Facts in Human Affairs

Facts in Human Affairs

Here are some thoughts that are very basic and which I am sure have occurred in some form to almost everyone at some point. But I think that they may still be worth noting. 

Facts in Quantitative Fields and in the Natural Sciences

In quantitative fields such as mathematics, basic physics, basic finance, etc., one can usually (though not always) be reasonably confident that published data, analyses and conclusions have undergone some scrutiny. 

What is more, in principle, if one has sufficient skill and time, one should be able to verify any given, claimed measurement or result oneself, directly, through careful observation, logic, computation, etc. This ensures that one cannot usually get away for long with "manufactured facts" or other nonsense.  

Does this mean that these fields are free of dogma, blindness, selective reporting or outright fraud? No. But usually these things cannot be maintained indefinitely. This is precisely because there is no "authority" in these fields, other than the test of verifiability or reproducibility. 

This gives us a bedrock on which we can build with at least some confidence. 

Numbers are of course things that are seen as having minimal fuzz, although they are almost never completely free of that. In any case, quantitative observations often provide a firmer basis than qualitative ones do for connecting our mental constructions with physical reality.

What happens, for instance, in the physical sciences, to a theory that predicts a number that does not match the number produced by repeated, careful measurements made in the "real world"?

Such a theory, however hallowed by earlier verifications of other predicted numbers and however venerated for elegance or intuitive appeal, has to be either modified or discarded. There is no way out of this. 

But even in those natural sciences that have traditionally been less quantitative, such as biology, observation that is replicable remains paramount. 

Limitations on Objective Methods

The natural sciences and the quantitative fields have great strengths. However, like everything else, they are limited in their range of applicability. No one in his/her right mind would try to apply these, for instance, to the purely subjective phenomena within an “individual sentience”. By definition, such phenomena are usually accessible only to the being experiencing these. They are not usually accessible to others. So these things are not objectively verifiable. 

I cannot, for instance, really feel your pain or your pleasure, although I may have some degree of connection with you and so also some empathy in this regard. It is the same, more generally, with all sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, memories and imaginings. 

Indeed, identity itself cannot be identified through objective means. The “I” dissolves upon examination. Nor would “I” be able to find “you” anywhere in “your” body. And vice versa. 

Facts in Human Affairs

Be that as it may, what we find, in human affairs, is that the precision or replicability that one depends on in quantitative fields and in the natural sciences is rarely possible. What is more, human affairs can be greatly tangled and complex, with interactions, for instance, between psychology and finance, and more generally between expectations and results in every human field. 

It is difficult or impossible to disentangle this complexity, separate it into compartments, understand each part as best as we can and then put things back together to make the whole. 

The "analytic method" fails. There are too many interactions between the components. The whole is greater than the parts. This is at the cores of both the wonder of life and of society, as well as of their resistance to analysis.

One has also to be very careful about drawing definite conclusions based on anything other than first-hand, “eye-witness” knowledge. 

I learned that lesson very early on in my life. Even within the same house, two accounts of the same witnessed incident could vary quite a bit. And of course, with every retelling, things tend to be stressed, not stressed,  added, or left out. 

How much more potentially incomplete and distorted, then, are accounts of what happened a block away, across town, in a distant country or in the time of our grandparents or much earlier?

So, even with what may be reported and become generally accepted as factual, one has to be careful. 

History or Mythology?

From all the myriad events in a particular time period, even for a limited locality, a “recounter” or historian selects just a few. He or she repeats this for different time-sections, and then strings these selected events together into a sort of story, usually with just a few central characters, chosen out of the many possible. 

The persons who do this should not be unduly blamed. This is all that humans can usually do, trying to make some sense out of complexity. We tend to linearize or sequence, for instance, things that are fundamentally nonlinear or non-sequential in nature. This is also what  humans are most capable of comprehending. 

Stories are what we are told when we are young; stories are what we understand and enjoy. Stories are what we create or modify ourselves; they are what we use to make sense of the world. 

Given this, what should still be perceived clearly is that every historian has his/her biases and filters, these being dependent to various degrees on their own settings.

When I was still young, growing up in India, I began to try to listen to not just All India Radio or the BBC but also, when I could, to other radio broadcasts, including from countries with which India or the UK were at odds or in open conflict. I found that at times the same events were reported in ways that made one account look like the “photographic negative” of the other one, be the report from right across a common border or from a distant place. 

Over time, I came to realize that each nation-state constructs a national history that is a mix of selected facts and at times gross distortions of reality. So the “national histories” are to a degree “national mythologies”. Political events may, of course, lead to challenges to these mythologies. Unfortunately, too often, these are replaced by new mythologies that are just as distant from reality, if not more. 

Just as there are "national histories" that are in fact just as much "national mythologies", be these British, French, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese or whatever, so also there are theological and ideological narratives and worldviews that are, to various degrees, also a mix of selected facts and things that are not factual. 

This has long been clear in theologies, and more recently perhaps in the political and economic ideologies that are in some ways their descendants.  

Whether it be Western-Mediterranean fascism, the more lethal German-Nazi variant of that, socialism in its various forms, communism in its various manifestations, or globalizing free-market capitalism in all its past and current incarnations, or the various mixes of religion, nationalism and politics that have arisen across the world, we can see that each of these are continuations of the attempts by humans to make sense of the world, including the human world, through the creating of simplified models of its complexity. 

This is what physicists and others have been doing now for awhile, with considerable success and usually with no ill-intention--whatever be the positive or negative uses to which their work is put.  However, this is also what kingdoms and empires have used to justify their existence and propagation and what political parties use, for instance, to either maintain the present order or to challenge it. 

 

The War in Ukraine

Currently, we may have noticed, here in the USA, a divergence in reportage on the Ukraine War between Fox News on the one hand and CNN or MSNBC on the other. This divergence used to be common for domestic affairs but was much less noticeable in foreign affairs. So also, many of those in India may have a different view of the war than most of those here in the USA or in the UK. 

Who is right, and who is wrong? The reality is that each group of presenters--be it of politicians, businessmen or media, is usually presenting a selection of facts that favors the interpretation or slant they are inclined to. Whether doing so consciously or not, they are "selling" or "marketing" what is essentially as much a subjective, human product as an objective, factual view of certain aspects of the human world.  

I do not wish to enter here into the debates regarding the Ukraine War. Like all wars, it is an ongoing horror that should never have begun and should be ended swiftly. I am only using it as an example of very recent events that are viewed, depending on one’s location and/or affiliations, in very different, indeed almost opposite, ways.

One could give numerous examples of other wars, carried out overtly or covertly, during just our own lifetimes, for which our opinions or even our “facts” would differ widely, depending on our circumstances. 

The terms we use reflect this. One person’s “terrorist” is another person’s “freedom fighter”. One person’s “invader” is another’s “liberator”. 

A “government” we dislike becomes a “regime”.

The Last Famines in India, 1943-1945?

Facts do exist in human affairs. The "Bengal Famine" of 1943-44 was not a fiction, nor the group of famines that followed it in Southern India in 1945.  Nor were the many famines that had occurred earlier in the subcontinent, when it was dominated by the British East India Company and later under direct rule by the British Crown, products of Indian nationalist imaginations. They were real and they were horrors.

The same may be said of many other famines the world over, with humans often playing a large role, as occurred in British India, in creating these disasters. And this also true of many great massacres, including even  genocides that were multi-continental in scope, that rarely get much attention or are even remembered. 

However, while in school in Kolkata and later in Delhi, I learned naught about these more recent catastrophes, including the “Bengal Famine” of 1943-44 that had occurred, in my region of birth (Bengal), less than a decade before that birth. It is possible that I might have learned more about it, if I had taken, after class 8, the Humanities or Commerce streams rather than the Science stream as I did—but I am not at all sure about that.

As it happened, If I had not seen my father's photographs, I would not have known that this great famine affected not only Bengal proper but also adjoining Orissa/Od'isha or that, in 1945, further famines extended deep into southern India, devastating parts of what are now Andhra, Telengana and Karnataka—and even reaching what is now Kerala. 

I am sure there were other places that were also affected, missing from my father's reportage because he could not travel to those places. 

When one tries to investigate the causes of these famines, that of 1943-44 localized mainly in Eastern India and those of 1945 spreading into Southern India, one finds that one has a lot to learn, even about things that were so momentous, so local to many of us and so recent, occurring shortly before our births and so witnessed by those of our parents who were in the affected regions. 

South India Famine of 1945

Sometimes, events that occur simultaneously or in sequence need to be given a collective name to be even duly recognized and remembered. The term “South India Famine of 1945” (rather than the separate terms, “Andhra Famine”, “Famine in Mysore”, etc. that my father used to use earlier) might serve the purpose in this instance of the 1945 famines in these regions and adjacent ones.

Bengal-Orissa Famine of 1943-44

I still do not know much at all about the "South India Famine" of 1945 and it was only when I came across Madhusree Mukerjee’s ground-breaking work on the "Bengal Famine" of 1943-44—as recounted in depth in her book, "Churchill’s Secret War" (2010, 2018)—that I began to get a better idea of what had occurred during that famine, why it had occurred, the historical background for it that stretched back to the rapacious policies of the British East India Company and the wider connections of that particular famine with events in the world and in the subcontinent. 

< As this section had become perhaps too long, I have moved the central body, which is in many ways crucial, to an appendix at the end.  --AJ, 2023-02-21>

Ms. Mukerjee's revelations, including the active

role of Churchill and others in his circle in bringing about, worsening and prolonging the famine, have subsequently been taken up by others who have publicized these findings, with or without credit to the source, as is usual. 

People resident in the major cities, especially Kolkata, probably fared better by far than those in many rural areas, although they too saw people trekking in from the villages to the cities in search of food, only to die, in too many cases, in the streets there. 

Disconnections between Urban and Rural Areas and between Economic Classes

This disconnect between the typical upper middle class Bengali "bhadralok"  of Kolkata and their village countrymen and women was something even I had noticed as a young boy in Kolkata. Of course, just as visible, in Kolkata, was the disconnect between economic classes.

A partial counter-example that I found later was that of those Punjabi Sikhs who had remained in the north and who tried to maintain close connections with their villages, even when living in the cities. Of course, the partition of the subcontinent made that impossible for many. 

So much for "facts" in human affairs.

What about opinions?  These of course diverge even more widely. That is why one should be wary, for instance, of depending only on  selected medial “news” sources, or of avoiding uncomfortable facts and contrary opinions. 

2023 February 20th, Mon.
Berkeley, California

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Appendix: The Famine of 1943-44 in Bengal and Orissa/Od'isha

This famine of 1943-44 in Bengal and Orissa was directly connected of course with challenges of various degrees, real or perceived, to the British Empire, from within its dominions as well as from the Second World War. But the connections of the famine with other occurrences did not end with this.

Among other things, a cyclone had already inflicted much damage in parts of Bengal and adjoining areas, prior to the famine of 1943-44. The British rulers were concerned about rebels in Bengal joining up with the Japanese and Subhas Bose's INA (Indian National Army) if the latter succeded in entering the subcontinent from Burma (now Myanmar). They adopted, consequently, something akin to a "scorched earth policy" in parts of Bengal not in the vicinities of Kolkata and perhaps other major cities, buying up grains directly or through intermediaries, ostensibly for the military and the war effort, along with civilians needed in the cities. This of course produced predictable scarcities, driving up prices and increasing hoarding by merchants and landlords.  

Bengal, especially the eastern part that is now Bangladesh, is a riverine terrain, with seasonal floods that made travel by roads impossible. Grain and other foodstuffs were also usually moved through the rivers, traditionally utilizing the tides, winds and human labor. The British government purposely seized and burned barges used to transport grains in parts of Bengal. This could either be seen as a punishment meted out to rebel areas or part of the scorched earth policy that resulted in the famine--or both.

Hindu-Muslim divisions in Bengal were deepened by the famine of 1943-45. There had also been rebellions against the British in places such as Midnapore/Midnapur/Medinipur, including against the forcible procurement of stocks of grain for use by the military and for exports. These rebellions were brutally suppressed, at times further inflaming communal animosities. As it happened, not coincidentally, Medinipur district was among the areas that were worst-hit by the famine. 

Winston Churchill's active role in all of this, as well as that of others in his circle (at a time when there were bumper crops of wheat all over the world and Britain itself was very well stocked with imports, including from India) is well documented in Ms. Mukerjee's book,  "Churchill’s Secret War" (2010, 2018), mentioned earlier in the main text, in the section on the famines. 

Churchill, in his recorded notes and other writings, exhibited a great aversion to Indians in general and seemed to relish their travails and deaths. He and his advisors repeatedly rejected requests by British governors in India to help prevent the famine and then to help lessen it. 

This included the rejection of a desperate plea to divert a few grain-laden ships steaming through the Indian Ocean to docks in India. In addition to the extra grain, and probably more importantly in at least the short term, this would have helped to drive down prices and to release hoarded stocks within India.

Yet, Churchill is still venerated through much of the world, including even in Bengal, mainly for his perceived (and well-publicized) heroic role in WWII. 

One should note that India's population was far from being the only one that suffered from Churchill's views and actions. So should he simply be reviled instead? 

Neither would suffice to completely describe the man, his mindset and his positive and negative contributions to the welfare of our species. Churchill is no exception in this. 

Personal Note

Again, I had never learned much about this, even from my father, the photographer Sunil Janah, although his family was from the hard-hit Medinipur district and he had traveled there during the famine that many had foretold and that broke out subsequently.  

Because of the wartime alliance with the USSR against the Axis powers, the British had temporarily lifted the ban on the CPI--the Communist Party of India--during the war, making the travel possible as well as the subsequent reporting--although of course in very restricted ways.  

However, the report on the famine by P.C. Joshi, who was then the general secretary of the CPI, was published in the party journal, People's Age/People's War, in English as well as in the major Indian languages, along with photographs taken by my father and sketches made by the artist Chittaprosad, these two being among those who had accompanied Joshi in his tour of the famine-stricken areas. 

This allowed news of the famine to spread beyond the confines imposed by the British censors, including through socialist and communist journals to the rest of the world, with perhaps some positive effect on relief supplies and efforts. 

My father and Chittaprosad became lifelong friends and P.C. Joshi and his wife Kalpana (born Dutta, with a remarkable story of her own during India's freedom struggle) were also close friends of my parents, both while we were in Kolkata and later when both our families had moved to Delhi.

A Book Burning and a Reincarnation

A note should be made here about a remarkable book of Chittaprosad's sketches on the famine, titled "Hungry Bengal" and subtitled "A Tour through Midnapur District, by Chittaprosad, in November 1943". This book, with the sketches unforgettable once seen, was printed in the 1940's, only to have almost every copy confiscated and burned by the British government in India, before the book could be released to the public. 

Uncle Chitta, as I called him (in Bengali), retained a personal copy--perhaps the only surviving one--that was probably passed on eventually to his sister and then his niece. Long after Uncle Chitta's  passing, this surviving copy was used by Ashish Anand and his team at DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) to reprint copies of that book of sketches and bring it into public circulation again, along with Chittaprosad's other works. 

A Dilemma in Medicine in the USA

 

A Dilemma in Medicine in the USA

This below was my response to a question about an alternative treatment for cancer that had been administered to a U.S. resident who had been diagnosed with a cancer that was advanced and for which there was no approved treatment that could save him in the U.S.A.  So he had gone to Mexico and had been treated there, using a drug not approved for cancer treatment in the U.S.A. This had resulted in a truly significant improvement. However, on return to the U.S.A., his physician refused to approve continued treatment with the drug, despite being presented with the documented evidence. 

Physicians in the USA will only prescribe or openly go along with treatments using drugs approved by the FDA. Federal oversight of medicines and treatments is of course needed. There have always been a lot of scams around, including lethal ones.  However, the FDA is not always right. For instance, how often has a licensed MD you have gone to here in the USA prescribed or even suggested the use of herbs as a treatment or preventive?  Yet this happens quite frequently, I am told, even in countries such as Germany, home to some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. But in this country this could get the MD into a lot of trouble. 

When it comes to cancer, the paradigm that has been very successful in the treatment of infectious diseases--that of identifying a pathogen and then trying to kill it--is flawed for obvious reasons. The "invading organisms" are the body's own cells. If the cancer is localized enough and identified early enough, then surgery and/or localized radiation may get rid of it. If it has spread, various forms of chemotherapy and in some cases wider use of radiation are utilized, often with many adverse and even lethal consequences. 

While there have been advances in immunotherapy and even gene therapy, there is a basic lack of understanding of the more general reasons behind the growth of cancers (which are part of the lives of most multicellular organisms, with various direct or indirect causes). 

We also do not have any real understanding of how to try to "normalize" cells that are behaving abnormally. In most cases, this is not from any damage or mutation to genetic material. Genes have been switched on and off and we do not know how to enable the body to communicate better with the affected cells to reverse these changes.

It should also be clear that cancers have become much more prevalent in our times, especially in areas that have become industrialized or urbanized or where there have been major changes in diet and/or heavy use of pesticides and herbicides in agriculture. This remains a crucial issue, even taking into account increases in average life span and improvements in detection. 

So a certain degree of humility and openness to other approaches is needed in this and other matters.

Of course, there is no substitute for replicable evidence. 

But here we run into a problem that arises out of the fields of finance ans economics. In order to get FDA approval for the use of a drug in humans, a company has to invest, typically, many millions of dollars in research and development, especially in field trials with humans. Why should any commercial company do this if the treatment cannot be patented? It would be a hugely expensive investment in altruism. That is not what commercial companies are built to do.

Higher levels of homocysteine (a product of protein metabolism) in the blood have long been known to be associated with increased rates of heart attacks and strokes. 

Folic acid (a B vitamin, also marketed as folate) has also long been known to reduce the level of homocysteine in the blood, without any adverse affects--although B12 levels should also be monitored as folic acid can mask the effects of B12 deficiency.

But how many MD's would prescribe folic acid for this purpose? Is it because they are ignorant or perverse? No, it is because such a treatment is not an approved protocol in which they have been trained in medical school. Nor do any of the pharmaceutical company drives they are exposed to during their practice bring this to their attention. 

There is no point in blaming the company executives, the physicians, or even the government. They are all to blame in part for the situation but there is little they can do individually about it. 

So one should of course be very wary of unusual cancer treatments. But one should not have a closed mind about those, whether they are FDA approved or not, provided one has at least some evidence to go on.

Substances meant to cure parasitical infections appear unlikely to help treat cancers. The only general way they might work that I (with very limited knowledge) can think of is that cancer cells may be more adversely affected by the substance than normal tissue cells.

So again, caution is needed, along with some degree of openness. In a case where conventional treatment offers no hope, it may not be imprudent to try other approaches, with due caution. 

Varieties of Ignorance--and More

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Varieties of Ignorance--and More

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I) Varieties of Ignorance

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II) Deception and Engineered Ignorance 

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III) Ignorance of Ignorance

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I) Varieties of Ignorance

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Firstly, there is circumstantial ignorance. This is simply not knowing about something, from not having had access to that knowledge--for various reasons, including not having the chance or means or being denied acccess. We are all ignorant in this way. 

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Secondly, there is preoccupied ignorance--not having the time to know about something. 

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Thirdly, there is lazy, apathetic or disinterested ignorance--not bothering to know about something or not having the interest or inclination to know. 

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We are all also ignorant in this second way and this third way, to certain extents.

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Fourthly, there is willful ignorance. This is actively not wanting to know about something. Here too, all of us are ignorant to various degrees, some far more than others.

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Fifthly, there is zealot or proseletyzing ignorance. In this, we are not content with not knowing about something. We are determined that others should not know about that thing either, and do our best to make this so.

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IIA) Deception

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It is of course also possible to know about something--even be an expert about it--but not want others to know about it. 

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If we go beyond simply not wanting others to know the truth about something to trying to prevent them from learning it, what we are doing is hiding or obscuring the truth. 

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This can be done in several ways and with various degrees of effort and efficacy.

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IIB) Engineered Ignorance

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I had distinguished between the following types of ignorance, from which we all suffer (or benefit):

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1) circumstantial ignorance;

2) preoccupied ignorance;

3) lazy, apathetic or disinterested ignorance;

4) willful ignorance.

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Clearly these divisions are somewhat arbitrary. For example, the second type of ignorance may be seen as a special case of the first, while the fourth kind may be considered an extreme case of the third.

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I had also mentioned  a fifth kind of ignorance:

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5) zealot or proseletyzing ignorance.

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This is a rather harmful form of ignorance, from which most of us are hopefully free. Again, it may perhaps be considered a peculiar extension or outgrowth of the fourth kind. 

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I had then noted that we may also want others to remain ignorant about what we ourselves know. 

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I think we have all experienced this desire and acted on it--for example by lying or keeping quiet about some childhood (or adult) misdeed or fumble made by ourselves or someone we wanted to protect--or even something we or someone else did that might be innocuous or even "correct" in our eyes, but that might still incur the wrath of a parent, teacher, boss, spouse or other person(s). 

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But this kind of hiding and deception is not just a personal or local affair. It is also carried out on much wider scales. This happens, at various levels, almost everywhere. And this appears to have been going on for a very long time, with no end in sight.

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So it seems to me that there is perhaps a sixth form of ignorance:

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6) engineered or designed ignorance.

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Clearly, this is a special (but very important and distinct) variety of the first kind: circumstantial ignorance. In this special case, the circumstances for our ignorance have been engineered. They have arisen by design--that of some other folk. Or it could also be that we are the ones who have engineered the ignorance of some others.

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Many of us (in my generation and earlier) did not know how babies are made until we reached a certain age. This was probably by design. Our parents, other elders, teachers and others were willing to teach us some things, but avoided some others, considering us to be too young to learn about those "forbidden topics". 

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This may well have been to our benefit. We were perhaps being "protected" in a sense. Or it could simply have been that our parents, for instance, felt embarassed about discussing these things with us--just as most of us probably felt or still feel, about discussing them with our late or surviving parents, after we had eaten of that forbidden apple.

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But other cultures may not approach this matter in this way, and our cultures may also have shifted since then.

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In school, we learned many good things, quite a few of which we found useful later, beginning with the three R's. 

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But we never learned about other things that could well be equally or far more vital--such as basic personal finance or law.

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Was this an example of "engineered ignorance"? Were we kept in the dark about these two (and other basic survival) topics by design--not necessarily benevolent?

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I am not sure.

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III) Ignorance of Ignorance 

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This brings me to another, related topic: the awareness of ignorance.

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We may be ignorant about something, and aware that we are ignorant. Or we may be blissfully or harmfully unaware--ignorant--of our ignorance.

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The well known war criminal and conversational poet, Donald Rumsfeld, had once expressed this particular kind of awareness and lack of awareness in a nutshell.  

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I paraphrase: 

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"First, there are the knowns. Then there are the known unknowns. And then there are the unknown unknowns."

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2019, June 21

Brooklyn, New York

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On Racism and Bigotry

On Racism and Bigotry 

Arjun Janah: I am a person whose skin happens to be brown and who also grew up in a country [India] that was very different from this country [the U.S.A.]--but was just as troubled and divided, for at least several thousand years, as this country has been for several hundred. However, despite the gross inequities, injustices and violence of the past and the present, and despite the existence of the debased mass cultures that are as typical of civilization as are its achievements and refinements, it was also a place where the many subcultures were still as interwoven and the humans still as essentially alike at core as they are here.

Liberals/progressives and others believe that racism, bigotry and many other things they view as evils are the results of cultural conditioning. To a great degree, they are right. But these would not arise and continue if they also did not find some innate bases within us, on which they could root themselves and grow. So, like everything else in humans and other social animals, they are, I believe, the results of both biology and culture. Children may be born innocent, but they contain within them the instinctive natures that express themselves in many ways as they grow. Cultures can encourage some tendencies and discourage others, but the tendencies themselves exist within us.

If so, they must exist for reasons having to do with survival--as all innate things do, forged as they were in the fires of our past eons on this planet. So we have a propensity for violence as well as instincts that guard against that; we have capacities for callousness and empathy, for cruelty and compassion, for exclusion and inclusion, for selfishness and altruism, etc.

Clearly, the persistence of these instincts must mean that they were needed for survival. But they exist within us in a balance that varies between individuals and between cultures. Also, certain instincts prevail over others, depending on the context and the "other" in the interaction. So we, along with Timur the Lame, Winston Churchill and Shaka Zulu, might behave in one way with regard to a family member, close human or animal friend, or a fellow member of our "tribal" elite--and quite differently with others.

All of this might seem abstruse and irrelevant in the current circumstances in this country and in many other places.

So Matt is of course right. It is a matter of necessity--of collective survival--that, in a multi-ethnic country, we unite to resist attempts at creating or deepening ethnic divides and at scapegoating ethnic groups for our real or imagined woes. This was so in the subcontinent, where we paid a very heavy price for not being able to do this in the 1940's, and are still paying that price. But the background to this, however cynically exploited by the British Empire, goes back many thousands of years, to at least the violent advent of the racist Aryas--along with the Muslim conquests and the excesses of monotheist zealotry that occurred much later.

And this horror has manifested itself in every continent, in almost every country, throughout history, including of course in this country, from its inception in twin genocides. This terror had stalked Europe, from which we draw our main strengths as well as frailties, for many violent centuries. Most of Europe's major nation states were born out of prolonged and violent ethnic cleansing--initially primarily on sectarian, religious grounds.

In Western Europe, Protestants and Catholics were set against each other. The hundred years' war has had its violent repercussions into our lifetimes, as we witnessed in Ireland. Although the drivers of most such conflicts are almost invariably economic and exploitative in nature, ethnic divisions, however superficial, are what most humans easily latch on to, rarely bothering to see beyond these.

So what occurred in Europe in the 1930's and 1940's had its precedents. Jews, specifically, were targeted, not only in pogroms, but through the organized and violent "ethnic cleansing" of entire regions.

Notable among these was the displacement, mostly into the mainly Muslim countries of North Africa and West Asia, of the Sephardim. This occurred around the time of Columbus, following the expulsion of the Moors from Andalusia. The Catholic Church played a prominent role in this and other persecutions.

The echoes of this and other great displacements and massacres will continue to reverberate for us and for those who follow us.

Yet even the descendants of those most adversely affected by such things are often unaware of the tragedies. The dead cannot speak. The memories and even the cultures of their surviving descendants are erased. We are taught the histories written by those who prevailed.

We need to be cognizant that the greatest such massacre, bi-continental in scope, occurred right where we live, and not in the distant past--and was repeated in Australia.

The colonial atrocities in Africa, such as that carried out by Emperor Leopold of Belgium in the Congo, exceeded, in sheer numbers, what occurred to Jews and others under the Nazis and what befell the Armenians and others during and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire--horrific as these two genocidal massacres were.

But it would be totally wrongheaded to think that Europeans are to blame for all the misery and death that humans have wrought upon one another. The fairly recent dominance of Europe gave it an outsize role in this. Our awareness of its history make some of us cognizant of the attendant horrors.

But human nature, with its angelic and demonic sides, has been basically the same over time and across the races, cultures, kingdoms and empires. The history of almost every "nation" on Earth is steeped in blood and suffering, inflicted and borne in varying degrees. Empires have advanced in violence and have also retreated or collapsed in violence.

What is more, such things have never stopped. One has only to look at the subcontinent in the 1940's, Indonesia in the 1960's, Rwanda subsequently, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and what is brewing and occurring in the subcontinent and in Myanmar even now--just to cite a few examples of ethnic violence on grand scales.

As for other acts of massive violence, carried out by state military forces raining fire on humans from land, sea and air, with millions perishing and many more wishing that they too had died--can we even begin to list such actions, even if we start from after the end of the second world war? We in this country had a good time watching M.A.S.H., on TV in the 1970's, with most of us oblivious to its setting and the horrific events that had occurred there, only two decades in the past.

Yet humans have still gone about their business, and genes and memes have flowed across the boundaries that were drawn, blurred and redrawn.

This was so in the subcontinent, despite all the strictures of caste and divisions of religion, and so also it has been here, in South Africa and elsewhere where attempts were made, as in ancient India, to separate people by ethnicity and to establish ethnic hierarchies. Humans like to have sex, they fall in love, and they learn from each other.

But one must recognize that there are things that drive these divisions, and that there are real grievances and insecurities to which demagogues and bigots may appeal--along with imagined ones.
 
https://www.facebook.com/professorposner/posts/10214010862842954?comment_id=10214013146740050

2017 August 14th, Mon.
Brooklyn, New York
   

Comment in reply to Peter Isackson

Comment in reply to Peter Isackson

References:

1) Facebook post:
 https://www.facebook.com/arjun.janah/posts/10154881912360950

2) my previous comment:
 https://www.facebook.com/arjun.janah/posts/10154881912360950?comment_id=10154884256150950&reply_comment_id=10154888222665950&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R3%22%7D

3) Peter's previous comment:
 https://www.facebook.com/arjun.janah/posts/10154881912360950?comment_id=10154884256150950&reply_comment_id=10154889555535950&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R2%22%7D

This is a comment, Peter, that I tried to make in response to a comment of yours on a Facebook post. But it was too long for Facebook to handle. So I could not post it there.

In desperation, I am posting it below instead. I have not had time to properly edit it. Sorry.
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Thanks for your considerate comment and explanation, Peter. As I have drawn this dialog out too long, perhaps, let me just focus mainly on our remnant differences of opinion.

A Personal Mental Model

I will describe here some features of my own mental model of the universe we inhabit. In this model, our universe has realms, including the physical and the mental.  These realms are connected and may be one at a deeper level. But to us they appear to be different from each other.

I have abstracted somewhat here from my earlier simple, commonsense examples, which should hopefully have been understandable.  I had given these examples in an earlier comment. For those who have not read that comment or Peter's response, following this might, in places, be a bit difficult.

Since what I describe is a personal mental model, it should be seen as such and no more. I personally believe this model, which is minimal and simplistic, has some good correspondence with reality, in whose existence I still believe, not have been dissuaded of it so far.

My belief is that the existence of this reality does not depend on our own existences, transient and local as these are.

I also had believed that this model, some of whose features I describe here, might not have differed significantly from what many others may also have constructed for themselves, consciously or not, to try to make sense of their own experiences. I may, however, have been quite wrong in this part of my belief!

Of course, I and others are surely influenced by our own instincts, cultures, inclinations and reasoning in the constructions of such models.

In any case, this model, like all models, should be subject to being amended and even being discarded when needed. The need for this would normally arise, most urgently, from some conflict between it and reality--for those who accept the existence of the latter.

Number

I would dare to disagree with Wittgenstein regarding his assertion that two plus two is four only because we agree it is.

I do not know whom Wittgenstein meant by "we". I think that this "we" would have to include birds and many other animals that can count.

Of course they would not use the words we use in English or any other human language. But I would posit that number is a property of the universe that would still be there, if all living things capable of counting were to vanish.

I will not try to claim that this assertion is provable by any obvious means or try to prove it here.

The concept of number (as manifested in the perception of differences in number,) does not need verbalization until we go beyond the first few numbers that we can distinguish, among like objects, by the use of our sight, our touch or our other senses. And even then, the verbalization serves only as an aid.

Nor will I attempt to define or claim I can define what is meant by "like". I know that you and others could claim that this "like-ness" is again is a matter of perception and agreement. I could replace "like" by "identical", but again I will encounter the same difficulty.

Number is, in my opinion, an entity of the mental realm, which we apply in the physical realm. Of course the two realms are connected. I will not try to explain the connection or claim I understand that connection.  I will say more about these two realms, that I mention here, later.

On Mathematics and Science

I believe scientists who have thought about it are acutely aware that they are proceeding based on certain assumptions. They may agree on the assumptions, or they may not. This is one of the things that liberates science, to a degree, from more doctrinaire fields. Of course, scientists, like all other living beings with minds, have their pet beliefs--including, in their case, about their subjects.  So they quarrel about this with those with other beliefs. Yet, although one might give many counterexamples, this does not result in as much acrimony as in the humanities.

As for mathematicians--these usually restrict their criticisms to real or perceived faults in the logical or other means of proof of their conjectures and to the logical or other consistency of their constructions. So there is even less acrimony among them--at least about the things most scholars of the humanities, or even in the natural sciences--argue about.

I am aware of the critiques of what I have stated about the objectivity of scientists and am willing to grant the partial validity of some of the critiques, without ceding much in what I have stated here.

Now some may take this relative lack of dispute about basics among mathematicians and, to a lesser degree, among scientists, to be evidence of their lack of perception or awareness. Perhaps so, perhaps not.

You had said, at one point earlier,

"The pure truth, whether scientific, philosophical or theological, doesn't exist. It's filtered through human interaction, which can never be perfect."

I would put it differently. I will attempt to do this.

Let me leave aside mathematics, where I strongly believe we can make statements that are perhaps as true as we can ever hope about a statement.  Let me also leave aside philosophy and theology, where I am not at all qualified to make any kind of statement regarding truth--and suspect that anything I say will be objected to.

Let me turn instead to the relative simplicity of the natural sciences. These sciences are focused on the physical realm. And now let me venture to make the considered statement that follows.

We can never be certain that we have perceived the truth, or reality, wholly or perfectly. All we can say is that we have created a mental model (or set of such models) that appears to correspond, in many ways, to physical reality. This remains, nonetheless, a mental model, however elegant and time-tested it may be.

So our conception of reality is a model we have constructed; it is not physical reality itself. We need to have the wisdom to always keep this in mind, and the humility to amend or discard this mental model when we find that it cannot describe reality.

Objective Reality

When I talked about objective reality, about which I gave several simple and concrete examples, I meant two things:

Firstly, we can have a substantial degree of agreement about this objective reality, because you and I can try to independently check a statement about it.

I have explained, with examples, that there are situations where we cannot check such a statement.

But if indeed we can check on that statement, but do not agree, it is most unlikely that we will hold that this shows that there is no objective reality. We would say that one of us has probably made a mistake, or that the statement was not precise enough for it to be checked.

So this is simply the kind of disagreement that might occur about an observation, including a measurement.  It is not the kind of disagreement that occurs in human affairs, or, frequently, in the humanities, involving opinions or inclinations or world views,

I had also qualified my assertions by saying that we do have conceptual frameworks based on which we make observations and measurements. I concede that my assertion of the existence of an objective reality might be attacked based upon my concession.

So let me come then to the second point I wish to make about objective reality, and which I might perhaps not have made earlier.  This is going to be an assertion, rather than a proof.

But let me first illustrate this second point with an example: if, by some catastrophe, you and I and all humans--and even all of life--were to vanish tomorrow from this Earth, I would assert that the sun and the planets and moons would continue to exist; they would continue with their motions and interactions; so would the remnant dispersed materials of our bodies.

The sun, the earth, the water and the air exist, independently of our agreement on its existence. This, I assert.

We may have our conceptions about this physical reality. But that, I (along with most scientists and most humans) believe is a cloth that covers and conforms to the reality underneath. If a magician were to whisk away the cloth, that reality would remain, even sans an audience.

And that is my second point. Put quite baldly and generally: objective reality does not need our agreement, or even existence, to be. It is.

Subjective Reality

Let me now come to subjective reality.

Firstly, let me clear up a misunderstanding for which I was probably at fault, as the words "objective" and "subjective" might be open to misinterpretation.

I did not mean to imply that subjective reality is any less real than objective reality. I only meant that it is a different kind of reality.

As I had explained with simple examples, only you have access to your subjective reality. I can only try, at best, to infer it from my observations of you and from what you tell me or others. 

And vice versa: You cannot access my subjective reality.

Subjective reality is the reality of the mental realm. We exist in at least two realms, in my opinion: the physical and the mental. These are surely connected and may be one at a deeper level. But for most practical, commonsense purposes we can clearly differentiate between them.

======================================================

The Mystery

This brings us to a well known mystery. Our sentience exists in the mental realm. And all our perceptions exist only in that realm, not in the physical one.

Indeed, you and I do not exist in the physical realm.

If I were able to search through every organ, tissue, cell, molecule or atom in your body, seeking for Peter, I would not be able to find him. No neuron knows of your existence. Nor is there a homunculus in your brain or solar plexus that is Peter in essence.

I mean by this, the one who knows he is Peter and answers to that name--and would know he is he, even if he forgot or was never given his name.

And it is exactly the same with me.

Does this mean that you, I, the cat and the cockroach are ethereal beings of this mental realm that I have asserted exists--but which can only be sensed as a subjective reality?

I do not think it is that simple. But it may be so, or even simpler. I really have no clue. None.

We are each, as perceived in the physical realm, a giant collection--a swarm--of a trillion cells, and each of these itself is a giant collection--again a swarm--of untold numbers of molecules and their atoms.

The giant swarm of molecules within each cell is gathered into structures and processes that are as complex as any one can find in our multi-cellular processes and structures--only more so.

As you know, there is probably not an an erg or a gram, or even a photon or an atom, within your physical body, that was there when you were born. So in this we are like clouds or storms that form and dissipate. We are complex processes or flows, rather than static objects. Of course, so also are the hills and the continents. Matter and energy flow through us as they do through clouds and storms and through ocean waves and currents.  And there is no "us" in "us".

There is also no real physical separation between our bodies and the rest of the universe. There is no sharp demarcation in space. There is no real barrier. There is no surface where we start or end. The belief in our separateness is an illusion--not that much different from the illusion that is perceived as a cloud.

It is the same in time. We have no clear beginning or end in time.

So in all of this we are as waves in the ocean, as ripples on a pond.

Patterns persist in us, as they do more briefly in hurricanes or much more persistently in Jupiter's great red spot. The processes that we are made of involve not only the interactions of matter and energy, in space and time, but also the flow (although that may be wrong metaphor) of information.

Our atoms are talking to one another, as are all the parts of the universe, including the galaxies.

Our molecules are also stores of knowledge, as seen in our persistent DNA, passed down through the eons, written to and erased, split apart and combined, and found copied a trillion times over in our living bodies. And our molecules are also processors of knowledge, in constant communication with one another, just as much as they are bricks and machines,

And so also, at different levels of organization, are our cells, tissues and organs in constant communication with one another, using chemical and electro-chemical means.

So where, amidst all the vortices, and where, amidst all the chatter that extends from the atoms to the galaxies, is sentience?  Is it that chatter itself?  Whence  arose this speech that pervades and permeates all?  Whence came this myriad of speakers and listeners at every point in the infinity of space and the eternity of time?  Can they be truly separate from one another--this endless, countless multitude--or are they one?

Or where, we may alternatively ask, are the elusive I, we, you, he, she, it, they of our human grammars? Should they be done away with? And who will do that doing away, pray?  How could the who arise from the what and how could the one ebb back into the other?
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The Quantum Realm

You may have noticed that I have stayed away from the mysteries of the quantum realm. I have done so for two reasons. Firstly, there is a tremendous amount of confusion about those mysteries, including among physicists themselves. Secondly, there is mystery enough, as I have described here, for us to wonder at and ponder, even in the realms we thought we understood.

Trust

Trust
  
If the font-size appears to be too small, please use the "zoom" feature that has been available for some time on most web-browsers.

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(This was generated during a back and forth today [2016 May 15th, Sun]  on the current Democratic primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  However, it touches on much wider issues.)

I personally have lived my own life always trying to see people and their affairs, not in black and white terms, but also noting the grays. That's a harder way to go about things, and one often finds oneself blasted by those who would take the simpler route.

That said, there are things on which one should not just shrug and yield.

These are matters, just for instance, that humans have always held to be crucial in our interpersonal interactions. We see these being violated everywhere, and so tend to become cynical. But the very fact that we still notice these things as they occur shows that these violations are hardly universal.

There is, for instance, such a thing as trust. If a person violates our trust and we get to know of this, it is very difficult to trust him/her again. Indeed, to do so appears foolish in the extreme. But should we then either shrug and trust most people in most things as we might perhaps have done before, or should we now distrust most people in most things, becoming suspicious, even paranoid?

In societies that most of us regard as "primitive", consisting of relatively small clans or tribes--the way most of our ancestors lived through most of our human and probably prehuman evolution--you will often find there is a high degree of trust within the clan or tribe.

This is not to say there are never any violations--but those who violate trust usually cannot escape the consequences.

While there may be occasional conflicts or even violence between clans and tribes (along with many peaceful and essential interactions), agreements between tribes are usually honored--and violations of trust viewed with outrage.

All of this might seem Utopian and absurd to us--but is very real to those who have lived and worked with such people, as my father, for example, did in India, visiting and photographing tribes (similar in some ways to the Amerindian tribes that vanished here) who had then been living in their traditional fashions in remote, forested and hilly areas of the subcontinent, not as other large-group folk did.

Over the past many decades, especially recently, all of that has been rapidly changing. Sadly, this was not unexpected. All over the world, over the last several centuries, the great diversity of our human cultures, each with it languages, arts, crafts, healing, and particular outlook and store of knowledge, has been vanishing just as rapidly as has the great diversity of our biological species, each with its genetic and cultural information, evolved over the eons.

So there is a greater reality that might be lost when we focus only on what we have experienced and understandably grown accustomed to in our own spheres, where each of us must survive. So we see or focus on certain priorities, based upon those experiences, and are blind to or ignore other priorities that might in fact be more pressing by far, and neglect of which might have far greater consequences.

In this, I am surely as limited as are others. However, I should say that the views I have expressed earlier in discussions about politics, economics and other matters have not usually been come to lightly.  Often I have arrived at them reluctantly, after years of observation and so also of reflection. This hardly makes me sage or expert about all such matters.

There are certain things (such as the science and mathematics it was my lot to study and work in for many years before I began teaching in the high schools here in New York City almost thirty years ago) in which one can make rather strong, definitive statements, noting also the limitations on the generality of such statements.

In other things, especially human affairs (including teaching) one finds oneself on much shakier ground.

One of the reasons for this is that it is not possible, even within a family or a close relationship, to know all that is going on or what the other persons are really thinking and feeling--nor would it be desirable to attempt to do so. So there is that trust that one extends, hoping it will not be violated, and trying not to violate others' trust.

But when it comes to what happened two hundred years ago, or what is happening right now in a place on the other side of the planet, or even in another section of town or even across the street, we are often very much in the dark.

Meanwhile, even within what might remain of our past clans, that we might be born into or construct through our interactions, we see breakdowns of trust, often brought about by distance, preoccupation and the general economic and social milieu we live in.  This is also often so between co-workers and neighbors.

Yet, that same modern human world that so isolates us from one another also makes us dependent on one another, and affecting one another, within a city, and across the globe, in ways that could never have been imagined before.  

What others do affects us, and what we do affects them.  

There are imbalances of power in this, and those who make decisions that vitally affect the lives of others are often able to escape what would, in the past, have been the consequences of their actions on themselves.

This cannot be sustained.

Arjun Janah
2016 May 15th, Sun.
Brooklyn, New York
 

On Progress

 
If the font-size appears to be too small, please use the "zoom" feature that has been available for some time on most web-browsers.
 
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On Progress 

When we were children in school, and (for some of us) even students in college, we were taught and even believed that we were in an extraordinary era of "progress".

But we should by now have come to realize that this "progress" was clearly along several directions.

If we consider, for instance, the degree of biological diversity on the planet or the degree of cultural diversity within our species, then clearly the "progress" made over the past century has been in the direction of decreasing both of these diversities.

Since the viability of the biosphere is dependent on its biological diversity, and that of our own species is dependent also on our cultural diversity, it follows that the progress in these two areas has also been towards greatly decreasing the chances of survival of our ecosystems and of our own species. This is so even if we only consider our prospects through the next few centuries.

The current ecosystems might be replaced by or transition to degraded substitutes, and our own species might also, for a while, experience something similar. However, in the latter case (that of our own species), the direction in which we are making progress seems to be towards extinction or near-extinction in the not-too-distant future, with extreme suffering in store for most of us en route to that.

Such a fate would perhaps be only fitting, since we have also been the prime movers in the recent extinctions of countless other species.  This has taken place in a time-span perhaps shorter than those of most of the great mass extinctions of the past. These ancient mass extinctions, as recorded in our planet's sedimentary rock layers as part of its fossil history, followed impacts by comets or asteroids or eruptions from super-volcanoes that rapidly altered, over decades or centuries, ambient conditions on most of the planet's surface.

So perhaps what should be taught in today's schools is that we are heading, ever faster, towards multiple catastrophes unless we take individual and collective action. The main thing we can do to avert or diminish these disasters is to slow production and consumption. Unfortunately, our economies are dependent on maintaining and increasing the rates of production and consumption.

This is what is touted by economists and governments as indicators of "growth", what drives corporate profits and government revenues and, let it be said, gives many workers and small businesses their incomes.

These incomes could be received directly from jobs or contracts that depend upon these corporate profits and government revenues, or they could be obtained indirectly from consumers who spend part of their own incomes on purchases, rentals, etc.

Increasingly, the sector that profits most from all of this activity is the financial sector--the banks and investment firms, along with the insurance businesses associated with these. Of every dollar or rupee that we produce through our labor (or even take home as pay) it would be interesting to figure out how much, on average, goes to a bank or other financial institution.

While human labor is still the fuel, interest from debt, along with rent, are the gears and crankshafts of our economic engines.

Some might point to fossil fuels and other energy sources as the more basic fuel, along with the labor of living plants that gather energy from the sun and so power the flows through the food webs on which we are still as dependent as ever for survival.  But human labor, physical and mental, remains essential even in the utilization of these and other natural resources.

Of course, the labor of those who do not work at paid jobs, but carry on those perennial human activities without which none of us would have survived even the first few months of our lives, will never be counted by economists and financiers.

Unless we figure out a way to get out of this economic trap, preferably without causing great hardships for ordinary folk, we seem doomed to continue on this path of "progress".

Most of the movement that many would agree has constituted progress that they consider positive and meaningful can be traced back to those advances in science and technology which have been put to what we consider good use. Of course, for every one such positive effect, one could find, perhaps, one or more that are negative.  "A better world through chemistry" had once been the advertised promise.  The reality turned out to be rather different.

Nevertheless, in the realms of public health, medicine and more, there have been advances that have been beneficial--at least for many humans.  However, increasing pollution, climate change, land scarcity, drainage of resources and capital, wars driven by globalized economic forces and made even more horrific through technology--and much more--have negated much of the benefit accruing from the kinder applications of science and technology.

Another area, in which many will agree there has been some positive movement, is in the social domain, where there has come to be some recognition of past and current injustice and unfairness.

In the economic realm, progress had been made, over the course of the last century, in advancing the rights of workers to a greater share of the wealth they produce. This had only been possible when workers were able to gain more political power. And this was not won easily or quickly.

But we have seen, over the past several decades, a global push back against even that advance, concomitant with the loss of whatever little political power workers and their political organizations had gained.

Other species will never, of course, have any power over human politics and economics, except through whatever voice may be gained by environmentalists and whatever political and economic power those who are affected directly by the loss of species might be able to exert.

The parallel loss of so many of our human cultures, including the accelerating loss of languages and even of entire language families, seems also almost unstoppable, given the fact that the people affected have been relentlessly displaced, scattered and reduced in number, with little or no power or influence over the great juggernauts that drive our economies and our species on their tracks of relentless "progress".  Many of us seem to have less regard for the fate of entire populations of our own species than we do for those of some others that we now suddenly favor after having driven them to near extinction.
 
The question that should be asked of those who still tout human "progress" remains the same as always, except that it is increasingly more urgent: "Towards what?"

Arjun Janah
2016  January 26th, Tue.
Brooklyn, New York