The Law, part 2

First part here.

(Before the Law by Franz Kafka)

The Law is esoteric, and its practice is a matter for experts. It is said that "Ignorance of Law is no excuse", but who knows the law completely?

The Law can never treat people equally because people's recourse to law differs, their power to defend themselves differs, their power to engage others to defend themselves differs.

Law is impersonal. The judge has to regard a criminal as well as an aggrieved person without subjectivity. In normal life, we judge people from their faces, stature, clothing, mannerisms, body language, tone of voice, warmth, vibe, tears, smirks... To all that, Law is (and perhaps should be) blind.

The ideal judge would be a computer which through sheer formal analysis decides the matter. Ideally, laws would be specified in formal language. But then, they would be opaque to who they impact.

Are there undecidable matters, impervious to rigorous analysis? On what basis are they decided in the real world? The judge's mood, the lawyer's energy, the regularity of the plaintiff's jaw?

In civil suits, there is always someone trying to gain unjustly. If they lose, the courts rarely if ever punish them for the harassment caused to the winner. Their loss of the lawsuit is deemed sufficient penalty. Costs are rarely imposed. "Dragging" someone to court, if concluded in a loss for the plaintiff, must be considered a criminal offense. It is not very different from dragging someone to a wrestling pit and then raining blows on them, forcing them to defend themselves.

Most people disregard the extent to which the economic disparities are conserved at the point of guns. If you see massive disparity in a society, but no guns, look closer.

An act to violate someone's rights is one kind of a crime. I think it is also a crime, perhaps a greater one, to put someone in a situation of peril where he has to break the law in order to uphold his rights and his peace. It is a greater crime because one has created a criminal from a righteous man, and then the might of State is turned onto him. From then on, he will not trust the machinery of law to protect him, and will regard it as foolishness to be law abiding.

Creating a just Law is one of the most solemn tasks given to man. The Bill of Rights is a paean to the American notion of freedom, and limits to what extent the State shall govern the citizens of that country. "The congress shall make no law ..." On the other hand, consider the language of the Fundamental Rights of a slavish country like India:

Freedom of speech and expression, which enable an individual to participate in public activities. The phrase, "freedom of press" has not been used in Article 19, but freedom of expression includes freedom of press. Reasonable restrictions can be imposed in the interest of public order, security of State, decency or morality.

Freedom to assemble peacefully without arms, on which the State can impose reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order and the sovereignty and integrity of India.

Freedom to form associations or unions on which the State can impose reasonable restrictions on this freedom in the interest of public order, morality and the sovereignty and integrity of India.

Freedom to move freely throughout the territory of India though reasonable restrictions can be imposed on this right in the interest of the general public, for example, restrictions may be imposed on movement and travelling, so as to control epidemics.

Freedom to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India which is also subject to reasonable restrictions by the State in the interest of the general public or for the protection of the scheduled tribes because certain safeguards as are envisaged here seem to be justified to protect indigenous and tribal peoples from exploitation and coercion.

Freedom to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business on which the State may impose reasonable restrictions in the interest of the general public.

While in the US Bill of Rights, the State is prohibited from infringing on a certain right, in the Fundamental Rights in India, the State is given discretion to violate those rights.

When the lawmakers are non-representative, then the duty of a citizen to abide by those laws is not a given.

Civil Disobedience is today a crime.

The Law

One frequently hears: "Do not take law into your own hands." It is worth asking: "Why not?"

The truthful answer has to be: "Because you cannot be trusted to be just."

The law is a surjective mapping of states of anguish and outrage to procedural remedies.

If somebody does you "wrong", then you file a complaint, and watch as the circus unfolds.

Since the Law takes care, your masculinity, or bravery, or courage, or cowardice are irrelevant.

The law is meant to protect the weak, and thereby weakens the strong. It is a move towards equality. An effective law-enforcement system is essential to social equality.

The Western genre of films and fiction is a celebration of masculinity precisely because law has not been delegated to institutions.

The Hero exists because he directs (or resists) his fate. If the tools of engaging with fate are relegated to others, then heroism is going to become extinct.

There are no heroes in a metropolitan city. There are only those who know the process well, and others who are relatively ignorant.

The nerd is the future of man. The nerd is not an actor, but a twiddler.

"The opposite of manliness isn't cowardice; it's technology." (N N Taleb)

"Knowledge is power", but when it replaces "Will power" then it leads to emptiness and psychological impotence.

War is the absence of Law. There have been efforts to internationalize law, but to little effect. Countries fight with their neighbors using all the means at their disposal, but criminalize the same activity between two individuals within the nation. Even shouting at your spouse is a criminal act in many modern societies.

Some say, and I agree, that modernity is the dominance of the intellect over the emotional. Intellect is procedure, and procedure is by its very nature a wet blanket for the fire of emotion.

The Law can be considered a further step in the same direction. To not only relegate to reason, but to relegate to others whose job it is then to work within reason to address a wrong.

Unless it consists of psychologically neutered individuals, a law-abiding society is an alienating one.

The more law-abiding a society, the more it will need faux outlets for fulfillment.

The tribal does not need enlightenment. The city-dweller does. What the city-dweller seeks nostalgically is a feeling of aliveness, which has been usurped by the machinery of the city.

Consider (simplistically) the three levels of living: physical, emotional and intellectual. The city values only the third, with the first two being artifacts instead of being natural, spontaneous parts of one's day. How can it be a fulfilling life?

The Law is institutionalized and formalized conflict-resolution. What people seek is revenge and to hurt the other and to see tears on the other's face, what Law cares about is written argument and whether the affidavit is notarized. It is not nearly the same thing.

It is an interesting question to ask whether an advanced and evolved society will have more laws or less. Whether it will be able to trust its citizenry to be just and therefore take law into their own hands.

Gun control laws are opposed by "conservative" men unwilling to become applicants to the state to redress their wrongs, but are advocated by "progressive" feminists, leftists and believers in democracy and its institutions.

(to be continued)

Seeker vs the State

"My girlfriend is a vegetarian, so that pretty much makes me a vegetarian." (Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction)

Relating to a seeker is hard work.

Any relationship has a set of expectations. The very act of relating is a human act, which fulfills certain emotional and social needs.

If the relationship has no emotional expectations (say with a bartender), even then there might be expectations of a certain consistency in behavior, quality and service. Any transaction, even a conversation, is pleasurable only insofar as it assumes certain facts about human nature and about having a common ground of what we value.

A seeker seeks to challenge and to transcend the status quo of existing mores, values, sets of expectations, roles, automatic mental states and behavior patterns.

A significant question is: If everything is to be questioned, then what is to be enjoyed?

Traditional religion seeks to moderate our aggression and to cultivate nurturing and love. A religious person (as opposed to a fanatic) is generally found to be forgiving, kind and a believer in peace and harmony.

On the other hand, liberalism, hard-core spirituality and new age pooh-poohs personal love, the bonds of family, the joys of kinship, the harmony of complementary roles (parent-child, brother-sister, employer-employee, husband-wife) and tries to establish an egalitarian equality between humans (treat your child as a friend, your wife as a friend, your teacher as a friend, your employee as a friend).

This equality may seem like a progressive idea, but it leads to confusion, chaos, constant re-evaluation of any expectation born of roles, and hence stress. The student may gloat over a teacher who never scolds, but imagine how much harder the teacher has to now work, in the absence of authority. The wife (in a patriarchal society) may initially welcome a husband who decries and protests against gender roles and biological differences, but after a while she (as well as the husband) will be thoroughly confused. Any expectation or resentment towards the other will be evaluated and questioned internally rather than it finding resolution via the other. Spontaneity might be left to trite matters, such as having dinner and who showers first. For the deeper emotional needs and growth, egalitarianism might be counter-productive.

A seeker likes to say that he or she does not need anything from the other. Not only is it narcissism in disguise ("you are not important to me"), it is counter to human nature to be in a relationship where there are no needs and expectations. It is no longer a relationship then, even though there may be regard, politeness and care. Fellowship is a poor cousin to love and attachment.

If the other is important, then it means I am not sufficient for my own happiness, and this admission is highly problematic for a seeker.

Of course, personal love (like all matters human) is problematic and rarely a smooth ride. But a seeker's rejection of its undeniable role is even more problematic. The rejection of personal relationships genuinely leaves no space for the other. The other has all the space, limitless in fact, but that is not the same thing as the other having a space in one's heart.

Those relating to and loving a seeker are not primarily looking for compassion, but passion. Not friendship, but belonging. Not detached playfulness, but attached longing. Not forgiveness all the time, but also anger and reactivity. Not just a soul, but also a body and a mind and a heart.

A seeker thinks that by diminishing reactivity and normal human impulses, he/she is making it easy on the other. This is a fallacy which needs to be probed. The impulses and reactions and needs and expectations and suchlike are what a relationship is. In the absence or diminishing of these, the relationship itself is diminished. It may become more peaceful in some sense, but it might be a fundamental mistake to think that peace trumps passion.

In the absence of normal human patterns, the relationship itself, being a human phenomenon, is nullified.

A spiritual seeker's primary, perhaps the only, relationship is with himself/herself. Despite protestations to the contrary, a seeker always puts himself, his values, his Utopian ideals, his seeking, first. Everything else is secondary.

Meerabai is an archaic case in point. Another one is Gandhi. I am not saying that they did not make valuable contributions to humanity or that they should have left their vocation for the sake of their husband or wife, or that they were not evolved or thinking people. I am saying that their personal relationships were failures and this fact needs to be plainly accepted as a consequence of placing more importance on what one believes than what the other person needs. Gandhi, in his (perhaps misguided) battle against his libido, never asked his wife if she was thereby sexually starved.

Is it inevitable that someone who challenges the status quo in one field cannot live a somewhat conformant existence in another? Perhaps not.

It is an error to go too wide in one's seeking. All that one will achieve at the end will be Oneself. It is not such a big prize, come to think of it.

Monkhood is therefore a more rational choice if you want to go all out (not that I recommend it). Then you do not put another through the misery of having his/her expectations thwarted.

Seek and question, but also accept. Do not blindly question everything. Accept what brings you joy, and what brings the other joy. Accept the transience of joy. Accept that joy may leave sorrow in its wake. Accept that joy outweighing sorrow is a life well-lived. Accept that needs are not fictions. Accept your own humanity, and that of the other.

To subject another to total rationality is to be insufferable.

To look too closely at everything is also a defect of vision.

Aphorisms on Suffering, part 2

Part I here.

The unconscious mind is not fully ours; it is part animal, part heritage.

The conscious mind is not fully ours as well; it is part society, part reasoning.

As Freud pointed out a century ago, civilization is a yoke on our instincts. That is what makes us human.

Similarly, reasoning (which is individual) is in constant friction with conditioning (which acts at the level of the collective).

"Will" is something marvelously human. It is to act under the guidance of the neo-cortex, with the drive (say, lust, or to seek approval) very likely being beneath the surface.

Suffering is the inability of our drives to find fulfillment and flourishing, either due to internal conflicts, or because of opposition from outside. An example of the former is lust versus shyness. An example of the latter is the desire for financial security versus currency inflation.

The conscious brain's primary purpose is to mediate between the various conflicting inner drives ("have better self-esteem"), and to seek a workaround/path through outer obstacles ("try to have a nest-egg in the bank").

Suffering has grades, obviously. Something might just lightly impinge on our moral senses (a news item about corruption in a far-off country), or something might lead of a paroxysm of pain (the death of one's child).

As long as one wants a certain state of affairs, the distancing from that state of affairs is tautologically painful.

Ved Vyas (in Bhagwad Gita) was naive is exhorting people to pursue a goal without desire. Why will they pursue at all? Why will someone go through intense pain and obstacles if there is no desire for the result? The most probable reason for this kind of exhortation is to have people follow the desires of others (kings and brahmins), which is an interesting kind of peaceful co-existence.

One's dharma is, in quite a few cases, others' desires.

Desire follows from attachment to certain states and values. If you say you do not desire anything, but still engage in willful acts, then you don't know yourself, yet. (it is at least highly probable that you are attached to a certain philosophy of seeming detachment, with spiritual undertones)

What is perhaps more useful is to say: Don't be needlessly attached. (someone criticizes Bon Jovi, and a fan commits suicide)

As long as there are inner drives, it is inevitable that they will conflict with each other at times. Inevitably, they will require prioritization and lead to suffering (the lower priority drive will feel thwarted). "What do you want more?" is an interesting question of the psyche, and one which has not received the kind of attention in spiritual literature that it deserves.

Similarly, as long as we exist in a physical world with limited resources and competition, it is inevitable that our desires for objects will meet with resistance.

To live is to live with this complexity.

The more developed someone's neo-cortex is, the more is the possibility of his conflict with his inner drives and with the external world. In that sense, though an infant cries, it is more in bliss than an adult who cries (because an infant's conscious brain does not intrude and say: do not cry).

Perhaps "ignorance is bliss" is better phrased as: "unconsciousness is bliss".

As an adult gains in consciousness, he gains also the consciousness of the various conflicts inside and outside. A child is blissfully aware that the world is an arena of conflict. An adult has to live with this knowledge. An adult wishes for infancy at times, but forgets that as an infant he was taken care of by other adults who had to live with what he wants to avoid.

If the inner conflicts are unbearable, psychological intervention is required. Similarly, if the outer conflicts turn violent (say, a war-torn zone), UN is supposed to step in.

On the other hand, there is a normal level of conflict (inner and outer), and hence of suffering, that is considered acceptable. A horny but shy adolescent is a normal human being. A poor man wanting a better life is considered to have normal desires.

Unfortunately, a high degree of suffering (due to circumstances, or due to sensitivity) can make one give up on life as it is, as being too stressful and not worth it. Depression, introversion, renunciation while in youth, celibacy, suicide, (unless whimsical) are results of severe maladjustment.

To know that suffering is inevitable, but to want to study it deeply and act so that its needless instances can be ameliorated (e.g. in cases where it is not a zero-sum situation), both for oneself and for others, is the hallmark of adulthood.

Seekers are infantile in their self-superiority.

No One Killed Jessica by Raj Kumar Gupta

This film raises many issues, many of them subliminal.

In brief, the film is about the bar-rage killing in Delhi in 1999 of Jessica Lal, a "celebrity barmaid", by a spoilt kid of a powerful politician, his manipulation of the witnesses and his subsequent acquittal, and about the media campaign which led to his re-trial and eventual conviction.

It is essentially a film about modernity versus medieval values. Modernity believes in institutions, in a faux equality before the law, and the strength of process, whereas tradition focuses on power structures and influence. More on this later.

Democracy can only function when people know what is going on. Only then can the protest and outrage begin. However, the vectors of mass media target mostly the middle classes.

The middle class is essentially risk-averse. It is essentially about consumption, evolution of status, safety, security, cocooning, avoidance of scandals, and a defensive and conservative attitude towards life.

If there is oppression and injustice, the approach of the middle classes is to work around it, and not to invite more trouble by protesting against it. The protests, if at all resorted to, need to be safe. Hence, middle class protests are marked by numbers (candle light marches, SMSes, online petitions), where there is no risk of being individually targeted.

There are hundreds of murders and thousands of instance of miscarriages of justice everyday, around the world. What was significant about Jessica's murder that it captured the imagination of urban India?

She was perceived as "one of us", a hep upwardly-mobile middle class, anglicized, fashionable, etc. It is easy to be outraged when the victim is more like us. The film repeatedly stresses that it could be "your sister" or "your daughter". If a tribal woman is raped and killed, urbanites can't easily identify with it and such incidents are generally forgotten.

She chose a certain profession, that of a "celebrity barmaid" where it is all about status. At such parties, the invited are the well-heeled, the powerful, the ones accustomed to servility in others. Whether it be the tasteful rich, or the nouveau rich, uncouth in their mannerisms, both classes expect to have their egos gratified in those ivory-tower gatherings.

I can personally attest to the fact that high-status bars and clubs are all about who can get which table, who can get the waiters and the barmaids to hover, who can bring in friends from the back door, and who is left standing in a corner waiting for one's drink. In such a place, it is foolhardy to not expect that, given the slightest provocation, egos won't explode. That's why bouncers are kept on a leash, and one is strip-searched at entrance.

On a digression, I urge you to read through this longish article about "bottle service celebrity watering holes". Also, note that Jessica Lal's next destination was Dubai, the mecca of decadent parties and pimping.

At such a party, the bartenders and waitresses have to be very careful and diplomatic while serving their clients. It is pretty clear to me that the accused, drunk with booze as well as power (and holding a loaded gun in his hands), suffered a narcissistic injury via Jessica Lal which provoked an explosive response.

Such bars and parties are also obvious petri-dishes for sexual preening and sexual status battles. Beware of a narcissist who is unable to get his fix of sexual attention in such a party. He will hold everyone as responsible for his pain, and will become abusive and aggressive. "You don't know who I am?" "You are attracted to THAT loser?" "You don't like ME?" "Let me teach you a lesson about not liking me."

The more one feels like a loser, the more the narcissistic rage boils.

Unfortunately, but revealingly, the film (being a cultural document) illustrates the "loser" characteristics. It is a wholesale snub to people-with-poor-taste-who-suddenly-have-money-they-shouldnt-be-allowed-at-the-Leela-Kempinski.

- The "Sai Baba" locket (the SWPLs have a platinum chain, or a US soldier tag)
- The "Jai Mata Di" celebration (the SWPLs drink while trance music plays)
- The Zingaro beer bottle (in the swimming pool scene) (the SWPLs drink single-malt scotch and vintage wine)
- Men dancing with men, while leering at women (the SWPLs make subtle passes, and have literate eye contact, and don't just grab women, they pinch it and crack a joke)
- Having a docile and dumb wife who wears a sari and covers her head
- Bad hair and bad noses

And so on...

This film is also a revealing look at the gender roles in the post-literate-inforati. Women are wantonly aggressive (rude epithets fly thick and fast), revealing dresses (which I continue to maintain is a power tactic), women hit men and sit on tables and block their way, extra-large red bindis (which I continue to maintain is an expression of "I'm Kali and you better not disagree with me"), women starting the act of sex, being on top, and then leaving suddenly without so much as an apology, reveling in being called a rancid bitch, a woman who is ready to be on the go 24x7 and who rebukes any other woman who isn't, who constantly puts others down, and men who are scared, soft and careful.

Coming to the gist of the film, the media-fueled conviction of the accused is as much a miscarriage of justice as was his initial acquittal. I see the incident as more of a road-rage-kind, and his being drunk and not having premeditated the murder must lessen the severity of his crime (which was a murder nevertheless). In US, there is the notion of degrees of murder. This crime falls in the category of "second degree murder" which is generally not punished with life-imprisonment.

In still-evolving democracies, miscarriages of justice, or past injustices are generally sought to be reversed with acts which are themselves prejudicial. In this case, the initial acquittal was obviously a miscarriage of justice. But so was the draconian punishment awarded by the superior court (due to the media circus).

On a last note, I strongly uphold the invalidity as evidence of statements-made-in-custody. This is one of the few safeguards against a police state anywhere.

See, for example, Murder on a Sunday Morning.