ECONOMICS IS NO NATURAL SCIENCE!THE HINDU WAY OF LIFE DESCRIBES 4 PURUSHARTHAS (GOALS): DHARMA, ARTHA,
KAMA, AND MOKSHA. ARTHA REFERS TO MATERIAL PROGRESS, WHICH IS
NECESSARY IN ORDER TO LIVE A BALANCED LIFE. THE BASIS OF ARTHASHASTRA
IS THAT ONE MUST STRIVE TO GENERATE WEALTH, RESOURCES, AND MONEY, AND
SHARE IT EQUITABLY TO CREATE HAPPINESS FOR ONESELF AND OTHERS. SUCH
GENERATION OF WEALTH MUST BE THROUGH ETHICAL MEANS, WHICH ALONE WILL
LEAD TO OVERALL HAPPINESS -KAUTILYA’S ARTHASHASTRA, BY TANMOY SINHA
Physics is natural law, so correct!
Economics is man made ‘flaw’, so incorrect!
Economics modernly occupies the highest pedestal on human engagement’s
altar. Entire world attention is riveted on economic activities of
countries, nations and societies. Economics seems to have usurped to
itself the sobriquet: zeitgeistspirit. Anything and everything
including the philosophy of life itself is reckoned on the touchstone
of economics. At the university economics enjoys stature equal to or
even higher than natural sciences. Human society world wide is ruled
by market, the central plank of all economics. Needless to say, the
present day zeitgeist is but expression of this very economics,
laisser faire economics at that. As such, it is worth our while to
throw the spotlight on economics with a view to find out the real
truth about it.
What is then economics?
Purely from academic point of view, economics is that science which is
society’s systematic method to run its market. It determines price
over ways of supply and demand. Ideally, it should stick to that very
specific function, again determining price of commodities. The point
thereby is to render efficient service to human beings.
How and under what conditions of social organization commodities are
produced in the first place, how price of raw materials going into
their production is set, how wage is paid, under what premises of
distribution of wealth, how labor is determined with regard to basic
requirements of human living, how the entire social fabric stands in
relation to that particular social activity, how for example the
produced wealth is distributed among participants of production are
not matters that should fall under jurisdiction of economics alone.
Ideally, the overarching Constitution of a social order takes on that
role because unlike all other participants in market i.e. commodities,
humans are not that, nor should be that. We may call it for
convenience’s sake as life’s philosophy- or simply life’s greater
purpose. For example, the Preamble to Indian Constitution mentions no
where market or economics , but focuses instead on the quintessential
as given in “JUSTICE, social, economic and political..”
For instance, the Sikh faith makes it very clear that their society
must follow the Kirt Kar and Vand Chhak paradigms. The former entails
full employment of citizens, the latter fair and equitable
distribution of produced wealth. That is so, the faith says, because
it believes in the rule of not only law but in equal and yet greater
measure of justice so that not one citizen, as a condition of
fulfillment of whole of social contract, comes to harm on same social
contract’s account. Market doesn’t even find a mention!
The odd citizen may still suffer, sure, for such is human make up
comprised as it is of complex of components that range from Prarabdh
to conscious Karma to the very elusive ill fate, but surely not on
social inadequacy’s account. Economics in this society is subordinated
to philosophy of life. That is what the ten Sikh Gurus showed as they
set example after example in this sort of highly meaningful living.
And because the living was so meaningful, filled with finest purpose,
the Sikh society was able to produce some of the most wonderful
cultural wealth ever produced on earth.
Take Langar-what an institution which ensures that no human being need
go hungry on starvation’s account or for that matter on any unforeseen
emergency’s or as well by desire and sure by need! Generations later
their 5th Guru, the Guru Arjun Dev arranges compilation of Shri Guru
Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Book, easily the finest, the deepest ever
knowledge on grammar of life presented in peoples’ own lingo. It is a
huge book, yet not one word is expended on economics, all of them on
living’s overall spirit and philosophy. This particular Guru, by
letting himself be willingly martyred, also set the stage for India’s
Freedom Struggle. Such wonderfully productive and purposeful ran the
recent Indian society- unfree at that- ruled over by philosophy along
its course. That was not all. More was to follow, wondrous sagas of
humans’ superhuman accomplishments. Their 9th Guru set another golden
standard in Freedom Struggle. Their 10th Guru marked the culmination
of humans’ extraordinary flight into horizons of top notch endeavor
and attainment. He created on earth Khalsa! We sing of those great
minds today with pious devotion and profound veneration.
Not just economics, but life’s overall philosophy fleshed up that
fertile society.
Today’s world is so sterile as regards richness of human
accomplishment. Actually, it is disappointingly fruitless, and such
fruits as are born on their tree of economics are rancid, bitter, bad,
even stinking bad. Wars, bloody wars without any particular reason or
rhyme are easily the bitterest fruit. Slow simmering burning of humans
on the stakes of their emotion, aspiration, ambition and innocent
yearning and fondness for a happy life is still worse fruit. It is
violence as of slowed poisoning of living tissue and suffering soul.
It is induced, nay, forced social necrosis!
Market is the culprit, and by derivation economics. Human society is
not made to serve economics. Human society has altogether other
purpose of its existence but one which is not only unknown to
‘marketeers’, but also not considered worth knowing and researching by
them. They have instead raised economics to the status of a deity on
their profit’s altar. Capital is their Pontiff. Economics is the be
all and end all of all their ablutions, why, the very quintessence of
being human beings! No wonder they live to suffer and also make rest
humanity burn in those hellish fires. They have reduced being human
being to being soils for seeding of all sorts of man-made needless woe
and suffering.
Severe and hard to bear as this senseless modernism is, it is really
worth our while to review economics and raise the question: is
economics truly a science?
Nature proceeds by its natural laws as of physics and chemistry and
biology. Every thing in nature runs frictionless, perfect, therefore
promoting of existence. Therefore, too, good and positive, advancing
of natural phenomena including the human civilization.
Economics runs by laws made by humans themselves. Price, the heart of
all economics is laid down by market, and that is a thing manipulated
by speculators, not overseen by society’s philosophers, much less
inspired! One may not live as one may like- market decides the
location, the size and shape of home. Millions live pig lives in
hovels of homes though they work hard, and again pay taxes.
Manipulators of market are themselves driven by profit greed, not by
some ethereal ideal which is expected of thinking human beings, for
that is how they distinguish themselves from rest animal species. To
complete this stark contrast, actually an unpardonable contradiction
caused by human hand, I may here bring in predators. The predators
appear to us so ferocious, and cruel, but in reality they are neither.
They are made so by nature. It is important to note here that however
‘violent’ of habit, even these predators do not exhibit ‘greed’. They
do not kill beyond their immediate food need.
Market, therefore economics, not overseen by living’s higher
philosophy, is driven by greed which brings into existence
competition, unhealthy predatory competition that peaks in such
monstrosities as bloody wars, imperialisms, Holocausts, Slavery,
Apartheid etc.
Therefore, by no stretch of imagination can economics be termed as a
natural science. There is nothing natural about it, nor are any
natural laws involved in its sub processes.
Greed is of course a natural faculty, the bad bitter fruit of
unrefined unreined desire. Humans themselves are complex natural
creatures, in the main spiritual which make up of theirs is supported
by their material body. Mind and intelligence are humans’ tools to
steer their course through life. The two are their voluntary ‘muscles’
as it were, usable at personal command, for example to smother greed.
Economics knows only the one faculty: greed. Market always fans, as
matter of its principle, consuming propensity’s fires. It gives little
chance to intelligence to work its way into the deal. For example, by
the correct use of intelligence, the great Einstein should not have
undertaken work which, he knew, would create on earth the demons of
nuclear energy, this jinni that is so out of bottle now, a constant
threat to human existence! Einstein has been certainly the top
intelligent human being in modern time.
Indian philosophy delineates all of five subtle spiritual faculties.
These come intimately interconnected. Any one of these five faculties
alone, if used unchecked, unreined, is enough to wreak havoc. It can
destroy the careless practitioner in a trice. We know all this all too
well in our today’s world, also from our own personal experiences.
Economics, as marketish as it is practiced, sets all five together in
motion, and, too, like hounds loose on incredulous humanity. To the
big misfortune of practitioners of the ‘art’ they are also made to
play in unison! Market sees to that. The end result is utter
devastation of all pristine purpose of being human. Humans are reduced
to being mere animals in their market jungles, ferocious predators of
the worst kind who hunt and feed on fellow beings’ body, feel and
emotion. It is a world of man made hells beyond all Dante imagination,
one that could easily put even the Yama to shame. In the Yama hell,
souls are held to account for their Karma, made to do penance in
horribly hellish ways. In these man made human hells in which we are
living, souls are made to suffer just like that, because they happen
to be born into societies where market, therefore economics rules the
roost, not the principle, philosophy and moral of life.
We can account for natural law. We can account for physics, chemistry
and biology right into the finest details of their nuanced processes.
We see so much orderly run of nature that sustains our lives. But
there is no accounting for taste. So we cannot account for human
taste, and for that market taste borne thereof. It is wild, Wild West
like wild. It is not natural, bears little resemblance to natural law.
It is, all of it man made, therefore unnatural, therefore imperfect,
therefore bound for the dumps as far as goals such as human happiness,
peace and sustenance of life are concerned, let alone exalted
destinations like Nirwanam, Parmdhaam.
Why, we are in the present day world- in the post postmodern world
ever more so- bearing witness to earth’s pollution and, as it seems
certain, eventual destruction at the hands poor thinking economists
and marketeers.
That would not be the case if economics were as natural a science as
is, say, physics.
The human world today finds itself in throes of its self destruction.
The next World War, even of Nuclear Holocaust caste, is no mere wild
imagination. It is already in works as one can easily foresee with a
little application of one’s foreseeing mind. Not a day goes by on
earth when war is not undertaken in pursuance of unbridled economics.
Economics scientists are busy at university researching ever new
methods to this madness of bloodying of all good, all pious in human
beings. Then they came up with colonialism, then they took to
imperialism. These days they have set up Globalization. They too
rubbed in their Outsourcing technology. Internet is a big aid. They
are by cloud computing just now. Still others are at work at their
dark universities to do more of the same for that which is still
worse. For example, Indians are thereby to revive Nalanda University.
The knowledgeable know the significance of that name. One of the
schools of studies they have in visor is Business School, obviously
the seat to research and devise ever new market technology. In other
words, that premier university should also perform work to make of an
unnatural science ‘natural’ science! Human misery, so diligently
market produced, economics inseminated, must not take an end! It must
‘advance’. A poet once stated it so: fakire shahar ke tan par libaas
baki hai, amire shahar ke armaan abhi kahaan nikle!
What an unholy unnatural science is this economics!
Finally, I went back to ancient books of humanity. Rig Veda is the
world standard. I drew on Upanishads. I consulted Vedant. I even
listened to the famous words of Vivekananda and read through texts of
his great Guru Ramkrishan Parmhans. With much the same care I took to
researching European economists of note, particularly so the Adam
Smith, and the political economist John Stuart Mill. No where did I
find economics ideas to even border natural sciences in the sense that
we understand physics, chemistry and biology and geology.
Perhaps our modern humanity needs to stop in its heels and ask itself
pointedly: is economics as by us practised not the false way to the
correct human denouement?
If they do that work, there is a chance that they may hit the truest
goal of being human.
If they don’t, it is, as the Hindus say, transmigration of soul ad
infinitum, the human world no better than the animal world it is
always at pains to brand as the ‘lower’ , the ‘lesser’ as the theirs.
What a false assessment of matters mistaking the unnatural science of
economics for a natural science.
The math would never work for advancement of human civilization.
Quite the contrary, it is a menace, a means to certain self
destruction not excluding destruction of our life supporting planet.
Economics is, when run out of human reason’s bounds, as it currently
very much is in that it orders around civilization’s bearings, a
villain of piece in the human drama. Unless checked and brought under
philosophy’s control, it is licence to humanity’s doubly assured
perdition.
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