchical or linear relationship between species, which is not the case. The dharmic mind knows that a forest comprising of all prey (like deers) and no predators (like tigers) can sustain, but a forest comprising of all predators and no prey, cannot sustain. 

The sustainability paradigm requires us to think "holistically". We cannot focus on one entity and its sustenance. We need to promote sustainability of everything. 

In the sustainability mindset, "growth" is not an end in itself either. The dharmic mind knows that nothing can grow forever. Growth saturates and is subject to diminishing value of returns. Like creativity, promoting growth is important-- but not as an end in itself.

The wonder that was India

 Once upon a time, philosophers-- men and women alike-- observed systems of interacting elements, and noted that the system as a whole, can be in different "states of being." They also noted that some states of being are more "stable" and "sustain" against perturbations. It is in these sustainable states, we can nurture life. The entire ecosystem of our planet, they noted, is just a sustainable state of being.

They called this phenomenon of sustainability against perturbations, as "dharma".

Sustainability is not a binary. Some states are more sustainable than others. They also noted that regardless of how sustainable was a state of being, every physical system eventually collapsed. Nothing in this physical world, they noted, is in a state of eternal dharma.

This prompted them to embark on a quest for "eternal sustainability" which is called "Sanatana dharma".

Physical systems are trivially not eternally sustainable. They hence called physical reality as "Maya." Eternal sustainability, if it exists, needs to be in the realm of prajna or consciousness, they noted. Even here, they saw that not every element of data, information and knowledge, represented eternally sustainable assertions. For example, an assertion that "summer is hotter than winters" is mostly true, except when there have been exceptions.

They then noted that, as long as assertions connected with physical reality, they can't be eternally sustainable. But then they saw that no matter how much they tried to go meta, some connection to physical reality remained. But some of them managed to get into a state of consciousness, that was completely unconstrained by physical reality.

They called this, the universal consciousness or Reality or Brahman.

They then went on to create a vibrant civilization that was based on this quest for experiencing the state of eternal sustainability. They saw that, when the core inquiry of the population is on eternal sustainability, we can derive notions of ethics, fairness, harmony, freedom, and other elements of humanities, fairly easily.

This in a nutshell, was the wonder that was India. Not the drivel meted out by Indology experts in high citadels today.

Dharma and Ergodicity

In the last couple of years, I have spent a lot of time trying to interpret the notion of dharma and traditional Indian worldview using systems theory. You can check out older posts with the label "Theory of Being" and also my book on Amazon called "Theory of Being". 

In this post, I put forth some more working ideas towards building a more comprehensive theory of systems using Indian thought. The ideas presented here are work in progress-- meant to provoke thought and get feedback. Ideas presented in this blog are subject to future revisions as I get more clarity. 

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When we study systems we are first taught that a system is an ensemble of interacting parts. The interaction between the parts or the system dynamics, is what characterises a system-- without which, it would just be a collection of different parts, and not a system. 

Systems are everywhere-- in fact, a non-system is much harder to find and/or create, than a system. Even an inanimate piece of matter, like a stone, is a system of tightly interconnected molecules interacting in specific patterns that keep the solid matter intact. 

When we study systems in today's world, we are taught about two kinds of systems called as: linear and non-linear systems. The latter is also sometimes called "complex" systems. 

Linear systems are so called because their dynamics can be represented in the form of linear differential equations. In an intuitive sense, they represent an "open loop" interaction with their environment where inputs from the environment and the outputs to the environment do not confound one another. 

Almost all machines adopt a linear design model. Even with complex machinery like say an airplane, the overall flight dynamics is still linear. What this means is that the input that goes into the airplane (the air in front of the engines) is separate from the output (or the exhaust) that comes from the airplane. Airplanes in their current design would find it very hard to fly, if the exhaust and the turbulence it creates, were to somehow come back to the front of the engine. Indeed, when planes fly too close behind other large airplanes, they are known to even crash from the exhaust turbulence, also called the wake turbulence. 

But most natural systems are non-linear in nature. Human societies, ecosystems, weather, etc. all display rich forms of "closed-loop" interactions where the output of some unit in the system comes back to affect it subsequently. We see that in human societies all the time. Our output or actions have consequences that can come back to haunt us, in the (wrongly) called "law of karma".

Non-linear systems are known to be very hard to model, understand and predict. The term "butterfly effect" comes from the study of non-linear systems, representing what is called "sensitivity to initial conditions"-- which means that a small change in the initial conditions of a non-linear model, can result in vastly different ways in which its dynamics would pan out over time. Colloquially, it is said that, a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, can potentially create a chain of events causing thunderstorms in some other part of the world. 

While non-linear systems are hard to model and understand, not all non-linear systems pose a hopeless case. Ludwig von Boltzmannn, who was one of the pioneers in statistical mechanics-- or the study of large number of interacting entities using statistical techniques, had this hypothesis about complex systems: large systems of interacting particles settle down to a stable state where the time average along a single trajectory equals the ensemble average.

This hypothesis was later found to be false, and not applicable universally. But it was true of a specific class of interacting, non-linear systems that has now come to be called "ergodic" systems and the above hypothesis is now called the Ergodic Hypothesis.

To understand ergodicity, let us take an example. Consider a music troupe-- my favourite is ABBA-- (I know, I am old!) who are famous and have a large fan following. They are known for their superlative performance that draws a huge audience whenever they perform. But each time they sing, their performance would not be an exact replica of previous performances. The same song sung at different times would be a little different from one another. But this difference will not be arbitrary-- most of the performances would hover around an expected set of metrics about music quality, beats, emotions, etc. that have made them famous. It would hardly ever be the case that the first time they sing a given song, it would be sublime and the next time it would be downright jarring. 

Suppose, in order to "quantify" ABBA's performance, we develop a set of metrics like highest musical pitch, number of frenzied fans, number of beats per minute, and so on, and we measure them painstakingly across each of their songs. Now, we can see the ergodic property that in a single long performance, the average of these metrics would likely be the same as the average of these metrics obtained from a large number of independent concerts. In other words, to get a good idea of an ABBA performance, we could either take small samples from several of their performances, or sit long enough in a single performance. In both cases, we would get a pretty good idea of an ABBA performance. 

Sometimes the troupe may try to experiment with their performance and change some fundamental stylistic elements. Most likely, such fundamental changes from their signature performances would not have gone down so well with the audience. In other words, the more the troupe changes, the more they would remain in the same neighbourhood of activities that made them what they were.

The ergodic property of systems points to a number of interesting implications. One, it indicates the presence of an "invariance" or a stable set of characteristics of the system that regulates and keeps each individual instance of the system around this stable region. It is almost as if, the system-- the music troupe in our example-- has its own characteristic sense of "self" that is expressed in its performances. Just like when we express ourselves as individuals, we display both a signature set of invariant properties that characterises us, as well as a randomised but bounded distribution of each individual expressions. If a single musician (my favourite now is M S Subbulakshmi) were to sing a given song (my favourite is Bhaja Govindam and here are two different performances of the same song: Performance 1 and Performance 2), each rendition would be somewhat different from each other-- yet all of them have the signature tune of the singer, whom we can recognise instantly. 

Consider again, our music troupe. Suppose that they hire a manager to promote their music, and the manager starts insisting on various changes to their styles according to what he thinks is the latest fad. Each new idea from the manager pulls the troupe's style in a different direction. But one day, if they grow weary of the manager and fire him, the troupe would then almost immediately revert back to their original characteristics. The "invariance" property again. Or shall we say the "elastic" nature of ergodic systems? That is, subject to minor distortions, the system reverts back to how it was, once the distorting influence is removed. 

Suppose also that the favourite troupe was once just a garage band when they started out. As they become rich and famous, they lifestyles change. They move on to bigger houses, buy cars and travel, and even invest in better, high quality instruments and audio systems. Despite all this, their signature distribution would still remain pretty much the same. The sound and video quality of their music may vastly improve, because of which, their impact may become even higher than before. But yet, the better "capability" they now have due to better instruments and money, only serves as a catalyst-- and not as a replacement or an alternative-- for their signature brand of music. 

If you have read about the Theory of Being, the above characteristics would have sounded very familiar. 

Dharmic thought that developed in India, was primarily based on observing life forms and its variegated characteristics. This is in contrast to the physics and mechanics developed in ancient Greece, that models the world in terms of inanimate matter. 

Dharmic philosophers observed living beings and were able to understand the invariance property of living beings. They could see that, despite the variegated behaviours of an animal-- these behaviours were not completely arbitrary. There was something latent and invariant behind the rich set of behaviours, which they could identify as the self. 

It was also apparent that it is our sense of self that drives us, and this is what we strive to preserve, and this is what sustains us. This characteristic of sustaining our sense of self is what is called dharma. They could also see that not every kind of interaction is conducive to dharma, which leads to the concept of adharma. We know this today as not every kind of non-linear interaction is ergodic, and there are indeed non-ergodic systems. 

Dharmic philosophers could also see that they could extend this concept of self and dharma to systems of being, like human societies, ecosystems, climate, and so on. Indeed, they could also use this method of inquiry to even understand the behaviour of metals and annealing, and in understanding several forms of systems of inanimate objects and their interactions. 

This lead to the development of a complete abstract theory of "being" which characterised Eastern thought for several thousands of years and sustained a vibrant civilisation under this thought umbrella. In Indian society, dharma is seen as an essential property for sustenance of life, since thousands of years. Life indeed is ergodic and to preserve life (and human societies and ecosystems), we need to preserve its ergodicity. 

Yet, if we see current day public rhetoric and self-help "motivational" books, many times they fail to recognise this important characteristic. 

"Travel and discover yourself" they say, and keep urging people to spend their money on "experiences" rather than "things". Travelling all the time helps us discover something alright-- we discover that we have spent most of our money, have no place we can call home, have no sense of belongingness anywhere, and so on. Travelling indeed does help us discover new things about the world and about ourselves-- provided we can do this in a sustainable fashion. If our passion for travel uproots us from our homes and our sense of identity and belongingness to somewhere, we have indeed paid a very high price. 

Indian wisdom on the other hand, always advised us to invest our money on building strong relationships and develop new ideas, rather than the dichotomy between experience and things. The underlying reason was of course, dharma. 

Similarly, "live outside your comfort zone" they say. And I'm tempted by Sheldon's quote in the Big Bang Theory: "It is called comfort zone, for a reason". Our best performance may indeed be outside of our comfort zone. But if our life motto is about living outside our comfort zone, we are most likely neglecting an important part of what sustains us. The fact that we feel comfortable in some settings says something about ourselves. It is one thing to just enjoy the comfort of our comfort zones, and yet another thing altogether to discover what does our comfort zone say about ourselves and how can we use it for self actualisation. 

Indian wisdom does not compel us to either be comfortable or uncomfortable. It instead urges us to meditate and observe ourselves, understanding what drives us, what is it that we seek, and by what do we feel disspirited. Our best performance comes not from being comfortable or otherwise, but from a deep sense of self awareness.

Let me stop at this note for now. There are several more interesting characteristics of ergodicity, and the dharmic way of life. More on them in some future posts.

Astika and Nastika

The terms astika and nastika from Sanskrit are wrongly translated as "theist" and "atheist". This post tries to explain their meaning.

There is no notion of theism in dharmic thought. Sure, Hindus have several deities, but it is not the same as theism. A deity is used as a handle to focus one's thoughts and hermeneutics around what it represents, as a means of spiritual inquiry. This is characteristic of the bhakti marga mode of inquiry.

The terms asti and nasti respectively represents something that is or is not. The video above, explains these terms.

The fundamental debate in dharmic thought is whether there is a reality that is beyond our perception and cognition, or what we can perceive and think of is all there is.

As in a much later era, the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, once said, "What we observe, is not the universe itself, but the universe exposed to our method of inquiry."

A core debate in dharmic thought is as follows. What we can perceive, imagine and conceptualise is called Maya. The true nature of reality is said to offer its glimpses to us only when we can escape the illusion of Maya. There is no single way to achieve this. This spiritual inquiry takes several forms, each of which has a core component -- like jnana (pursuit of knowledge), bhakti (devotion), yoga (harmonization), karma (deeds) etc.

Each marga or pathway of inquiry has a different characteristic. The jnana marga for instance, uses skepticism as its core element of inquiry. It is sometimes called "Neti, Neti" (not this, not this). One who pursues knowledge is eternally skeptical of everything that is presented, and wants to go and explore their foundations -- until one day, they turn their skepticism onto their skeptical mode of inquiry. And get thoroughly confused. And are completely lost. At this point, they are considered to have qualified for spiritual inquiry (passed their comprehensive exam or quals).

Similarly, a seeker using the bhakti marga for spiritual inquiry, holds on to an object of their devotion and idolises it or deifies it. They express themselves without inhibition towards their object of devotion. Their object of devotion would be the centre of their universe and they dedicate themselves totally in it. Until one day, they realise that all the ideal and divine attributes that they have been attributing to their object of inquiry is in fact, within themselves! If they felt that their deity was the epitome of gracefulness and compassion, it is because their mind was able to experience it. If they felt that their deity was the epitome of justice and order, it is because their mind was able to experience it. By attributing things to the deity, they are in fact, discovering themselves. And that is when they have cleared their comprehensive exam and gained candidature.

This beautiful rendition from the Markendaya Purana, estimated to be more than 5000 years old, explains the above -- the purity of thought and action we attribute to our ideal deity, is in fact, within us.

Like the above, there are several pathways, each having its own dominant heuristic to help us escape the hermeneutic framework in which our mind resides. Each such transgression of the underlying hermeneutics leaves the seeker in a potentially different part of reality and they would come back with a glimpse of one small part of the underlying reality that is presented to us as Maya, in our matrix.

Where there are several pathways and heuristics to escape Maya, there is also a "null" hypothesis, which is the nastika hypothesis.

The nastika hypothesis basically says that there is no such thing called reality beyond our perception and cognition. Just because we stumbled upon something unexpected, which made our entire mental framework crumble, does not mean that it was somehow unreal, and whatever we experienced in the resultant state of confusion and hallucination is somehow real.

In fact, whatever we experience in our state of confusion (that gained us our candidature), is still in fact, being experienced within the framework of our faculty for perception and cognition! How can we claim to have transcended our existence, if all that we experience is through our perception and cognition? Sure, we may not be able to understand what we experienced, or we may not be able to explain it, but we did experience it in our mind, using our brain and body -- that is, we experienced it within the framework of existence, or Maya.

The astika mind would argue back by saying that, what the seeker experienced is not just a new experience, but a new insight and a perspective. Which can only be experienced if one were to escape from sensory and cognitive limitations. For instance, did mathematical truths like the primality of a number, exist when dinosaurs roamed on the face of the earth? Sure they did. Except, there was no seeker who could escape from the confines of their mind, and discover them. It was only after several millennia, that the human mind discovered it. It was always there, but the earthly creatures were too trapped in their minds to discover them. Who knows how many more elements of reality we can discover, if only we made an effort to escape from Maya?

The nastika mind would reply by saying that in our quest for truths that lie outside the realm of Maya, we may end up neglecting our very existence and well-being. If for instance, people around me are suffering, I would rather engage with them and find solutions right here and now, within the framework of Maya, rather than neglect all these "worldly matters" and go off on a "spiritual quest" and breaking our own minds. This line of argument, for instance, was what philosophers like Siddharta Gautama (later known as Buddha) gave, in their rejection of the astika philosophers.

Buddha himself went on a spiritual quest, but in a guided fashion. He went to explore the roots of suffering and pain. He didn't reject everything, saying Neti, Neti. And he didn't idolise anything, like a bhakt, pursuing the pathway of devotion. His pursuit had a focus called "What is" (the cause of human suffering), and based on focused struggle or "Srama". This pathway of focused inquiry was later accepted as yet another valid pathway, and is now called Sramana.

The idea of nastika is very important, because it brings in the notion of a null hypothesis for spiritual and philosophical inquiry. It is possible for us to adopt scepticism as a blind belief (religion), just like we can be proud of our humility, and flaunt our modesty at every given opportunity. The nastika frame of reference can give a reality check in such cases.

The above debate is very different from the debate as to whether "God exists" or "There is no God". This is also not the same as the (confused) dilemma between "religion" and "science". 

Stories of Dharma - 1: The heart

Usually (among my Indian readers) while growing up, we would have heard bedtime stories from our parents or grandparents, explaining the concept of dharma. Most of these stories would have involved some form of social dilemma, which is ultimately resolved by a wise person who understands dharma.

Given that we were also taught to think "scientifically" at school, it is hence natural that we would have interpreted dharma as some form of a divine code of ethics, that defines our "religion". And sometimes, when someone would have asked us which scripture spells out the codes of dharma, we would have had no answer.

Sometimes, some of our bedtime stories would have involved celestial bodies like the sun and the moon. Later on, as adults our "scientifically" trained minds would have told us that if ethical concepts like dharma were applied to the sun and the moon, it means that our ancestors had a primitive, anthropomorphic model of the universe.

In reality, the concept of dharma is way more fundamental, and way more profound. It is by no means, a divinely revealed code of ethics. It is a natural phenomenon that can be experimentally verified in a repeatable manner, and is resilient against attempts at falsification.

So, to revive genuine scientific curiosity about this concept, let me start a series of posts featuring bedtime stories related to dharma. Except, these stories are not about social dilemma leading to ethical questions. Instead, these are stories that perhaps Sheldon Cooper would like to hear during bedtime!

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Today's dharma story is about the human (or any animal's) heart. The heart is a critical organ in our body, which powers our blood circulation system. It is because of the heart that our body is able to assimilate nutrients and oxygen, and discard carbon dioxide and waste. 

Image source Wikipedia: By DrJanaOfficial - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50477765

But if we look at how the heart functions, it seems rather strange. The heart pumps blood using recipocatory motion that continuously keeps the organ expanding and contracting. Any mechanical engineer would agree that this is an extremely inefficient way to build a pump. An alternating motion creates fatigue in the material, leading to wear and tear. None of our pumps for instance, use such a technique. Instead, we use motors involving rotary motion that is much more efficient. 

So why didn't nature evolve a motor for the heart? Why did it settle down for such a crude implementation of a pump? 

It is dharma in action! Let me explain. 

Firstly, let us bust the myth that the human heart is somehow inefficient. Our heart has been beating continuously, at an approximate rate of 70 beats to a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ever since we were born! It has not taken a single break, and has not been shutdown for maintenance. If it were, we wouldn't be here, reading this blog. 

No "efficient" motor-based pump designed by humans, has known to perform for 80-100 years at a stretch, continuously, without a break. So clearly, nature has different ideas about what is "efficient". 

What we call as living beings is essentially a vast colony of even smaller beings called cells, that are trying to sustain themselves. In order to sustain themselves, they have come together to form a large system -- a metropolis of sorts -- where they are cooperating and complementing one another and helping each other sustain. 

Our heart is no monolithic entity. It comprises of several thousands of cells that are in a cooperative setup, and are contracting and expanding autonomously to result in the overall heart beat. Cells do experience wear and tear, and die away. But they are quickly replaced by newer cells that are born in the system. Indeed, every few years, we are biologically not the same creature anymore! 

So why does the heart pump blood using contractions? Why did the cells not evolve to collectively form a motor, so that they can work more efficiently? 

The answer to this is that, a motor is actually less efficient when it comes to sustainability, than a pump based on contractions. A motor is adharma, compared to a contractions based pump! (Imagine interpreting this as "a motor is unethical or immoral!" 😀)

A motor requires its blades to be so finely organised, and the system of blades to be synchronised so well that it creates a neat, rotary motion. Get a set of people to form a circle and run in a circle, and you'll know what I mean. It is very hard to maintain a circular motion with a group of agents acting autonomously! 

For a motor, the circular motion is extremely critical to maintain the flow. Even a little loss of synchrony in the circular motion can effectively shut down the pump. 

In contrast, it is much more simpler to organise a collection of autonomous agents to contract and expand together. The contractions need not be tightly synchronised. Indeed, the rate at which the heart beats, keeps varying throughout the day. The rate at which individual cells contract and expand also keeps varying. But within a fairly large interval, these variations do not disrupt the overall operation of the pump. 

Sometimes our heart does go out of synchrony. Such phenomena are called fibrillations, where the heart cells become uncoordinated. Fibrillations would be far more commonplace, if the heart cells were to have evolved into a motor, rather than in their current form. 

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There you go. Hope you enjoyed today's bedtime story of dharma. Express your gratitude to dharma, and have a good night's sleep while your heart beats on!

Dharma and Evolution

In this post, I would like to contrast between the models of life as defined by the theory of evolution, and as defined by the theory of being.

Evolution, or the "The greatest show on earth" is considered the scientific basis to describe how life operates. There are several underlying theories that make up the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Among these, the most significant is the theory of natural selection, proposed by Charles Darwin, in the mid nineteenth century.

At the core of this theory is the concept of "natural selection" that posits a differential selection among members of a species in an evolutionary cycle, by natural conditions. Natural selection is based on a concept of "fitness" of the phenotype. A phenotype refers to the overall expression of an organism such as its physiological properties, behaviour, dispositions, etc. that is a result of the interaction between its innate characteristics (its genotype) and the environment.

Natural selection is based on a concept of "fitness" of phenotypes and the process is called "survival of the fittest." The problem now becomes what defines the "fitness" of a phenotype. At the core of the theory seems to be a circular argument that says that, selection is based on "fitness" and "fitness" can be established by observing which phenotype gets selected.

To overcome such circularity, the concept of fitness has been attributed to various characteristics by different people over time. Fitness has been equated with characteristics like ability to produce offsprings, physical combat ability, ability to survive in harsh conditions, etc.

Although Darwin perhaps did not mean it this way, the idea of "natural selection" rests on a "judgement" metaphor of life. It is almost "religious" in its suggestion, that nature sits on a high pedestal and decides which phenotype shall live and which shall not. And species had better adopt the slogan, "be fit, or perish."

This judgement metaphor of evolution has given rise to so many misguided social, political and legal misadventures. Such a metaphor has made people explore theories of racial purity, it also created an obsessive compulsion about physical desirability leading to complications like anorexia, etc.

Regardless of what definition we take for fitness, there is ample evidence to the contrary. Phenotypes that were considered the epitome of fitness have either been deselected from the gene pool, or evolution seems to have simply ignored it.

Dinosaurs were "fit" in the sense of having enormous physical capacity. Yet, they are extinct now. Cockroaches are "fit" in the sense of being able to survive under vastly different conditions. Yet, despite the fact that cockroaches survived where dinosaurs didn't, nature preferred to evolve dinosaurs into birds, rather than asymptotically converging every species to the cockroach. Germs multiply very fast (have several offsprings) which is another interpretation of fitness. Yet, several disease causing germs are still contained across the world, and have not exactly resulted in a worldwide pandemic.

So clearly, while evolution is there to see and does explain how life functions, the problem is with the "judgement" model of how life works.

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Let us now develop a "Theory of Being" concept of how life works. 

What I am going to assert here is that fitness is a consequence of evolutionary dynamics and not a driver of evolutionary dynamics. 

To recap the theory of being, the fundamental unit of existence is an abstract entity called "being" (atma). Every being has an innate capability for self expression called prana. Self expression is constrained and characterised not just by the being's innate capabilities, but also by the characteristics of its environment called the vidhi. The interplay between the prana and the vidhi, settles down in some stable state, which is called its dharma. Dharma is the state where a being maximises its self expression given its innate characteristics and the environmental characteristics. Disparate stable states of being for a given species, represent the different phenotypes that are observable for that species. 

In that sense, the phenotype itself is an expression of fitness -- it is an optimal state of robust sustainability that is achieved by the interplay between the being's prana and its vidhi. 

The fact that some phenotypes survive and some do not, has to do with the characteristics of the environment, rather than that of the being. When the vidhi changes, some phenotypes that emerged as optimal states in the previous generation, may no longer be the optimal states for the next generation. The previous generation did nothing "wrong" or "unfit" for its phenotype to be rejected by the next generation. It is just that the vidhi has changed, and what was optimal earlier is no longer optimal.

So, rather than nature passing judgments on us, nature is just finding its dharma -- that is, its stable states over time. Life in turn is responding to how nature is changing, and changing its stable states suitably. 

Climactic changes in the Mesozoic era made the dinosaurial life form unsustainable. This life form found a new class of optima in the form of birds. This change is not a judgement on the dinosaurs or their "unfit" life form. 

The cockroach life form was optimal then, and is optimal now. Stable as it may be, its prana is very limited. So, while it has survived, it has not become the "global optima" onto which all phenotypes converged. 

The selfish gene seems to be driven not only by survivability, but also by maximising of the complexity (entropy?) of self expression.

Dharma and liberty

Given my interest in the concept of Dharma, it is assumed that my political inclinations lie with the "right-wing" (a term that has no meaning to describe the Indian political landscape) and by implication, I am a "conservative" and further by implication, I'm in the opposite camp of "liberalism" and favour imposition of collective will (led by religious doctrine), as against upholding of individual liberty.

This is how befuddled and muddled is the collective discourse, as is our understanding of important concepts from the Indian worldview.

This post is to address the question of whether a worldview based in dharma is in opposition to the ideology of individual liberty.

To recap, dharma is the property of sustainability or a "stable state" that is characteristic of any finite system of being. It is not some form of a divine commandment or revelation given by the Gods and accessible only to the sages or some such. It is a property that can be empirically verifiable, repeatable, and even proven. For instance, algebraic topology is full of theorems that look for "fixed points" in finite systems of set-valued transformations. The Kakutani fixed-point theorem for instance, plays a central role in proving that any finite system of interacting phenomena has a stable state of being (which gave the Nobel prize to John Nash).

In contrast, the political ideology of liberalism is essentially that -- an ideology. Fundamentally, an ideology is a wish -- about how things ought to be. The liberal ideology says that individuals are born free, and individual liberty is the basis for all civilised social orders.

As an ideology, it is perfectly fine and it is a good thought on which to base our thinking on.

However, individuals are not islands that are isolated from one another. They interact with one another and with the environment, to exercise their freedom. And when individuals interact, it forms a collective system of being, that settles down into its own stable state, that may or may not uphold individual liberty.

For instance, let us consider a system of two individuals A and B, who are living in a liberal setup and who have all the rights to exercise their free will. The individual A believes that one needs to be open-minded, tolerant and welcoming of differences of opinion, and truly believes in Voltaire's statement that "I may disagree with what you say, but will fight to death, your right for saying it."

The individual B on the other hand, believes that he knows the "truth" about everything and it is not just his right, but his duty to make everybody else comply with his beliefs, because that is the truth.

When A and B interact and both exercise their individual liberty, A has no choice but to be enslaved by B, because according to A, B has the right to practice his individual liberty, that involves domination over others. If A fights back, then A becomes the hypocrite, since he is not following his own ideology of tolerance and open-mindedness.

This is the "Tragedy of the liberals" that is seen in all liberal establishments. While liberal establishments promote individual liberty as an imperative, they also open doors to fanatics pushing fanaticism, using the entitlement for individual liberty.

As a result, societies built on liberal imperatives, evolve elaborate sets of processes and laws, involving snooping, spying, profiling, etc. that on the whole, poses as much a threat to individual liberty as a non-liberal ideology.

A society built on a liberal ideology is also susceptible to individuals being unaware of their individuality. Most of our "free-willed" choices are actually conditioned by social messages from other individuals, mass media and public figures. How many of us, for instance, would like to admit that we would rather not travel, as it is too expensive and exhausting, and does little to expand our horizons (based on who we are) -- no more than reading books or interacting with people on the Internet? Similarly, how many students want to study deep learning because they are genuinely curious about it, and not because it is the "coolest" technology with "lots of scope" and that "everybody else is doing it"?

Individuals are extremely vulnerable to suggestions and manipulations. Without an intense inquiry into our own selves, we do not really understand what our preferences are, and when we say we are exercising our liberty, are we really expressing ourselves, or giving an outlet to our frustration, or complying with what the rest of the society thinks is freedom?

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The problem is not with liberalism as an ideology. The problem is that liberalism has remained just an ideology. We cannot just be wishing and insisting that individual liberty has to be protected. We need a theory about know how to protect it. 

This is where the theory of dharma is very important. 

Every system of being (called Atma) -- be it an individual person, a society of people, or even a physical entity like a piece of coal -- has one or more stable states into which it settles down. This is called its dharma. Each stable state is characterised by a level of Prana or "capability" of the system of being. A carbon polymer for instance, can settle down into various stable configurations, each of which gives it a different characteristic. 

The capability of a system of being, is not just a function of the amount of resources or "wealth" at its disposal. Consider a tall skyscraper that is powered by a local power station. The electric power is utilised by the building to manage its lighting, elevators, air conditioning, etc. -- basically to "be" the building. Now consider that the power station is hit by a lightning, and several orders more electricity flows through the system. This extra resource did not give greater capability for the building. In fact, it mostly ended up burning out the fuses and appliances, thus reducing the capability of the building. 

Capability or Prana, cannot be measured in a purely objective fashion. A fish and a monkey may have the same amount of energy measured objectively in terms of joules. But, the capability of a fish to climb a tree is very low, as is the capability of a monkey to swim in deep waters. Prana is innately tied to individuals and their individuality. 

Hence, for example, "real India" is not the poverty that is shown on news channels by an "objective" third-party observer, let alone in a movie like Slumdog millionaire. Real India is how Indians see themselves. Real India, as is the notion of India itself, is defined in the minds of its individuals. If Indians see themselves as innately wealthy, then their response to poverty would be to fight it and bring themselves back to a state of wealth. On the other hand, if poverty enters the mind, then it would result in real poverty. 

There is a saying in Kannada which makes me cringe every time I hear it. Groundnuts (ಕಡಲೆಕಾಯಿ) is called "ಬಡವರ ಬಾದಾಮಿ", or "poor man's almond". Except that the groundnut is grown in a region that is rich with tropical resources, rains, minerals, rivers, etc. while almonds are grown in deserts and desolate regions that are much less endowed with natural resources. And yet, we call ourselves the poor man, and crave for almonds which supposedly is affordable only by the wealthy. 

A dharmic society has to begin first from the individual. It has to begin with eradicating the poverty latent in their minds, and empowering individuals to deeply inquire into their individuality. We need to have individuals find their dharma that maximises their Prana -- a state of being where they feel the most free to express themselves, without being hampered by scriptures, norms and social expectations. 

In this sense, dharma for social structuring, is innately about individual liberty -- not just as an ideology, but as an integral element of establishing collective sustainability. 

But dharma does not stop with individual finding their state of dharma. Every collection of individuals forms a system of being that has its own stable states. A dharmic society is one where any collection of individuals actively communicate to understand where is their stable system of being, and what is the Prana associated with that stable state. A dharmic institution for example, encourages people to speak up about their concerns, own up the institution and actively work towards its sustainability. It does not, for instance, create rigid hierarchies and power structures for the sake of efficiency. 

The founder of Sony Enterprises, Akio Morita, had this to say about institutions in the US and Japan (and Asia in general). In the US, employees are kept happy because happy employees are more efficient and productive, and bring more profits to the company. While in Japan, the company was seen as a family and all members of the family were made to understand that the company has to make profits and be efficient, if the family needs to be happy. 

The dichotomy between collective will and individual liberty is a false dichotomy -- they are not always in conflict with each other. The relation between the collective and the individual, is a whole-part relation -- somewhat like the relation between (say) our liver and the rest of the body. They body cannot be healthy if the liver is suffering, and even if the liver is healthy when the body as a whole is suffering, it adversely affects the liver as well. 

Individual Prana is important for the collective dharma (sustainability of the collective) and the collective Prana is important for the individual dharma. 

An individual may be part of several collectives (office, family, club, neighbourhood, ecology, etc.) each of which have their own stable states. Sustainability of all these collectives are affected by the individual's contributions to them. An adverse impact on the individual in one collective (say, office politics) may impact the individual's contribution to another collective (say, the family). A dharmic mind is holistic in nature, and is sensitive to such interferences. It does not live in an articulate, water-tight compartmentalisation of one's life. Hence, "work-life balance" as a separate object of inquiry, makes no sense to the dharmic mind, because the dharmic mind is always balancing between several systems of being that it is contributing to. 

Dharmic hermeneutics offer the most promising potential for building theories of sustainable liberty, rather than pursuing liberty as an ideology.