400 Aurovilians participated in the voting

A...C....B Written by Radio Team Wednesday, 18 March 2009

In today's news an excerpt of the General Meeting and Resident Assembly concerning the choice on the proposals concerning the selection of the new Auroville Council. While the votes are still being analysed we can say that proposal A is leading followed by proposal C and B. Proposal A as you can check in our previous editions indicates that the residents nominate candidates following a precise job descriptions and a selection committee composed by members of the previous WC and AVC choose between the nominated individuals. Almost 400 Aurovilians participated in the voting. To download the news click here.

The corporate world remains the last bastion of dictatorship

Corporate reforms from The Big Picture by T T Ram Mohan
Leave aside the big talk of 'reforming capitalism'. That means all things to all people. Concretely, what can one expect by way of reforms in the corporate world? From a recent story in the FT, I flagged the following:
The US Congress has voted to give shareholders an annual vote on executive pay, although this will be a non-binding vote
Shareholders may get the right to nominate candidates to the board- and to remove non-performing directors. These have been management's prerogative so far
Redesign of executive compensation with less liberal stock options for people at the top.
An improvement in the composition of corporate boards- board members will need to demonstrate better expertise than playing golf.

Is that good enough? Well, it's a good start. But I am a bit of a radical when it comes to corporate reform. I happen to think there is a fundamental problem with the modern corporation: excessive concentration of powers in the CEO. The world over, democracy has gained ground at the level of nations.

But the corporate world remains the last bastion of dictatorship. Greater diffusion of powers and more participative decision-making are what companies lack - and which is why they are prone to disaster. Serious reform is making these things happen.

The fundamental human need for stability

Flawed b-school ideas from The Big Picture by T T Ram Mohan
It's interesting that there has been much finger-pointing towards b-schools in the massive debate on capitalism prompted by the present crisis. In the Satyam episode, some of the outrage stemmed from the realisation that two b-school dons were on the board. As I have pointed out in earlier blogs, I don't really buy the stuff about 'excessive' focus on shareholder value and how b-schools have gone wrong in overemphasising this aspect of capitalism. For a change, I came across something more sensible in this article by Richard Layard of the LSE's Centre for economic performance. Lord Layard points out three b-school ideas that need to be questioned:

Three ideas taught in business schools have much to answer for. One is the theory of “efficient capital markets”, now clearly discredited. The second is “principal agent” theory, which says the agents will perform best under high-powered financial incentives to align their interests with those of the principal. This has led to excessive performance-related pay, which has often undermined the motive to work well for the sake of doing a good job and introduced unnecessary tension among colleagues.

Finally, there is the macho philosophy of “continuous change”, promoted by self-interested consulting companies, which disregards the fundamental human need for stability – in the name of efficiency gains that are often not realised.

What would it mean to govern so that members of a society can 'enjoy the goods to which they have a right'?

The Immanent Frame
Secularism, religion, and the public sphere
New at The Immanent Frame, a discussion about Nicholas Wolterstorff's book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, with responses from the author:

Kevin den Dulk: “Justice and rights-talk in liberal democracies”
“Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs is a profoundly ambitious book. His normative aspiration is nothing less than 'speaking up for the wronged of the world' by reorienting contemporary thinking on rights and justice. … But what about the practice of liberal democracy? What would it mean to govern so that members of a society can 'enjoy the goods to which they have a right'? Justice is not a book of practical application, but it is clearly on Wolterstorff’s mind.” View den Dulk's full post.

Jonathon Kahn: “Nicholas Wolterstorff's fear of the secular”
“The truly dynamic discussion in America today about religion and politics is not between 'wall of separation' secularists and Christian political theologians attempting to turn American into a theocracy. Instead, the promising but fledgling discussion is between religious and non-religious democrats who are acutely aware of the two horns of this essential American dilemma. First, one has a right to express one’s convictions in whatever terms one holds them, including religious terms; second, one cannot assume that one’s fellow citizens’ convictions are shaped by the same terms.” View Kahn's full post and see Wolterstorff's response.

John Schmalzbauer: “Rehabilitating religious rights talk”
“Wolterstorff critiques the notion that rights talk is an offshoot of modern individualism. Questioning Stanley Hauerwas’ claim that the language of rights 'underwrites a view of human relations as exchanges,' he presents an account of justice that is irreducibly communal. Wolterstorff also takes on those philosophers who would ground their accounts of justice in the classical Greek and Roman descriptions of the well-lived life. In his judgment, such approaches fail to take into account the inherent worth of human beings.” View Schmalzbauer's full post.

David Johnston: “Justice and theism”
“Wolterstorff’s book is a challenging, serious, sustained reflection on the foundations of justice. He wrestles with a wide range of difficult issues, often with considerable success. Yet the net result with which the reader is left seems to amount to something less than the sum of its parts. I shall point to a handful of difficulties, touching on both his historical narrative (which occupies roughly half the book) and his philosophical argument.” View Johnston's full post and see Wolterstorff's response.

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Citizens of many EU countries are afraid that their problems are decided elsewhere and without them

19.2.2009 - ENGLISH PAGES
Speech of the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus in the European Parliament

There is no end of history. Claiming that the status quo, the present institutional form of the EU, is a forever uncriticizable dogma, is a mistake that has been – unfortunately – rapidly spreading, even though it is in direct contradiction not only with rational thinking, but also with the whole two-thousand-year history of European civilization. [...] Let us not underestimate the fears of the citizens of many member countries, who are afraid, that their problems are again decided elsewhere and without them, and that their ability to influence these decisions is very limited. [...] Let us not allow a situation where the citizens of member countries would live their lives with a resigned feeling that the EU project is not their own; that it is developing differently than they would wish, that they are only forced to accept it. We would very easily and very soon slip back to the times that we hoped belonged to history.

The present decision making system of the European Union is different from a classic parliamentary democracy, tested and proven by history. In a normal parliamentary system, part of the MPs support the government and part support the opposition. In the European parliament, this arrangement has been missing. Here, only one single alternative is being promoted and those who dare thinking about a different option are labelled as enemies of the European integration. Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition. It was through this experience that we learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must exist.

And not only that. The relationship between a citizen of one or another member state and a representative of the Union is not a standard relationship between a voter and a politician, representing him or her. There is also a great distance (not only in a geographical sense) between citizens and Union representatives, which is much greater than it is the case inside the member countries. This distance is often described as the democratic deficit, the loss of democratic accountability, the decision making of the unelected – but selected – ones, as bureaucratisation of decision making etc. The proposals to change the current state of affairs – included in the rejected European Constitution or in the not much different Lisbon Treaty – would make this defect even worse. [...]

I say all of this because I do feel a strong responsibility for the democratic and prosperous future of Europe. I have been trying to remind you of the elementary principles upon which European civilisation has been based for centuries or even millennia; principles, the validity of which is not affected by time, principles that are universal and should be therefore followed even in the present European Union. I am convinced that the citizens of individual member countries do want freedom, democracy and economic prosperity.

At this moment in time, the most important task is to make sure that free discussion about these problems is not silenced as an attack on the very idea of European integration. We have always believed that being allowed to discuss such serious issues, being heard, defending everyone’s right to present a different than “the only correct opinion” – no matter how much we may disagree with it – is at the very core of the democracy we were denied for over four decades. We, who went through the involuntary experience that taught us that a free exchange of opinions and ideas is the basic condition for a healthy democracy, do hope, that this condition will be met and respected also in the future. This is the opportunity and the only method for making the European Union more free, more democratic and more prosperous. Václav Klaus, European Parliament, Brussels, 19 February 2009 [12:35 PM 12:55 PM]

Tocqueville’s vision and even the language anticipate Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World

February 14th, 2009 12:21 pm We’re All Fascists Now II: American Tyranny Michael Ledeen

Fascism was a war ideology and grew out of the terrible slaughter of the First World War. Fascism hailed the men who fought and prevailed on the battlefield, and wrapped itself in the well-established rhetoric of European nationalism, which does not exist in America and never has. Our liberties are indeed threatened, but by a tyranny of a very different sort.

Most of us imagine the transformation of a free society to a tyrannical state in Hollywood terms, as a melodramatic act of violence like a military coup or an armed insurrection. Tocqueville knows better. He foresees a slow death of freedom. The power of the centralized government will gradually expand, meddling in every area of our lives until, like a lobster in a slowly heated pot, we are cooked without ever realizing what has happened. The ultimate horror of Tocqueville’s vision is that we will welcome it, and even convince ourselves that we control it.

There is no single dramatic event in Tocqueville’s scenario, no storming of the Bastille, no assault on the Winter Palace, no March on Rome, no Kristallnacht. We are to be immobilized, Gulliver-like, by myriad rules and regulations, annoying little restrictions that become more and more binding until they eventually paralyze us.
Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated… [...]

The tyranny he foresees for us does not have much in common with the vicious dictatorships of the last century, or with contemporary North Korea, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. He apologizes for lacking the proper words with which to define it. He hesitates to call it either tyranny or despotism, because it does not rule by terror or oppression. There are no secret police, no concentration camps, and no torture. “The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling.” The vision and even the language anticipate Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World. Tocqueville describes the new tyranny as “an immense and tutelary power,” and its task is to watch over us all, and regulate every aspect of our lives.
It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

We will not be bludgeoned into submission; we will be seduced. He foresees the collapse of American democracy as the end result of two parallel developments that ultimately render us meekly subservient to an enlarged bureaucratic power: the corruption of our character, and the emergence of a vast welfare state that manages all the details of our lives. His words are precisely the ones that best describe out current crisis:
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? [...]

In Tocqueville’s elegant construction, it “renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.” Once we go over the edge toward the pursuit of material wealth, our energies uncoil, and we become meek, quiescent and flaccid in the defense of freedom.
The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

The devilish genius of this form of tyranny is that it looks and even acts democratic. We still elect our representatives, and they still ask us for our support. “…servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind…might be combined with some of the outward forms of freedom, and…might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.” Freedom is smothered without touching the institutions of political democracy. We act out democratic skits while submitting to an oppressive central power that we ourselves have chosen.
They devise a sole, tutelary and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people…this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. [...]

The great Israeli historian Jacob Talmon coined the perfect name for this perversion of the Enlightenment dream, which enslaves all in the name of all: totalitarian democracy.
These extreme cases help us understand Tocqueville’s brilliant warning that equality is not a defense against tyranny, but an open invitation to ambitious and cunning leaders who enlist our support in depriving ourselves of freedom. He summarizes it in two sentences that should be memorized by every American who cherishes freedom:
The…sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
As I said last time, we’re in for a hell of a fight. Or so I hope. Pages: Prev12 10:30 AM

1. a Duoist: Only 28 years after Tocqueville’s book, socialism swept across Europe; the ideology of ‘equality’ was born. In the Christian nations, ‘equality’ resonated with the founding slave-religion, and “helplessness” eventually became the ultimate virtue. In this cultural transformation of merging Christian theology with socialist ideology, ‘victimhood’ became a form of heroism and we slaughtered tens of innocent millions, all in the name of “equality.”
Talmon was correct, as was Tocqueville and Hayek and Nietzsche: the ultimate conclusion of merging Christian doctrines with socialism tenets will eventually be ‘voluntary totalitarianism.’
It is wonderful to read this warning caution from a freedom scholar. Thank you, Dr. Ledeen. Feb 14, 2009 - 8:39 pm

The message of Savitri isn't to renounce the world, but to embrace it

The Abode of Yoga
"All life is Yoga." Sri Aurobindo Sunday, February 8, 2009 Savitri

While still in law school, I had secured a clerkship at a small, high-end business litigation firm in downtown San Diego. Upon graduation from school, the firm hired me full-time. With my positive bar exam results, my cushy student life was over.

I took solace in Sri Aurobindo's final masterpiece: Savitri. As I've written before, the most significant books I read during my three year law school career were Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Yoga, and The Life Divine. In Savitri's 24,000 lines of blank verse, Auorbindo weaves the themes of his canon into a simple love story. [...]

The message of Savitri isn't to renounce the world, but to embrace it. That said, Savitri is a challenging read (to put it mildly). Two things made it easier for me though. First, I had already read most of Sri Aurobindo's canon -- particularly The Life Divine. I found the themes to be the same and easily recognizable having had already been exposed to them in Aurobindo's other writings.

Second, I read Savitri in small doses as I commuted into work each day on public transportation. Following the poetic and esoteric language alone -- not to mention trying to keep up with Aurobindo's prodigious vocabulary -- takes concentration. Reading a little at a time made it a lot easier to absorb.

With few exceptions -- politics perhaps being one -- it was difficult for me to imagine a more spiritually challenging profession than being a trial lawyer. Yet, that's the path I began to tread. Savitri made it a little easier. Posted by Y. at 9:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The message of Sri Aurobindo that all life is yoga should be spread to the maximum extent possible - Prof Manoj Das

Pondy Varsity VC advocates spiritual values for governance
By chennaivision at 6 February, 2009, 1:08 pm Puducherry,

Pondicherry University Vice Chancellor J A K Tareen today said spirituality and ethical values were essential for good governance.
Presiding over inaugural function of the International Research workshop on ’spiritual and ethical foundations of organisational development’, jointly organised by the University of Delhi School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship, Regent University USA, Infinity Foundation USA and Department of Management Studies, Pondicherry University, here, Mr Tareen said spirituality theme should reach the common people by beginning at home and at school.

Mr Tareen expressed concern over unhindered foreign culture and western style of living, which was accepted by the society informally. There must be some way out and proper reasoning for the promotion of integrated and spiritual foundation of organisational development, he added.
The vice-chancellor said corporate governance should not only focus on profit centric, but also promote an objective and ethical approach. The participants should ensure that their discussions and recommendations were shared with the common people to achieve unity.

Inaugurating the workshop, Prof Manoj Das, an Aurobindian, said there shoud be synthesis of idealism and perfection and the message of Sri Aurobindo that all life is yoga should be spread to the maximum extent possible. About two hundred delegates were participating in the three-day workshop. UNI

Secular form of Asian political institutions often masks a religious spirit

A Secular Age: Discerning the religious spirit of secular states in Asia posted by Richard Madsen

In his monumental book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor distinguishes three meanings of secularism, as it refers to the “North Atlantic societies” of Western Europe and North America.

• The first meaning is political. In this sense, secularism refers to political arrangements that make the state neutral with regard to religious belief. The legitimacy of the government is not dependent on religious belief and the government does not privilege any particular religious community (or any community of non-believers).
• The second meaning of secularism can be termed sociological. It refers to a widespread decline of religious belief and practice among ordinary people.
• The third meaning is cultural. It refers to a change in the conditions of belief, “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”

In the North Atlantic world, all governments are (for all practical purposes) secular in the first sense, Western Europe, but not the United States, is secular in the second sense, and all societies are secular in the third sense. Taylor tells the story of how the three modes of secularism have developed throughout the course of Western history and of how they have mutually influenced one another. He is especially concerned with the third mode, the development of secular conditions of belief.

Can this analytic framework be applied outside of the North Atlantic world, particularly to Asian societies? Taylor himself would not claim to have created a framework for a universal theory of comparative religion. But this framework, grounded in a particular cultural and historical experience, may nonetheless be useful for cross cultural comparisons. [...] But the secular form of Asian political institutions often masks a religious spirit. Some examples:

• Japan has a secular constitution, but many of its government leaders have felt compelled to pray for the spirits of the war dead at the Yasakuni shrine. The pressure to visit the shrine comes from nationalistic constituencies within Japan, but it is indeed a pressure to worship at a Shinto shrine, presided over by a priest, which purports not just to memorialize the names of the dead but actually to contain their spirits. (Japan’s Asian neighbors are more upset about this than Americans. Could this be because Asians take more seriously the living presence of spirits of the dead?)
• Through its “Vigilant Center” at the Ministry of Culture, the government of Thailand is supposed to protect the nation’s culture and values by, among other things, keeping people from using images of the Buddha for profane purposes.
• The Indonesian government is based on a national ideology of “Pancansila,” which proclaims a national unity based upon mutual tolerance among believers in an “Almighty Divine.”
• And even the government in China, which is supposedly led by the atheist Communist Party, takes it upon itself to carry out religious functions. It has claimed the right to determine who is the true re-incarnation of the Panchen Lama (and will undoubtedly do the same for the next re-incarnation of the Dalai Lama). It claims to be able to determine the difference between true religion and “evil cults,” and tries to root out even private belief in “evil cults” like Falungong. Moreover, the Chinese government invests enormous amounts of money in spectacular public rituals, like the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, which are redolent with symbols of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. [...]

Political secularization, in Taylor’s sense, therefore is a reasonably accurate way to describe the formal structure of most East and Southeast Asian states. But it doesn’t adequately describe the interior spirit of these states, which must be comprehended through a closer examination of how these states have developed within modern history. Taylor’s account of political secularization does, however, help us pose the questions of how the external forms and interior spirit of modern Asian states have interacted with one another and what have been the practical consequences of this interaction.

It would be beyond the scope of this post to give a full account of the development of Asian states. But as we consider the development of the social and cultural life within some Asian societies, we can get some sense of how these societies and cultures have been influenced by the interplay between secular form and religious substance within their states. In my next two posts, I will explore the extent to which Asian states and societies have followed Taylor’s path to social and cultural secularization.

[Editor's note: This post draws from a draft chapter for the SSRC's forthcoming publication, Rethinking Secularism, co-edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Craig Calhoun, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen.] Madsen R. Discerning the religious spirit of secular states in Asia. The Immanent Frame. 2009. This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under A Secular Age.

Tusar N. Mohapatra: February 6th, 2009 at 2:29 am
[India is not a secular state. Indian state actually privileges Hinduism over other religionsI demonstrate that in practice, Indian state actually privileges Hinduism over other religions and religious communities. The Indian state is in fact the defender of the dharma for the following five reasons... For all these five reasons, India is not a secular state. It is in fact the defender of Hindu dharma. Hyderabad-born, MIT-based Omar Khalidi is the author of Muslims in Indian Economy and Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India. Why India Is Not A Secular State: outlookindia.com Omar Khalidi 8:39 PM]

Mirror of Tomorrow :: Beyond Religion: Perspective of the . However, we shall see that spirituality itself has to evolve and become a higher spiritual adventure and a new discovery ringing in a new era of knowledge without the possibility of error, a creative and supremely effective power and bliss without the shadow of suffering. Religion in the West hardly admits the free seeking of the aspiring human mind.

Engaging with the historical sweep of Polanyi’s great war-time oeuvre

How widespread Polanyi’s influence is today
A short history of economic anthropology from The Memory Bank by keith
In The Great Transformation (1944), Polanyi brought a radical critique of modern capitalism to bear on his moment in history... Conclusions: the next stage

Anthropologists aim to discover the principles animating economic organization at every level from the most particular to the universal. The purpose of economic anthropology, when still known as ‘the economics of primitive man’, was to test the claim that a world economic order must be founded on capitalist principles. The search was on for alternatives that might support a more just economy, whether liberal, socialist, anarchist or communist. Hence the interest in origins and evolution, since society was understood to be in movement and had not yet reached its final form. Anthropology was the most inclusive way of thinking about economic formation; only secondarily was it a critique of capitalist inequality.

The First World War marked a new stage in the convergence between capitalism and highly centralized state bureaucracies. The universities expanded and knowledge was compartmentalized as so many impersonal disciplines modelled on the natural sciences. Anthropology found itself pigeon-holed as the study of those parts of humanity that the others could not reach. The concentration of social power in immense anonymous institutions discouraged people from trying to make a better world by themselves. So, from being at one time a constructive economic enterprise of universal intent, anthropology came to be driven by the passive aim to accumulate an objectified data bank on ‘other cultures’, largely for internal consumption. The profession became fixed in a cultural relativist paradigm, by definition opposed to the universalism of economics. Anthropologists based their intellectual authority on extended sojourns in remote areas and their ability to address the world’s economic trajectory was much impaired as a result.

We have identified here three stages in the development of economic anthropology. In the first, up to and including the Second World War, ethnographers sought to engage the more general propositions of neo-classical economics with their particular findings about “primitive societies”. They failed, mainly because they misunderstood the economists’ epistemological premises. In the second stage, coinciding roughly with the West’s experiment in social democracy at the height of the Cold War, anthropologists argued among themselves about whether or not special theories and methods were needed to study their preserve, tribal and peasant economies, thereby opening the way for Marxists to exercise a temporary dominance, but again mainly referring to the traditional objects of ethnography.

The third stage of neo-liberal globalization, which may or may not be concluding in our day, has seen anthropologists open themselves up to the full range of human economic organization, studied from a variety of perspectives. So far, they have only rarely addressed world economy as such, preferring in the main to stick with the tradition of ethnographic observation (Gregory and Altman 1989). The time is ripe for anthropologists to take the extra step of addressing the world economy as a whole as well as its parts; and engaging with the historical sweep of Polanyi’s great war-time oeuvre might be one means to that end.

The issue remains whether or not capitalist economy rests on human principles of universal validity. This argument about sameness and difference plagued post-war economic anthropology, much as it plagued nationalist discourse in 19th century Germany. Anthropologists can be proud of our discipline’s commitment to joining the people where they live in order to find out what they think and do. But fieldwork-based ethnography needs to be integrated once more with the perspective on world history that it overthrew. 7:47 PM 6:36 PM

The social cannot be adequately thought without taking into account non-human actors

The Ontic Principle’s Tangled Beard
from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects

I will, however, say that one of the things I’m trying to accomplish at the level of social and political theory is, following Latour, the introduction of non-human actors into social networks. In my view, a good deal of social and political thought suffers from flawed assumptions at the level of social ontology. The field gets restricted to human beings, discourses, signifiers, language, ideas, norms, etc., and the non-human is set aside and treated as something outside of or other than the social. Following Latour, my thesis would be that the inhuman is an actor in the social as well, and that the social cannot be adequately thought without taking into account non-human actors.

I learned of a good example non-human actors play in social assemblages or networks as an undergrad in a course entitled Nature, Technology, and Culture. There the professor discussed a city where the bridges between the North and South side were built too low for the public buses to pass through. This simple fact contributed a major difference in both income distribution and cultural distribution in the city, as those who were from the South side of the city could not readily travel to the North side of the city where many of the jobs were. In addition, this difference, the bridge, had both catalytic and de-catalytic effects in the sorts of human networks formed. By virtue of this lack of ready transportion between the North and South sides, networks among humans became restricted to these particular regions, leading these networks to become self-reinforcing of particular relationships. In this example, the simple height of the bridge would be a non-human actor within the social assemblage. It will be objected that the bridges were built by human hands, that they would not exist without humans, and this would be true. However, the key point is that the difference introduced by the height of the bridges was not– as far as we know –intended to produce this difference.

Similarly, we have completely inhuman actors that play a significant role in processes of social assembly. Thus, for example, what role does the disappearance of Lake Chad, an inhuman entity, play in the process of assembly for human relations in Africa? Lake Chad is an inhuman actor that certainly plays a significant role in how life is organized among people in this region. Through the role of this actor, people are led to relate to the land differently, each other differently, occupations differently, and perhaps even their cultural beliefs differently. As a result of the way in which this lake acts, all sorts of translations must take place among the people in this vicinity.

In short, my thesis would be that the social is composed not of what is human, but of the inhuman and human alike. Once again, following Latour, this leads to a significant transformation of our understanding of the social. The social is not a distinct substance in opposition to, say, the natural or the psychological. Rather, the social now refers to associations. Following Whitehead, the social will thus refer to any form of association, whether completely inhuman or involving combinations of the human and the inhuman. What will be of interest in a social theory is how these association are made and remade. As Latour dramatically puts it, “the social does not explain but must be explained”…

No groups only group formations. The point that inhuman actors play a significant role in human social formations might appear trite and obvious– and it really should be –but when confronting a world of social and political theory that seems to focus almost entirely on the discursive, the symbolic, and the normative, it is, I think, a tremendously important point to make. So long as these inhuman actors are not included in associations or assemblages, I just don’t see how we can pose the right sort of questions. George Bush states the terrorists are out to get us because they hate our way of life, i.e., culture is to explain it all. There are no small number of theorists who make similar claims in much more elaborate and sophisticated vocabularies. The point is not that culture, language, signs, history, etc., do not make a difference, but that we must also think these differences in their relation to inhuman differences.

***

• Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference‎ by David Harvey
• Readings in the Philosophy of Technology‎ by David M. Kaplan - In his consideration of another thing, a bridge, Heidegger notes the human ways and works that are gathered and directed by the bridge.
• Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the New Age‎ by Kishor Gandhi
• Sri Aurobindo and the New Age: Essays in Memory of Kishor Gandhi‎
• The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order‎ by Parag Khanna

This is a fundamental issue of trust and faith which has been shaken

Moneycontrol » News » Udayan's comments
Satyam: A cleverly crafted scam
Published on Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 13:56 Source: CNBC-TV18

...one bad apple does not mean that everything in the basket is rotten. Having said that will it shake investor’s confidence?

Absolutely and unequivocally yes, more than anything else that has shaken investor confidence. This is not one crooked stock broker scamming investors by leading them up and getting a line of finance from a bank, it is one of the country’s biggest companies; it is an index stock with a several billion dollar marketcap, it was thought just a few months back as one of the beacons of Indian IT and today the promoters come and said, everything that I shared with you was a complete scam.

Do you think this will have no repercussions? Absolutely not, that would be too simplistic an inference to draw. I am finding it difficult to articulate what one should after looking at the scale and magnitude of this scam which has played out, where the promoter in five pages has just blown the biggest scam going in this country and has submitted himself to the forces of law...

Who do you believe now?
Satyam is a company which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE); this is an index company, quarter after quarter it announces numbers which we take as gospel and we do a lot of analysis, every analyst does on whether margin slipped a bit and wage hikes happened and now you know that none of those numbers existed then who do you believe? Do you believe auditors, who are supposed to be looking at these companies?

This is a fundamental issue of trust and faith which has been shaken. One can forget about the Satyam stock much that we feel very bad about Satyam shareholders that is one company. Here you stand the risk of actually losing your faith and trust in the system, which is supposed to be policing the numbers which you have faith and trust in. What happens to the auditors? This is a company which is not a fly by night small company, it is listed on a global exchange, global investor – they are supposed to be following US GAAP norms etc and quarter after quarter they keep blinkering all their investors and none of us find out till the promoter one fine day decides to confess.

Could there be more companies doing these kind of thing? What are the auditors doing? How will we ever know? You and I cannot be looking at going into and checking the bank accounts of Satyam and what they earned in a particular quarter or not. At some level there has to be an implicit code of faith that we believe what is posted on the walls of the exchange but today we cannot. So what are these people doing – these auditors and tax consultants and even rating agencies, how have they conducted themselves over the last two-three quarters. It is absolutely appalling.

[Raju confesses: Why and how of the Satyam con Since about seven years, we wanted to show more income in the account to avoid others from involving in company affairs and any other possible hostile takeover situation, and hence, manipulated the balance sheet to attract more business and show unavailable amount as available cash in hand.This process continued for the last seven years and margin amount shown got increased much more year after year. Moneycontrol » News » Business]

[Does one bite the hand that feeds it? It’s a time tested phrase that lies at the very heart of the Satyam scam and the systemic flaws that allow such frauds to be carried out, undetected... All independent directors or auditors are not unscrupulous. But there is an obvious conflict. Perhaps these things aren’t spoken about as it is a system that works mostly, with the odd scam here and there. But for my money, a new system needs to be thought about. Else, you’ll simply be hoping that those you trust are not crooked. And that isn’t good enough.

These bodies must get their bread buttered by the people they are trying to protect against fraud. Investors, not company managements or promoters. Is it so difficult to devise a system where auditors and rating agencies are paid by the ‘users’ of the information they dish out? I doubt it. Leaps of faith HT 11 Jan 2009 Udayan Mukherjee is Managing Editor, CNBC TV18]

The human spirit has still to find itself, its idea and its greater orientation

1919

THE year 1919 comes to us with the appearance of one of the most pregnant and historic dates of the modern world. It has ended the greatest war in history, begotten a new thing in the history of mankind, a League of Nations which claims to be the foundation-stone for the future united life of the human race, and cleared the stage for fresh and momentous other constructions or destructions, which will bring us into another structure of society and of the framework of human life than has yet been known in the recorded memory of the earth's peoples. This is record enough for a single year and it looks as if there were already sufficient to give this date an undisputed preeminence in the twentieth century. But it is possible that things are not quite what they look to the contemporary eye and that posterity may see them in a very different focus. 1815 must have seemed the date of dates to the men of the day whose minds were filled with the view of the long struggle between the ancient regimes and revolutionary France and then between Europe and Napoleon. But when we look back at present, we see that it was only a stage, the end of the acutest phase of struggle, the commencement of a breathing-time, the date of a makeshift which could not endure. We look back from it to 1789 which began the destruction of an old order and the birth of a new ideal and beyond it to later dates which mark the progress of that ideal towards its broadening realisation. So too posterity may look back beyond this year 1919 to the beginning of the catastrophe which marks the first collapse of the former European order and forward beyond it to dates yet in the womb of the future which will mark the progress towards realisation of whatever order and ideal is destined to replace it. This year too may be only the end of an acute phase of a first struggle, the commencement. of a breathing-time, the year of a make- shift, the temporary halt of a flood in motion. That is so because it has not realised the deeper mind of humanity nor answered to the far-reaching intention of the Time-Spirit.

In the enthusiasm of the struggle a hope arose that it would sweep away all the piled-up obstacles to human progress and usher in with a miraculous immediateness a new age. A vague ideal also syllabled eloquently of peace, of brotherhood, of freedom, of unity, which for the moment partly enlightened and kindled the soul of the race and gave its intellect a broader vista. Men spoke of the powers of good and evil separated on opposite sides and locked in a decisive conflict. These ideas were the exaggerations of sentiment and idealistic reason and in their excessive and blinding light many things took cover which were of a very different nature. The hope could not but be an illusion, a haloscene of the dream mind when it sees a future possibility in its own light apart from existing conditions. Human mind and action are too much of a tangled coil to admit of such miraculous suddennesses; the physical shock of war and revolution can break down stifling obstructions, but they cannot of themselves create either the kingdom of good or the kingdom of God; for that a mental and spiritual change is needed to which our slowly moving human nature takes time to shape its customary being. The ideal, a thing of the intellect and the sentiment only, cannot so easily bring about its own effectuation; force of circumstance, the will to survive of existing actualities, the insistent past of our own nature are not so easily blown away by the eager shouting of a few high and great words or even by the breath of the thought behind them, however loudly blare the trumpets of the ideal. Nor was the war itself precisely a definite issue between pure good and pure evil, - such distinctions belong to the world of the idealistic reason of which our actual intricate existence in whose net opposites are very bafflingly fused together, is as yet at least no faithful reproduction, - but a very confused clash and catastrophe of the intertangled powers of the past, present and future. The result actually realised is only such as might have been expected from the balance of the forces at work. It is not the last result nor the end of the whole matter, but it represents the first sum of things that was ready for working out in the immediate- ness of the moment's potency. More was involved which will now press for its reign, but belongs to the future.

The cataclysm of the last five years had a Janus face, one side turned towards the past, one turned towards the future. In its dealings with the past it was a conflict between two forces, one represented by Germany and the central Powers, the other by America and the western nations of Europe. Outwardly, imperial Germany represented a very nakedly brutal imperialism and militarism satisfied of its own rightful claim and perfection and opposed to the broader middle-class democracy - but democracy tainted with a half-hearted, uneasy, unwilling militarism and a liberalised, comfortably half-idealistic imperialism- of Western Europe. But this was only the outside of the matter, in itself it would not have been a sufficient occasion for so great a catastrophe. Imperial Germany and all it represented had to go because it was the worst side of European civilisation enthroned in all the glory of a perfect mechanical and scientific efficiency. Its figure was a composite godl1ead of Moloch and Mammon seated between the guardian figures of Intelligence and Science. It had its ideal, a singular combination of the remnants of the old spirit of monarchy and feudalism now stripped of all its past justification, of a very modern burdensome organised aggressive commercialism and industrialism and of a mechanised State socialism administered by an empire and a bureaucracy, all guided by an expert intelligence and power of science. This triple-headed caricature of a future ideal for the world, with its claim to take possession of the race and mechanise its life for it, had to be broken, and with it passed away almost all the old phantoms of aristocracy and survivals of aristocratic monarchy which still lived on in an increasingly democratic Europe. So much the war has swept away; but its more important and positive result is not the destruction of the past, but a shaking even of the present bases and a clearing of the field for the forces of the future.

The future does not belong to that hybrid thing, a middle- class democracy infected with the old theory of international relations, however modified by concessions to a new broader spirit of idealism. The peace which closes the war is evidently in part a prolongation of the past and a thing of the moment, its only importance for the future is its association' with the plan for a league of nations. But this league also is a makeshift, a temporary device awaiting the possibility of a more perfect formation.- Its insecurity lies in the degree to which it is a concession to the past and founded on a present which is indeed still dominant, but very evidently doomed to a rapid passing. The future destined to replace this present is evident enough in some of its main outward tendencies, in society away from plutocracy and middle-class democracy to some completeness of socialism and attempt at a broad and equal commonalty of social living, in the relations of the peoples away from aggressive nationalism and balances of power to some closer international comity. But these are only symptoms, feelings-out, mechanical tendencies, not likely by themselves, whatever changes they bring, to satisfy for long the soul of humanity. Behind them lies a greater question of the spirit and ideal which are to govern the relations of man with man and people with people in the age that is opening, the most critical because the most far-reaching in its hopes of all the historic ages of humanity.

Meanwhile much is gone that had to go, though relics and dregs of it remain for destruction, and the agony of a sanguinary struggle is ended, and for that there may well be rejoicing. But if something is ended, all has yet to be begun. The human spirit has still to find itself, its idea and its greater orientation. THE END Page-654 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > English > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > 1919

Alipore Bomb case was bigger than 1857. Sadly, our 'eminent' historians never told us this

OPED Saturday, October 11, 2008 Pioneer.com Politics of reaching out Udayan Namboodiri

By taking the first steps to greater political inclusiveness this week, LK Advani practically asked the Hindu Right to mend its own ways -- a Saturday Special focus

On the whole during this trial at every stage I could find, in the British legal system, how easily the innocent could be punished, sent to prison, suffer transportation, even loss of life. Unless one stood in the dock oneself, one cannot realise the delusive untruth of the Western penal code. It is something of a gamble, a gamble with human freedom, with man's joys and sorrows, a life-long agony for him and his family, his friends and relatives, insult, a living death. In this system there is no counting as to how often guilty persons escape and how many innocent persons perish".

The writer of these lines was Sri Aurobindo; the book, Tales of Prison Life, which was based on his experiences as an accused in the Alipore Bomb Case of 1908. The parallels of the context with that of today are vaguely eerie. A hundred years ago this October, Anglo-Indian officers of Calcutta Police were randomly rounding up Bengali boys in connection with bomb discoveries in the unlikeliest of places. A garden house in Manicktola, the rest room of a girl's school in Hatibagan, a chummery of east Bengali clerks in Sealdah, it seemed no place was safe. Thanks to the The Statesman's tradition of reproducing quaintly relevant news items from a bygone era in its "100 Years Ago Today" column, we are now getting to read some of the reports that must have filled the minds of the white denizens of the imperial city with so much anxiety back then.

Those who treat Sri Aurobindo as an icon must understand that Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, as played out in Independent India, is as much weighted on the side of the prosecution as in the famous savant's time. Draconian laws still insulate the police from critical inquiry and human rights are treated as so many doormats. Today's demanders of "tough laws" to fight terror must realise that without police reform and a thorough overhaul of the CrPC, a legislation like POTA-II would resemble a cart placed before the horse.

We are not commenting here on the content of revolutionary terrorism as celebrated by the Swadeshi movement as a necessary arm of resistance to British rule. Perceptions on what constitutes 'freedom fighting' and 'terrorism' are, as we well know, calibrated by the situation of the beholder. The intention is to point out how each age's law makers stand directly poised for confrontation by painting the guilty and the innocent with the same broad brush. Sri Aurbindo filled the pages of his dairy with heart wrenching stories of the degradations that perfectly honest human souls were subjected to under the pernicious British gaol system. He described in his subsequent book the farcical trials under the hypocritical jurisprudence that presided over the lives of ordinary mortals, filling them at once with great hope and depressing futility. He was eventually acquitted, but that's different. [...]

So, on the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's famous incarceration, they would do well to plunge into the ocean of Hindu philosophy in search of knowledge that could address the political insufficiency of some of their present postures. Advani, who would be 81 next month, has proved to them once again that majoritarianism could also mean the elder brother practicing what he preaches. Terrorism , like the black death, affects us all. Blaming "the Jews" didn't help last time and nor will it this time round. -- The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer

OPED Saturday, November 22, 2008 Pioneer.com 100 years of righteous terror Udayan Namboodiri

In terms of bequeathing a legacy, the Alipore Bomb case was bigger than 1857. Sadly, our 'eminent' historians never told us this

Exactly a hundred years ago today, 25-year-old Satyendranath Bose climbed the gallows at Calcutta's Alipore Jail with the cry Vande Mataram on his lips. His was the third hanging of the year. Fifteen-year-old Khudiram Bose and Kanailal Dutta (20) had preceded Satyen for bombing and shooting at representatives and agents of the British Empire. The entire country was left breathless by the competitive dare shown by middle-class, educated Bengali boys. All over Punjab, Maharashtra, Sind and, of course, Bengal, bards began spinning spectacularly panegyric yarns about boys, the milk still in their cheeks, merrily kissing the hangman’s noose before dying. Some of these songs have stood the test of time. Quite a few may have inspired a Bhagat Singh or a Subhas Chandra Bose. At any rate, India got its first batch of pure heroes.

This week, Saturday Special recalls the multi-layered impact of the Alipore Bomb Case that manifests in a variety of ways even today. We have just got over the 150th anniversary of the 1857 revolt. But, hype apart, how many scholars would disagree that its contribution to the future course of the freedom struggle was almost zero? Few actually. It's one thing to politely agree that it was the "first war of independence", but quite another to accept that its cause commanded widespread sympathy or that its actors were the stuff of folklore. Alipore, on the other hand, was both.

We feature alongside (main story), the noted American historian, Peter Heehs, whose authoritative work, The Bomb in Bengal: The rise of revolutionary terrorism, is respected as the first narrative history of the event even as it stops short of being uncritically laudatory.

The Alipore Bomb Case got its name from the district court of Alipore in which a clutch of cases concerning the same group of accused persons was tried. But no bomb actually went off there. On April 30, 1908 two members of Barindranath Ghose's wider circle, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki, threw the famous Muzaffarpur bomb, whose target was Douglas Kingsford, an unpopular Judge, but actually killed two innocent Englishwomen. Chaki committed suicide but Khudiram entered folklore for the calmness he exuded when mounting the gallows on August 11. Just as soon as the news of the blast reached the authorities in Calcutta, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Andrew Fraser, himself an object of three assassination attempts for being the real author of the Partition decision, decided to crack down on a garden house that was engaging the attention of police detectives for quite some time.

This garden house was located in Manicktola, an eastern suburb of Calcutta and was an ancestral property of the Ghose brothers. Barindranath wished to operate an Ananda Math-like group from there. His followers lived a spartan life on the garden. They stocked a great deal of guns, ammunition and explosive chemicals. They read the Gita, meditated and trained themselves in martial skills. The police had been watching the property for quite some time. After the Muzaffarpur incident, they decided to move in. Early on May 2, a large posse of CID officers and men swooped down on the garden house and arrested everybody they could find. They also raided the office of Nabashakti, a paper run by Aurobindo from downtown Calcutta and rounded him up. The owners of shops and houses suspected to assist the operation were also hauled away.

Wide publicity followed the mystical leader and his band of boy revolutionaries after the arrests. For the first time we see the latitude enjoyed by the native Press, even in the heyday of Empire, to defend the revolutionaries. Moral support often came from unexpected quarters. For example, Kier Hardie, a Scottish socialist who was the first independent MP in Britain, said, "the outbreak of terrorism is the natural outcome of the policy now being pursued in India." Therefore you had not only 'terrorism', but also an early 'root cause' theory. In retribution, bombs began to go off at regular intervals all over India. Terror gripped the European and Anglo-Indian communities. A unit of the British Army posted in Calcutta wrote to Viceroy Lord Minto that its members would not hesitate to slaughter every available Bengali if a even one European was hurt. On November 8, a young boy called Jatin Roy Choudhury, who was connected to Barindra Ghose's group via two members, shot at Lieutenant Governor Fraser at Calcutta's Overtoun Hall. He missed, but went on record saying, "If we kill one LG, other LGs will listen to our grievances."

The case was heard in two stages. The first, against 30 of the 35 arrested, began within a month. Alongside, there were two other cases called the Harrison Road Arms Act case and the Alipore Jail Murder case. The latter was over the murder of Narendra Nath Goswami, a follower of Barin Ghose since the early days, who was killed by Dutt and Bose inside the Jail Hospital because he decided to spill the beans as an approver. This was achieved on August 31 and, after a speedy trial, they were sentenced to death. Dutt was hanged on November 10. His body was taken in procession to the Kalighat burning ghat by thousands of people. This unnerved the government and when it was Satyen's turn to hang 12 days later, his body was cremated within the jail premises.

Aurobindo Ghose's stood trial as part of the second batch, the Judge presiding being Charles Porten Beachcroft, his contemporary at Cambridge University. Chittaranjan Das, the famous barrister and Congress leader, defended him for a nominal fee. The eventual verdict and its place in history are still intensely debated. The Judgment itself is part of the curriculum of many law schools. It was an excellent opportunity for the British to showcase the liberal core of their jurisprudence and Judge Beachcroft exploited it to the hilt. Though there was a mountain of evidence implicating Aurobindo Ghose, he was acquitted. Barindra and Ulaskhkar were sentenced to death (commuted on appeal). Seven others were jailed for varying lengths of time and the rest were acquitted.

The legacy: The Alipore Bomb case marked a personal watershed for Aurobindo. It also changed the course of the freedom movement. He was left disillusioned by terrorist tactics and underwent a paradigm shift in his attitude, chosing thenceforth to become a great spiritual savant. But the spirit of righteous war did not leave successive generations of freedom fighters. Hundreds of so-called terrorist groups mushroomed all over India and even abroad. Though Nehruvian and Marxist scholars gave predominance to Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence in school history texts -- about the only ‘history’ most Indians ever get to read -- it cannot be denied that the British felt more exercised by those who followed Aurobindo's principle.

Academician Rakesh Sinha (The Other Voice) recounts some of the latter-day teachings of Aurobindo while Dr Heehs reflects on the conceptual divide between terrorism of the form we know today and what was celebrated by the early Bengal patriots. ry of the Indian freedom movement. -- The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer. The Search Results are given below using word ALIPORE BOMB CASE 'God cannot be jailed' 22 November, 2008 The bomb that shook an Empire 22 November, 2008 100 years of righteous terror 22 November, 2008 Politics of reaching out 11 October, 2008 Alipore bomb case to be exhibited at SC museum 12 May, 2006

Justice as fairness, Rawls said, aims to effect a “reconciliation of liberty and equality”

Rawls from Philosophy Talk: The Blog by John Perry

"In A Theory of Justice (1971, 1999), John Rawls proposed a striking and original marriage of liberty and equality, animated by a tolerant and democratic faith in human possibilities. For much of the past century, the idea of a politcal philosophy devoted to both liberty and equality seemed to many people a contradiction in terms. Outraged by vast differences between the lives of rich and poor, egalitarians condemned the classical liberalism of John Locke and Adam Smith for giving undue attention to legalrights and liberties, while remaining in different to the fate of ordinary people.

• Traditional liberalism, they complained, prized equality before the law, but showed complacency in the face of profound and grim inequalities of fortune on earth.
• Classical liberals, in contrast, embraced personal liberty, and condemned egalitarians for their paternalism and willingness to sacrifice human freedom in the name of some possible future utopia.

Practically speaking, democratic welfare states tried, with more or less success, to ensure personal and political liberties while protecting indviduals from unforgiving markets. But the philosophical options seemed starkly opposed. In between Friedrich von Hayek's classical liberalism and Karl Marx's egalitarianism, every thing was an unstable political compromise, or an ad hoc balancing of competing values.

"A Theory of Justice changed all this. Rawls proposed a conception of justice – he called it “justice as fairness” – that was commited to both the individual rights we associate with classical liberalism, and to an egalitarian ideal of fair distribution conventionally associated with socialist and radical democratic traditions. Justice as fairness, Rawls said, aims to effect a “reconciliation of liberty and equality.” His work prompted a remarable renaissance of political philosophy in the United States and elsewhere (A Theory of Justice has been translated into more than 20 languages), and has provided the foundation for all subsequent discussion about fundametal questions of social justice." From "The Importance of Philosophy: Reflections on John Rawls" S. Afr. J, Philos. 2004, 23(2)

Becoming critical, competent, conscious, & compassionate

"Such a Body We Must Create:" New Theses on Integral Micropolitics Daniel Gustav Anderson INTEGRAL REVIEW December 2008 Vol. 4, No. 2 Anderson: New Theses on Integral Micropolitics

Leo Strauss (1973), the intellectual forefather of American neoconservatism, accurately frames this problem from the perspective of the subject-at-large:

What is called freedom of thought in a large number of cases amounts to—and even for all practical purposes consists of—the ability to choose between two or more different views presented by a small minority of people who are public speakers or writers. (p. 23)

If anything like the Habermasian public sphere exists now, it is effectively rigged, much as the game of brand preference is for any kind of commodity. Whether one chooses cigarette X or cigarette Y, one chooses cancer rather than any kind of fulfillment; if democracy as it is known in any given Western state is the final-perfect form of government, then the scope of one’s choices is effectively foreclosed.

I propose instead that everyone attempt to take up the discipline of making new values, and that those who master this practice first must go further and make space for others to learn how. Transformational practice demands one take responsibility for what one can be responsible for. If a comprehensive transformation is to occur, one must be able to take real responsibility for two factors, the means of production and reproduction of established society, and subjectivity, political consciousness (Marcuse, 1969, p. 56).

Ortega y Gasset (1993) takes responsibility of this kind to be "the Herculean task of genuine aristocracies" (p. 21); by contrast I take this to be the task first of a critical vanguard working from the bottom up—working, precisely in Ortega y Gasset’s formulation of effortful servitude and discipline (p. 63), or in Gurdjieff’s famous summary of his own practice, conscious labors and intentional sufferings. This is real responsibility, or becoming-responsible.92

Becoming-responsible is a practice that includes both interventions and takes many forms. One can see from this discussion of transformation and intervention that a responsible vanguard or agent must have at minimum the following four characteristics:

• Becoming-critical. One is able to read one’s moment clearly, without misunderstanding.
• Becoming-competent. One is able to take self-directed action toward an intelligent (critical, conscious, compassionate) aim with increasing skill; one is willing to learn.
• Becoming-conscious. One is able to intentionally disabuse oneself of mechanically-acquired habits and attitudes that lead to misunderstanding, incompetence, and incomplete or distorted compassion, and take action that is creative (novel) rather than merely recreative or repetitive.
• Becoming-compassionate. One is able to select aims and actions not for the sake of one’s regime-investment or personal narrative but for the benefit of one’s community and, ultimately, all of animated nature diversely framed. This demands critical intelligence, life competence, and disciplined consciousness.

89 In theological language, one might say that the first intervention corresponds to the "turn" of one’s intentions to the divine in recognition of the divine that Buber (1958) describes.
90 According to Marcuse (1969), "radical change in consciousness is the beginning, the first step in changing social existence: emergence of the new Subject" (p. 53), suggesting that the emergence of this new subjectivity is the task of the second intervention. [...]

Ziporyn (2004) gives four characteristics of the actions of one practicing revolutionary desire, a charismatic: inexplicability, absolute confidence, sacrifice, and meaninglessness. 10:08 AM 9:33 PM 9:35 PM 8:30 AM 10:53 AM

Like Hegel, Sri Aurobindo characterizes this evolution as Providential

Imperialism. Rosa Luxemburg demonstrated early in the Twentieth Century that, under empire, the world became consumed without margins, nondual in an unusual sense, under a global regime. The task of capital in this phase was to integrate control over its imperial members socially and subjectively. Thus, post-Hegelian and positivist synthesis is explored (Aurobindo, Gebser67), but on the terms of Spirit rather than the literal cannon.68

The critical question is whether this attempt is an ideological cipher or mimicry for European force, as I suggest it is in important ways for Aurobindo (Anderson, 2006), or if it is a redoubling of spiritual and intellectual force against this hegemony, as I think it usually is in the tradition of Marxist and post-Marxist critique. This question remains a live one; my intention here is only to frame it for further inquiry in order to show that what we call integral critique at the time of capital’s explicitly imperial period responded directly in form and content to the conditions of an imperial regime.

This still very much matters because imperialism carries on, if in different forms and by different means than it was implemented during the Scramble for Africa (see Chile, 1973 or Iraq, 2003), and the residual forms of the early integral response (such as Aurobindo’s Providential theory of evolution) remain in the writings of key integralists as functioning ideologies or residuals.

66 Capitalism is understood here not as a set of values or a static structure but as a dynamic kind of regime best described as a very large and aggregated machine that, with some intelligence but with or without responsibility, functions by constantly breaking down and consuming bits of itself as fuel and as raw materials (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983)—in short, reinventing itself in fits and starts (see Thesis Seven).
67 I find the origin of integral theory as an intellectual movement in Aurobindo’s post-Hegelian positivism (Anderson, 2006); Hampson (2007), in a useful counterbalance to my position, cites Gebser’s positivist, post-Hegelian synthetic work as the foundational gesture of integral theory. Both positions have merit, and broadly speaking, do not contradict, insofar as both Aurobindo and Gebser were working from largely the same intellectual milieu the Hegelian and post-Hegelian idealism Wilber (2000a) praises as a "lost opportunity" (pp. 523-537) and in the context of Empire’s transformations. Such is the ambivalence of the post-colonial situation.
68 Integral praxis has arisen under the aegis of private property, as a response to it—in some cases critical and oppositional, in some apparently so but not actually, in others still positively and explicitly supportive of the regime at hand. Since this is the case, if integralists are to have a complete understanding of our collective project, we need to develop the theoretic tools for understanding how our ideas circulate as commodities and as flecks of ideology—that is, by whom and how our work is deployed, under what terms, and under whose control. The Marxist tradition provides means for explicating all this ready-made and, in my view, already postformal if not always already-integral or responsible. Toward this end, one of the implicit purposes of the present inquiry is the continued patriation of Marxist and post-Marxist inquiry into integral discourse that I began in Anderson (2006).
Anderson: New Theses on Integral Micropolitics
INTEGRAL REVIEW December 2008 Vol. 4, No. 2 9:35 PM

Lobbying is marketing: to transform a group’s narrow interest into public interest

Lobbying Democracy in action
ET , 17 Dec 2008, 0512 hrs IST, Robert J Samuelson

Lobbyists have a bad rap, which is why politicians routinely vilify them. People want to blame their discontents on sleazy influence merchants. Periodic scandals confirm the stereotypes: the Jack Abramoffs who wine and dine legislators. But mainly the anti-lobbying bias is mythology.

Myth number one is that lobbying is anti-democratic , because it frustrates “the will of the people.” Just the opposite is true: lobbying is an expression of democracy. We are a collection of special interests; and one person’s special interest is another’s job or moral crusade. If people can’t organize to influence government—to muzzle or shape its powers—then democracy is dead. The “will of the people” is rarely observable, because people disagree and have inconsistent desires. Of course, the “public good” should always triumph, but what represents the public good is usually debatable. The idea that the making of these choices should occur in a vacuum —delegated to an all-knowing political elite—is profoundly undemocratic. Lobbyists sharpen debate by providing an outlet for more constituencies and giving government more information.

A second myth is that lobbying favours the wealthy, including corporations, because only they can afford its cost. Government favours them and ignores the poor and middle class. Actually, the facts contradict that. Sure, the wealthy extract privileges from government, but mainly they’re its servants. The richest 1% of Americans pay 28% of federal taxes, says the Congressional Budget Office . About 60% of the $3-trillion federal budget goes for payments to individuals—mostly poor and middle class. You can argue that the burdens and benefits should be greater, but if the rich were all-powerful , their taxes would be much lower. Similarly, the poor and middle class do have powerful advocates. To name three: the AARP for retirees; the AFL-CIO for unionized workers; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for the poor.

A final myth is that lobbying consists mostly of privileged access to legislators or congressional staffers—and that campaign contributions buy that access. Although this happens, it’s not the main story. “Lobbying is much more substantive and out in the open than its ugly caricature. Lobbyists primarily woo lawmakers with facts,” writes Jeffrey H Birnbaum, the veteran lobbying reporter. If lawmakers “see merit in a position and there is a public outcry in its favour, that’s the way they tend to vote.” Lobbying is marketing: trying to transform a group’s narrow interest into something perceived as the “public interest.”

In 2008, there are about 16,000 active registered lobbyists—people with sufficient congressional contacts that by law they’re required to report, says the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s up about 50% since 1998. But there are also hordes of public relations consultants, advertising managers, Internet advisers and policy experts primed to influence government. When political scientist James Thurber of American University counted all these others, the influence-lobbying complex ballooned to 2,61,000. Under Obama, this complex will expand. Of course, it can capture public policy for private purposes.

Sometimes this involves discreet favours: budget “earmarks,” tax breaks or regulatory preferences. Though large for recipients, most are small in the context of government. What matter most are the major policies that determine the government’s overall size and direction. Lobbying ensures robust debate on these issues , and whether the ultimate outcome is for good or ill, it’s democracy in action. (c) 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group

***

July/August 2003 Atlantic
Americans censure nepotism on the one hand and practice it as much as they can on the other. There's much to be said for "good" nepotism, the author argues—which is fortunate, because we're living in a nepotistic Golden Age
by Adam Bellow
In Praise of Nepotism

The tendency in American life since World War II has been toward individualism, mobility, and the dissipation of family bonds. The "return" of nepotism therefore seems especially disturbing. Critics from both left and right have pointed out the worrisome consequences of reviving the hereditary principle. Several writers have recently argued that after a long period of extreme social mobility and mixing, the United States is undergoing a new process of stratification. Call it what you like, the overclass, the cognitive elite, the meritocracy, today's American elite increasingly lives in its own segregated communities, sends its children to the same exclusive schools, marries within its own class, and acts in other ways to pass on its accumulated wealth, position, and privileges. In other words, the American meritocracy appears to be turning into an exclusive, inbred caste. [...]

Indeed, we should not only respect great families but try to be more like them. Rather than simply seeking to punish or stamp out the bad kind of nepotism, we should reward and encourage the good. The risks inherent in the return of dynastic nepotism have been exaggerated and fail to take into account both the progress of meritocracy and the power of social envy in a democracy. Dynastic heirs walk on very thin ice in our society: we readily grant them the benefit of the doubt, but we hold them to extremely high standards, and at the first sign of their failing to meet those standards, the hammer comes down hard.

Nepotism may be objectively discriminatory, but given that people are going to practice it anyway, we may as well infuse it with meritocratic principles so that all can benefit. Let families compete for public honors; this has always been the soul of republican virtue, and it is up to us to recover this tradition in every generation. The spirit of family enterprise gives dignity and meaning to our lives, and is not only a spur to achievement but also a check on excessive ambition. It links the generations in a chain of generosity and gratitude. We would all be better off if we reflected more consistently and deeply not only on our debt to our ancestors but also on what we owe our descendants. Adam Bellow is an executive editor at large for Doubleday. This article has been adapted from his book, In Praise of Nepotism, to be published in July by Doubleday. Amazon.com: In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History: Adam Bellow