My usual gang here at IIT, we hang out at Nishant's room (H5, #76), be it after dinner, after lunch, just bored, just about anytime. And occasionally, we end up having disagreements. And today was one such. It was the usual Capitalism vs. Socialism debate that's been haunting me for a while now. And this time, I tried playing the devil's advocate and tried defending Capitalism; tried everything I had in my arsenal: globalization, trickle-down effect, jungle-culture, primal-instinct, and myriad other theories. When Amit was here a few weeks back, we had had the same argument through his entire stay in Bombay, and I tried to remember what he had used then, and tried in vain to use it now. But after an hour of heated discussions, I realized that it is incredibly hard to defend something you truly don't believe in.
I salute this aspect of defence lawyers, esp. the ones who know whether their clients are guilty. I wonder how many of them go through conscience turmoils when their professional ethics force them to defend a guilty client and their personal morals abhor the same client.
Speaking of dilemmas, I watched and loved Swades. As Upperstall put it, its one of the few good big movies which has some social message. I will watch it again in a theatre.
Speaking of academics, I am working on the open source search engine, Nutch these days. I don't know whether it will result in any solid contribution to the community, but I do hope that I get the required grades :)). Will get back to that now.....
2 comments:
It takes a lot to defend something that you don't believe in. It involves selling your soul out to a certain extent and at the same time, sticking to your business of argument. In the end, I feel like repeating a cliche (I hope it becomes one) I seem to have coined - Philosophy has more questions than answers. As a corollary of this, not all of us could be convinced about our schools of thought. As I write, I realize although capitalism and socialism are ideas that run head to head against each other, one need not necessarily be 'better' than the other. Here, I'm coming to an understanding that ideas are not quantifiable commodities. And 'better' is a very relative term. I'm afraid I'm making cliched statements. But that's OK. The concept of 'better' has so much to do with 'to whom?'. There are people who argue that America's belligerence is justified in view of 'better' security for american people. But what of the innocent Iraqis and Afghans, who don't care about American security, killed in these 'security' exercises? Clearly, American belligerence is not for the 'better' of these civilians. So, when we talk of better, it is important that we qualify ou talk by 'to whom?'. This way, we can't even mention about stuff like the general good of the society. There might be individuals and groups who are 'excluded' in the general good of the society. For instance the recent stir by the Kannada filmdom was about the general good of KAnnada film industry. But there were segments of the industry like technicians and cinema-hall owners who were adversely affected by the stir that was indeed for the overall good. We might say these are sacrifces to be made. But it is important that who makes a sacrifice for whom. As a technician in Kannada film industry, I'm willing to make a sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. I'm willing to fight for India's freedom so that my son may live in a free nation. But I'm simply not willing to make a sacrifice for the betterment of the community of actors and producers. As a freedom fighter I'm not prepared to be shot so that my neighbors unborn son may live ain a free country. So, it's time we redefine 'better' in a more specific way. THERE IS NO OVERALL GOOD. Socialism might be a better system for the soiety. But as a firts generation entrepreneur who has toiled hard for his millions, I'm not prepared to be robbed of my millions for the betterment of the society.
As I've told Teja, the ideologies we stick to depends so much on what works better for us, I mean selfish interests. When we say, something is better for the society, what we are doing (perhaps unknowingly) is promoting our self interest in the guise of social good. It probably makes sense that we acknowledge this elemnt of selfishness rather than trying to fool ourselves and everyone else. The advocates of socialism are advocats of socialism because socialism, in addition to its professed goal of social good also serves well the self interest of socialists. And no, I'm not trying to defile socialists or proponents of any other idea. I'm not accusing them of moral corruption. I'm only trying to say that self interest is natural, legitimate and present even in altruists. Clinging to an ideology to serve one's self interest is only logical.
Finally, we have this issue of conflict of interest. Whose side to take when there is a conflict of interest?As expounded before, it depends on our self interest and that's what we utimately go by. I don't agree with the idea of taking one side during a conflict of interest because that side happens to be the majority. We have every right to side with the majority. That's because siding with the majority is in the direction of our selfish (not unholy by any means) strategies rather than that siding with the majority is ethical. Nothing is fully ethical when there is a conflict of interest. Perhaps the most ethical thing we can do about conflict of interest is to try and change the cannibalistic system mankind has built over millenia. That might sound too utopic. Tha's OK. Armchair philosophy is anyway utopic and what I'm writing is looks like armchair philosophy from any angle!
Samba...Wassup?
Nice to see you here :-))
This is more like a POST rather than a comment....
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