Mutuality is the rule and not the exception

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

We often conflate science with technology. Science is the study of existing phenomena in the universe. The methods used to carry out this study have been getting narrower by the day. In the past, the greatest of scientists were philosophers first. Sadly, that trend has changed over the last century. With academic studies getting more niche & disjointed, the capitalist world rewards individuals more than the discovery. So, those in charge of deciding what comes under science, academic philosophers, come up with fancier theories each year. Theories published to pamper one's ego make it into the framework of the scientific method, narrowing the outlook of science, putting the best of religious cults to shame. Human perception is limited. We don't even see or hear beyond a range. And why is the rational part of the brain given more importance than the feeling (intuition) part? If one has read the philosophical works of the Netwons, Pascals & Teslas, one'd understand that these men would be labelled pseudoscientists & dismissed in today's world. That's how open-minded they were. Scientists of the past encouraged crazy & ridiculous ideas for us to have this level of technological advancement. What have we to lose by looking into the ancient philosophies? Isn't that the spirit of science? To keep an open mind, no matter how absurd some ideas sound. As for Gurus, no real Guru asks to be admired/worshiped/listened to. They are a humble lot who give wholeheartedly. The problem is of priests who misinterpret the Hindu texts to exploit people. These self-proclaimed Gurus, reeking of pettiness, are only after power & money. 

https://twitter.com/seenandhini/status/1713139766223634832?t=QCz4nTEoszx5y9Cy1-ByGA&s=19

are we animal or are we angel? 

https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1739831624517419045?t=kVHhPmU_ygLX9he7mveFVQ&s=19

not sure degrowth would work. But there’s no question that the capitalist economy needs to be reined in rather than being allowed to commodify all aspects of human and nonhuman life. Culture and politics ought not to be for sale. Economics should meet needs not invent desires. I'm not opposed to the idea; problem is there is no such thing as the "we" in those sentences. How to take such unprecedented collective action w/o the requisite publics? How to form such publics? The one thing I'd absolutely want to avoid is governments controlling production. They already do to some extent, and it is always bad news (eg, military-industrial complex). Economies cannot be centrally managed without leading to mass starvation and impoverishment (at least, that's the lesson I take from such experiments historically). Threefolding is degrowth by default since it redirects economic activity to the provision of human needs, away from capitalism's need to conjure up evermore new desires in people for products we didn't know we needed until we saw that ad. The creation of new desires is fine, but that ought to be a spiritual/cultural activity, not a for-profit industry.

https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1739766593360687567?t=R9GAni0CszF05bPV61j6rg&s=19

I'm not trying to put animals down, it's just that if we measure humans by the Darwinian standard, we are doing exactly what we were designed to do (be fruitful and multiply). Also, on that standard, extinction is just how evolution works. Life on Earth will degrow the human. Or, are we spiritual beings? Are we capable of cocreating an economy of virtue instead of vice? And maybe the biological world is not just a competitive blood bath after all? Look again: it may be that mutuality is the rule and not the exception.