Monday, June 18, 2007

Beauty Of Divergence

This is an interesting thought which has enlightened my inner consciousness. In this age where I see people getting more inclined to forge themselves into stereotyped views about life and way to live, I personally feel sheer absence of tolerance. People getting offended about divergence in perspectives towards life and nature. They miss out on the fundamental axiom of life, which is based on evolution, and, divergence is an inherent dimension of evolution. Beauty of divergence is that it still maintains a delicate balance. Nature has very interesting and complex mechanisms to achieve equilibrium when there is a mutation in the ecosystem because of external and internal factors. There are a lot of disparities in physical and intellectual capabilities, in life style both imbibed and inherent and habitats that they thrive in, between millions of species in this planet. Those disparities have added beauty, bringing variety and different possibilities for life to survive, evolve and flourish.
But unfortunately, our species ‘homo sapiens’ do not seem to comprehend the aspect of divergence, which is one of the fundamental pillars, on which the nature, which we are part of, has evolved. We are oblivious to the ‘beauty of divergence’. We are obsessed about convergence of thought processes, perspectives regarding life and philosophies which defines the rules for the same. But what does this obsession lead to. Nothing but, constraining creativity due to extreme dogmatism, leading to complete absence of evolution of philosophies which has been driving force towards enriching collective wisdom of our species. Dogmatism is acme of attachment. All misery and enormity of conflicts which exists among humans is because of attachment to materialistic pursuits and stereotyped views regarding life.
When ever I tried to visualize nature, it appeared to me as a web, where the diverging strands can be compared to paths of evolution and circular strands to paths of relationships and dependencies. It is a very delicate and intricate network. We humans are just a node where the path of evolution of apes intersect the current outer most circular strand which gives a snapshot of the current ecosystem. If we consider the evolution of human civilizations, that also can be considered as a web, similar to the web of nature which I have indicated above.
Humans have a myopic view of this planet and cosmos. We are so ignorant about the existence of this closely knit artwork of nature, the ‘web of nature’. We tend to believe that everything is centered around our species, which is a irrational belief, and shows a complete depletion of common sense!! Same magnitude of ignorance is evident, when I see, squabbles and debates centered around, which philosophy, on which social and intellectual dynamics of a civilization revolves around, is correct and appropriate to follow. Each and every living entity is like are ray of light. Colour of a ray depends on elements which it is composed of and the intensity of each of its elements. If you look at a living entity, it’s definition of life, depends on it’s intellectual, physical and spiritual quotient. I am not sure how many of us appreciate this fact.
One truth that I have realized is that nothing is absolute in this cosmos. Every thing is relative. Definition of anything is relative and is based on defined frame of reference. I see some people proud about something disregarding the fact that we are all bound by relative assessments and when we thing we are good it is not necessarily good in a different frame of reference.
In spite of this divergence in the web of nature, there is an implicit oneness. No species can survive in isolation. Each has to play it’s role in this act of nature governed by the rules of nature. If this oneness is discovered by all, then all the conflicts will cease to exist. For discovering this ‘oneness’ the focal point of life has to change from self and accept self as part of the whole. This can only be achieved by attaining a certain level of detachment from material world. For last few centuries humans have grossly overlooked this implicit thread of oneness which has to resonate with the rhythm of life.
Life is a journey fuelled by knowledge. Nature is the tutor and the university. The divergence in the web of nature unfolds in front of us hiding all the complexities and exhibiting only the simplicity. Can we imbibe this simplicity? I myself have forgotten in this uni focused rat race of urban life, when I get time to observe nature, which I often used to do in my childhood days. Many of the innovations that we have in this century probably is not in favor of oneness of nature. That is leading to conflicts within our species and also across species.
As the cosmos is, everything, is in a constant state of flux. Nothing is permanent. Always in a transient state. But how many of us realize this. Many of us live in a false pretense of permanence which is not real!! We are all bound by the cosmic cycle. What does cosmic cycle mean? It is a cycle where there is no beginning nor end. The diverging paths of evolution which leads to expansion of cosmic web, cannot sustain the expansion along the time dimension and will implode back into the state where the cosmic web originated. Cycle goes on!! This is also true with the ‘web of nature’. But this cycle applies to the physical world. Body is only a medium through which the inner consciousness interacts with the material world. Journey of the inner consciousness continues. Is it cyclic? May be, May be not!!
We discussed about the divergence in the web of nature. But what gives the order to this expanding web. What gives it stability and the equilibrium and controls the entropy as it expands? The order and stability is there because of the inherent convergence of the laws of nature which govern the diverging paths of evolution. But what about the web of civilizations. Why there is so much of conflicts and instability in it? Does it have a convergence in laws governing it in terms of values and ethics. Until this is in place conflicts are inevitable. I dream of this world and hope will be a reality soon!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am impressed by the style of your
writing and the wealth of knowledge you possess to back up
your views. Keep up the good work. I found the themes of
Megalomaniac(Mm) and Beauty of Divergence were
complementary.

We are all, including the Mm, are Karma Yogis in our own
individual style.

Human beings are products of environment. The way they
behave is the cumulative effect of their experience and
exposure.

Vedas,Upanishads and scriptures of all religions contain
philosophy. The scientific theories in it were based on
the prevailing knowledge and the socio-cultural setting.
We also know that knowledge is ever expanding and that
un-revised books are incomplete source of information. I
think we should keep an open mind. Adopt the good bits
from the west, east south and north. Discard the garbage
wherever it came from. We should consider that India is a
great country among other great countries in the world.
The moment we think we are the greatest would be the
beginning of the down fall.

To conclude,
"I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West,
out of place everywhere, at home nowhere."
Jawaharlal Nehru

Anonymous said...

I agree information is ever expanding. What I was commenting on,
was on divergent ways of arriving at laws which are generic. Our
civilization had well developed ways of discovering the self through
which discovering the cosmos because self is a part of it. Probably with
Mughal invasion and which was followed by series of other invasions
probably we have lost that completely. This methodology based on
intuition is very different from experimentation methodology which is
currently prevalent. We have to be open to accept that and if possible
respect it. Since I am an engineer I really appreciate the current
methodology, because that is what I have learnt. I am slowly discovering
the intuition based methodology by reading books. But I am not sure how
far I will reach because that needs a different frame of mind which is
tough to achieve!!
"Greatest" is a relative term, because we cannot define absolute for
anything and hence I do not believe there is "greatest" in anything.
There is no standard frame of reference, except for scientific theories
which have axioms to define frame of reference, which are imaginary. So
I agree with you that classification of anything this manner will not
make a lot of sense. I agree there is goodness everywhere, in fact in
every living creature and ultimately life is a journey to discover that
in yourself!! But unfortunately for ages life has reduced to a rat race
for power and materialistic possessions!!