06-17-2009, 08:39 PM
X-posted from Future scenarios thread... See how he realtes the past to the future.
<!--QuoteBegin-"brihaspati"+-->QUOTE("brihaspati")<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Current scenario in India can perhaps best be characterized as a phase of extreme and accelerating diversity. Historically, India shows alternate periods of extreme diversity and then a counterreaction towards extreme unification and homegenization followed by a counterreaction again of moving towards extreme diversity. During the diversity phase, concomitants are the presence, intrusion or activity of "foreign" elements in society and ideology.</b>
<b>We can identify such phases in expansion of the Persians into the western provinces of India circa 500-600 BCE, which is followed by attempts at political and ideological consolidation in the Magadhan empire.</b> The <b>process deepens with the advent of the Greeks, followed by political and ideological consolidation in the Mauryan empire. Same happens with the fall of the Mauryas, and the phase leading up to the Kushan consolidation and corresponding consolidation in the south. The phenomenon repeats with the period of the Guptas, and more spectacularly illustrated in the follow up to the Islamic invasions with the rise of Shankara school of thought. The later phase under Sultanate is of coures more well documented and we can identify the patterns more clearly, right up to the advent and eventual formal expulsion of the British.</b>
The average human mind is perhaps limited in the number of models it can maintain of abstract entities with corresponding associated concrete rules of behaviour. <b>So too much diversity means too many models a single individual has to keep in mind while deciding how to react in a given situation. Eventually a time comes, when that threshold of capacity is crossed and people become open to suggestions of homogenization and unification that simplifies and reduces the number of different models. Indians have prehaps been subjected historically to many more such episodes of diversification that has acted as stimulus to increase the threshold compared to other societies which started out later on the path towards complexity. This slightly increased capacity is reflected in the easier acceptance and tolerance of diversity as reflected in the ideological history quite prominently, as compared to say European society.</b>
But still even this increased threshold is reached eventually, even in India. <b>At the moment we are fracturing our society and ideology at an accelerating pace. The more this happens the quicker we approach the point when the majority of the population will reach their threshold and be looking for a simpler, homeogenizing, unifying framework.</b> Is that going to be the Abrahamic? Unlikely, for they are "too simple" for the level of complexity that the Indian mind has become used to. Can it be the vacccum ideology as maintained and promoted by the "secularist" Congress+Left position? That leaves too much to opportunistic thinking and individual decisions relying on their self-interest only - something the general Indic mind is not comfortable with over the long term.
<b>Are we ready to think towards an alternative? Whether we like it or not, we will have to face this question, and it is intimately linked with the geo-political scenario for the next few generations in India.</b>
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<!--QuoteBegin-"brihaspati"+-->QUOTE("brihaspati")<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Current scenario in India can perhaps best be characterized as a phase of extreme and accelerating diversity. Historically, India shows alternate periods of extreme diversity and then a counterreaction towards extreme unification and homegenization followed by a counterreaction again of moving towards extreme diversity. During the diversity phase, concomitants are the presence, intrusion or activity of "foreign" elements in society and ideology.</b>
<b>We can identify such phases in expansion of the Persians into the western provinces of India circa 500-600 BCE, which is followed by attempts at political and ideological consolidation in the Magadhan empire.</b> The <b>process deepens with the advent of the Greeks, followed by political and ideological consolidation in the Mauryan empire. Same happens with the fall of the Mauryas, and the phase leading up to the Kushan consolidation and corresponding consolidation in the south. The phenomenon repeats with the period of the Guptas, and more spectacularly illustrated in the follow up to the Islamic invasions with the rise of Shankara school of thought. The later phase under Sultanate is of coures more well documented and we can identify the patterns more clearly, right up to the advent and eventual formal expulsion of the British.</b>
The average human mind is perhaps limited in the number of models it can maintain of abstract entities with corresponding associated concrete rules of behaviour. <b>So too much diversity means too many models a single individual has to keep in mind while deciding how to react in a given situation. Eventually a time comes, when that threshold of capacity is crossed and people become open to suggestions of homogenization and unification that simplifies and reduces the number of different models. Indians have prehaps been subjected historically to many more such episodes of diversification that has acted as stimulus to increase the threshold compared to other societies which started out later on the path towards complexity. This slightly increased capacity is reflected in the easier acceptance and tolerance of diversity as reflected in the ideological history quite prominently, as compared to say European society.</b>
But still even this increased threshold is reached eventually, even in India. <b>At the moment we are fracturing our society and ideology at an accelerating pace. The more this happens the quicker we approach the point when the majority of the population will reach their threshold and be looking for a simpler, homeogenizing, unifying framework.</b> Is that going to be the Abrahamic? Unlikely, for they are "too simple" for the level of complexity that the Indian mind has become used to. Can it be the vacccum ideology as maintained and promoted by the "secularist" Congress+Left position? That leaves too much to opportunistic thinking and individual decisions relying on their self-interest only - something the general Indic mind is not comfortable with over the long term.
<b>Are we ready to think towards an alternative? Whether we like it or not, we will have to face this question, and it is intimately linked with the geo-political scenario for the next few generations in India.</b>
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